If you were to ask me what I'm passionate about,
I would probably say something like physics, or even science communication.
I would've written that down several times on something like a scholarship application,
or even just given it as a response when someone asked me about what I do.
But, I think a lot of the ideas around finding your passion are very flawed.
So, by all accounts, I guess I'm a very driven person.
I am self-motivated, and I'm interested in lots of things.
I like to achieve things, and I'm always working on something.
I guess that's just part of my personality,
and what people see of me is that I'm always sort of working on little projects, we're trying to get things done.
So a friend from high school recently said to me, "Toby, you are so lucky to have found your passion",
and I guess that really got me thinking, "Am I lucky? Is this really a privileged position
...that I meant to have found my passion?", because I don't really see it that way.
And if we're talking about my passion as being science, I don't think that's something that, you know,
I was born with as a given passion. I think that it's something I chose.
It's something that I chose to be interested in, and I chose to pursue, and do things in that area.
So when my friend said that I was lucky to have found my passion, she was feeling a lot more down
that she didn't really have anything that she knew she was really interested in above anything else.
She felt like she didn't have anything that she was passionate about.
And that's I guess [is] a really hard position to be in– to feel like there's something wrong with you
if you don't have one clear direction that you should be moving in.
And to her, someone like me seems to have that very clear direction,
and a very definite path to follow, but that's not the way that I feel.
Yes, I've done a lot of stuff within physics and science now, but it started off as just an interest,
and aspects of passion grew around just the years of study and the effort it I've put into
developing this interest in something, and that's led it to become almost part of my identity,
and my personality is that I'm really into science stuff.
But I don't think, you know, I was born with some destiny to become a scientist.
I just was interested in something and chose to make it the path I was going to go down.
I think that your passion is really just a mindset.
And to be honest, if physics, my passion, was to just be deleted from the world one day, just gone,
and I had no longer anything to do with it because it was just gone, I would be okay with that. [R.I.P. Physics]
I'm pretty confident that I would have found something else that I was interested in,
that I would have put effort into and pursued, and that would be my new passion.
I've got interests in a lot of different things.
Like I said, I guess that's one aspect of my personality that I easily find things interesting.
So, if I'd never gone and studied physics, I think right now, maybe I'd be doing a PhD in something like
psychology, or a field like that, and I'd be happy with that.
That would be my passion, and I'd wrap my existence around that new thing.
I don't think there's anything special about physics.
It's just the thing that I happened to have chosen in this version of reality.
I guess one thing that was holding my friend back from pursuing things a bit more
was that she felt like she hadn't been lucky enough to just be handed a passion.
But I think another aspect of it is a fear of failure.
So the same person said to me that they do fear trying new things
because they do have a fear of failure, and that's really common.
It is tied up with a lot of insecurities about everything, and it can really prevent you from trying new things,
and from selecting an interest to become your passion.
For example, I've never thought that I was the best at something like physics,
I never thought that I was the very best at it,
and even something like making videos for YouTube.
I look back at videos that I only made a week ago and will cringe at them.
But...if I was waiting to feel really secure about everything that I did and everything that I made,
I would never have made a single video ever, and it's likewise I probably would never have pursued physics.
If I'd allowed myself to be afraid of not being as good as someone else?
Guess what I did was just accepted that there's a transition of trying and not being so great at something,
and I was able to find a mindset where that didn't bother me.
I can't say that I've always been able to find that mindset.
I've had things that I was insecure about that I did let consume me sometimes,
but I saw the importance of finding that mindset where you aren't afraid of failure.
Because, I guess, if you're going to try and pull yourself out of that spot where nothing interests you,
you have no passions and you don't know how to find one because just nothing is interesting.
I guess it's all about trying to overcome the fear of failure and trying new things,
trying skill based activities, and developing your skills in them.
Passions are all about the situation you've been placed in throughout your childhood, the activities you've tried,
and the things that you've just been able to have a go at and develop skills in.
Because once you develop skills in something and you start to become good at it,
I think it naturally makes you like that thing more,
and that might develop them to the one thing that you would call your passion.
I think a passion really just means the thing that you do the most,
and often that's something you're good at, something that you're trying out,
something you're trying to become better in.
I do think that I am lucky in a way,
thinking back to the comment that my friend made, but not lucky to have found my passion.
I still don't believe that there's any God giving out passions or gifts when you're born.
It's not like each human has some passion deep down in their code that you have to unearth.
It's just the places that we fall into.
I do feel lucky that I had a mindset where I found things interesting,
and that has defined who I am. It's to find the fact that when trying to select something to pursue,
I felt like I had multiple options. And if one of them was to go away, like physics was to just disappear,
I would be just fine with that. In fact, I often think about the version of myself
that did pursue something different, like psychology or philosophy.
Those are some of the other things I'm interested in.
And you know, I would have just put all my effort into that other thing.
So I do feel lucky in that way, and I guess my advice [is] if you don't feel like you have that ability to find
lots of things interesting is to just try as many skill based activities as you can.
So for that reason, I am happy to have this video supported by Skillshare.
Skillshare is a place where you can develop your skill based interests
through classes on things like design, innovation, and technology.
For my audience, I would recommend some courses on Python,
including this one for data science and machine learning,
and this one covering the basics of Python programming.
I do have a special link where my viewers can get two months of unlimited access to Skillshare for free,
so I'll put that link on the screen and down in the description.
I'd really encourage you to check it out because they have over 20,000 courses,
I'm sure you can find one there to try and develop some of your own skill based interests and start learning.
So thank you guys for watching this video, and I'll see you next time.