School teaches students about how to write a resume. School teaches theory. And vocabulary. And accounting (in my case). And many other great things, like beer pong.

But not passion. School will not teach you how to find your passion, and there’s a reason for that.

Only you can find it.

But if I were to give a general lesson plan and to teach passion in school, this is what I would teach.

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Kimberly Pirtle is an intuitive life coach and holistic healer. She blogs about the power of positive thinking for creating bliss in our lives at http://www.uncoveryourbliss.com/blog/

Being wrong (or worrying that we will be wrong) about something as important as what we want to do with our lives is hard. It’s one of the fastest ways down the path of indecision and fear. What do we do if we invest time and money working towards a goal and then we get there and it’s not what we thought it would be? How can we trust ourselves if we took risks and now we’re headed down an uncharted path? Here’s the truth: That is life to its most basic definition. Life is change and the unexpected. Even if you live a charmed life and always know what you want to do and go out and do it you will be faced with unexpected events and people. I would go so far as to say that most of our meaningful living is done within the flow of change and unexpected events. Those are the times when we can’t run on autopilot and must call on who we are to find our way.

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Wake up from your dreams by following them. Don’t let responsibility wake you. Too often during our daily routine we are living in a dream before we are woken up by a co-worker asking us to do something. Or by an email that requires immediate attention. Or by a phone call. Or by, or by, or by.

Aren’t responsibilities like a useless dream catcher dangling from the dash? Our daily duties are consistently finding their way through that small, little hoop to abruptly wake us from our dreams.

Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up in a different way?

Instead of a co-worker popping their head into your cube and asking for a favor, what if you woke yourself by having a plan of action on how you were going to materialize an idea? Or instead of being interrupted by an email, what if you prioritized your day so you would have time to dream?

I’m not daring you to dream. I’m assuming that you are a dreamer just like me. What I’m daring you to do is prioritize your dream, make time for it, and most importantly, make time to think about it.

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Many students mistake passion for pleasure. A passion can be incredibly frustrating, overwhelming, sometimes even downright painful.

Most students mis-assume that passion must overtake you right away. A passion can be a small flicker – you can tell it’s a passion when its flames are ones you want to fan. It does not start out as a blaze of glory.

A number of students believe there is some great (high-paying) fun job out there somewhere if they can just find it, that does not come with a lot of stress, and that is as much fun as effort. I have not yet seen this job.

Finally, a substantial number of students mistake passion for profit. The belief is that if they do something they really love, they will make lots of money at it. To the contrary, my observation is that most passions insure, at least in the short term, poverty – not wealth.

So why don’t students “Pursue the Passion?”

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People who have not found their passion are sometimes inappropriately labeled as lazy. To me, that’s like calling the kid who can’t read dumb, when it’s really just a case of the
kid needing some glasses.

Discovering a passion does not have anything to do with motivation. We are all genuinely driven to find our passion, but the problem is that most of us are just waiting for our passion to overwhelm us like a 20 foot wave.

My friend Suzanne, who will be doing a guest post for us next week, puts it this way. “A passion can be a small flicker- you can tell it’s a passion when its flames are ones you want to fan.”

With that said, let me tell you how I fanned my fire.

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