They told you that “Curiosity Killed the Cat.”

They said:

…Stay in school.

…Color inside the lines.

…Play by the rules.

…Don’t touch that.

…This is how it’s done.

…Face forward and Pay attention.

They were either wrong or they were lying.

I was back on a college campus not long ago talking to undergrads about what life is like in “the real world.”

Over time, I noticed a theme. Most of the young people I spoke to were in a self-made “Passion Purgatory.”

There’s an assumption that your life’s passion will present itself to you like a stubbed toe — you can’t miss it, you can’t avoid it, and it’s all you can think about the second it happens.

Well, in my experience, passion-finding doesn’t happen like that.

Yet, people wait. Hoping that their passion will be left on the floor in the dark room of their life just begging to get stubbed on.

They wait in “Passion Purgatory.”

And the sad thing is the longer people wait the less they believe their passion will ever come. “This is just the way things are” becomes the self-prescribed medicine and only way to rationalize the boredom experienced day to day.

Well… I’m speaking outside of my personal knowledge now. So suffice it to say: if you’re waiting to happen upon your passion, I’d argue that you’re doing it all wrong.

I can’t tell you exactly how crummy life is without passion. But I can tell you what life feels like with passion and how to find it in your own life.

So let’s pivot.

Let’s Talk About A Life With Passion

When you have a life passion:

…most days, you pop right out of bed pumped to get the day started.

…then you have a reason to keep moving when you’re tired.

…there’s always something new to learn.

…there’s a friend who also cares.

…you’ll inspire others to care too.

…you can build things bigger than yourself.

…it shows.

The people in your life who have become outliers (uncommonly successful) in their work have all done it through a passionate approach to life.

Every professional athlete in a popular, competitive sport is impossibly passionate about their sport. Simply “going through the motions” cannot get you to that level of achievement.

At the top, everyone has a passion for what they do.

Sometimes the passion is focused internally (read: they love doing the work) other times the passion is externally focused (read: they love a certain type of people and social responses). Either way, the passion permeates through those outliers.

So, if you’d like to also be uncommonly successful in what you do, you’d better figure out your passion.

This begs the question, how can you find your passion.

The Curious Way That You Can Find Passion

Yes, that was a forced word-play.

Curiosity is a key to it finding your passion.

Quickly, a key point to keep in mind as we begin to look at curiosity. The people we referenced above as “outliers” are not newly curious in their fields. They’ve long been beating down that path toward their advanced levels of mastery in their disciples and are at a whole new level of asking questions and finding answers (being curious).

Realize that you and I are in different chapters of our stories… the only thing we need to tell ourselves is “Keep writing.” Following our curiosity is the only way to move from beginner to expert.

With that, when was the last time you said, “I wonder what would happen if…?”

–   When was the last time you made time to test the scenario?

When was the last time you said, ” I wonder how they do _________…?”

–   When was the last time you looked it up?

–   When was the last time you went down some rabbit holes intentionally?

My thesis is simple: young people in the school systems (and often at home) have curiosity beat both figuratively (and as sad as it is to think about, literally) out of them.

They stop asking why. They stop wondering how. The stop touching things that “could break” and they stop being curious.

Curiosity, however, is the key success.

Watch Chef’s Table and you’ll see that the best chefs in the world constantly ask “What if…?” and then go chase down the future.

Listen to some of the best programmers turned CEOs in the world, and it all started with a couple of lines of code and the question, “I wonder if this will work?” then “I wonder how I could do something cooler.”

Curiosity doesn’t come easily though. It’s a muscle. And like all muscles, it can be strengthened by getting repetitions. It can also get overtired from repetitiveness.

Whenever possible, we want to cross-train our curiosity. Changing mediums and changing the level of mastery is a great way to revitalize our questioning minds.

Also, like working out, it’s best to commit to a schedule and follow through when you feel great AND especially when you feel tired and bored. A “hardhat” mentality to “I’m going to get my butt to the keyboard/camera/guitar and put in my time” has proven to be the single key to longterm and consistent successes.

Finally, our curiosity is our child-mind. Children ask questions. Children light up at new discoveries. Children believe in magic and possibility.

Our curiosity keeps us child-like (not to be confused with childish). It’s our curiosity that keeps us innocent and optimistic.

Protect those world views. Stay curious.

To support you on your way to renewed curiosity, I say:

…Climb trees.

…Play with your food.

…Say things in funny ways.

…Touch that.

…Look out windows.

…Ask Why.

…Don’t read the instructions.

…Try new things.

…Say, “Yes and…”

…Curiosity killed the cat but in the next 8 lives, the cat was all the wiser for it!