When I was teaching high school science, I used to wake up an hour early so I could write. It was an hour solely for me, before the worries of the world clouded my mind. Then I’d go to school and talk about electrons day-in and day-out.

Turns out I hated talking about electrons.

It was in those moments, those days, I’d sit in the teacher’s lounge and try to find the voice inside of me that knew the right answer of what my heart wanted to do every day. And all I could hear were people counting down to Friday and vacation and summer.

It was then I decided I NEVER want to count my life down. Sure, I enjoy a weekend and vacation, but it can’t be the ruler of my life.

So I sought the advice from others to help me figure out where to go next, and found it to be largely unhelpful. Here’s a sampling:

“Once you find your passion the rest falls into place”

“Follow your passion”

“Chase your dreams”

Ok even my own eyes are glazing over writing these platitudes.

I used to buy into it all. I even used to write cover letters peppered with the word ‘passion’ because I thought it would help me land an interview. And I found myself asking the questions:

How are you supposed to find your passion when you love a lot of things? How do you find the answers inside when it wasn’t always safe to truly be yourself?

If you’re even a little bit like me, you’re passionate about a lot of things. I could EASILY convince myself to quit everything and go for that degree in astrobiology or ornithology or the global impact of the Irish whistle. And I have done that kind of thing in the past (I mean not those specific things–i never did finish that PhD in food science, my apologies to Dr. Yam)

I was coming from a place of being excited about the world and was passionate about a LOT of different things. But I had no idea how to process that excitement and passion…and somehow it felt wrong to love more than one thing. I had to train myself to be okay with getting excited about new things. And I KNOW I’m not the only one out there, even though the world feels like it was built for the single-passioned folks .

So… how do you distinguish between things that you love and things that may be worth pursuing as a career or academically or otherwise?

Here’s the next platitude people say in response to that question:

Know yourself.

Yeah, ok that’s easy when you’re just one of those people who knew at age 5 what you were going to do for the rest of your life. And good for you!! I’m proud of you and I’m sure we can find other things to talk about.

But this conversation is for folks like me who have/had a hard time knowing yourself, grounding in the real ‘you.’

For me, it wasn’t safe in my young life to express the real me. The interests I had, the clothes I wanted to wear, the way I wanted to spend my time–it all was tempered with other peoples’ ideas or goals for me.

I had to squelch that person, the true deep down intuitive feel-it-in-your-belly person. And I made a lot of left turns in my life. But you know what?

When you make enough left turns in life, you go around the block and end up where you started.

And I had a lot of fun making some of those left turns. (see also: my life as a drummer, my ultimate frisbee teams, the wildlife forensics lab where I worked, my obsession with birds).

5 steps to know yourself better:

1. Find safety. This is a must. Find safety in your home life as best as you can. And if it’s not safe, maybe there’s a room you can be safe in some of the time? Is there a door you can lock? Even snippets of safety can be powerful.

2. Find a way to feel grounded. I work a lot with people on mindfulness and feeling grounded. It’s hard. It’s hard to come back from trauma triggers. It’s hard to ingest social media or the news and not feel a little off-center. This is a practice and is totes worth the time.

3. Learn to be kind to yourself. Here’s what I wrote that may help you.

4. Develop your senses. Do something with your hands–it helps you build self-trust in a new way. Learn an instrument, learn to draw, get a sketchbook and just doodle. When I substitute taught younger kids, they used to spray shaving cream on the tables and the kids drew with their fingers in the shaving cream. Do that. These things can help unlock something in you.

5. Create something. Specifically something that’s low-stakes, and even better if it doesn’t last forever. It doesn’t have to be perfect or even good, it just has to be. Examples: bake something relatively easy that’s not supposed to look perfect. Wacky cake is a pretty easy place to start that’s both vegan and simple.

This may lead you to a deeper relationship with yourself. Maybe not right away, but give it time. And seek help (like me!) for guidance because it’s HARD to do this alone.

And the other thing I have to say to those passion seekers:

It’s not always totally practical or even possible to follow your passion every single moment. For instance, I cannot change space and time and age and gender and all the other things I’d need to be a goalie in the 1994 World Cup. I cannot go back to age 8 and stick with those drum lessons that real-me ended up dropping. But those things CAN inform your present. For instance, I did end up playing drums in bands. I do still watch Youtube videos of the 1994 World cup and write about it and have FUN with it. But life moves on and somehow the things all come together like all the electrons of your wacky cake.