You’re Not Lost (You’re Just Not Choosing)
“Stop looking for your passion. Passion is not a thing to be found. Passion is something that happens when you work hard at something you care about.”
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Elizabeth Gilbert spent a year traveling the world to “find herself.”
Italy, India, Indonesia. Ate, prayed, loved. Wrote a memoir that sold 12 million copies about her journey of self-discovery.
Then, years later, she said something that contradicted the entire premise of her most famous work:
“Stop looking for your passion. Passion is not a thing to be found. Passion is something that happens when you work hard at something you care about.”
The woman who built her career on finding herself through searching eventually realized: you don’t find yourself. You build yourself through work.
But nobody wants to hear that. Because searching is comfortable. Choosing is not.
Searching means all doors stay open. Choosing means closing doors. And closing doors feels like death.
So you stay in motion without moving forward. You keep “exploring your options” because exploring means you never have to commit to anything specific.
You can quit the job because it’s “not aligned.” You can abandon the project because it “doesn’t feel authentic.” You can end the relationship because you “need space to grow.”
And all of that sounds reasonable. Growth-oriented. Self-aware.
But watch what happens over five years.
You’re still exploring. Still figuring it out. Still waiting for the moment when it all clicks and you finally know who you are.
That moment isn’t coming. Because you don’t discover who you are by looking inward. You discover who you are by taking action outward and seeing what sticks.
The Confusion Is Real. The Solution Isn’t What You Think.
I’m not dismissing the confusion. It’s real.
You genuinely don’t know what you want. You have ten different interests and no clear calling. You look at successful people who seem so certain about their path and you have no idea how they got there.
That confusion is legitimate. The problem is what you’re doing about it.
You’re treating confusion like something to resolve through more thinking. More soul-searching. More personality tests and vision boards and journaling about your values.
But confusion isn’t resolved through introspection. It’s resolved through action.
You can’t think your way to clarity. You can only act your way there.
Every successful person who looks certain about their path? They didn’t start certain. They started confused. Then they picked something and went all in.
The certainty came from the doing, not before it.
What Actually Happened With My Writing
I spent two years trying to “find my voice.”
Read every writer I respected. Studied their styles. Tried writing like them. Then tried the opposite. Then tried to blend approaches.
I’d write something, read it back, and think: “This doesn’t sound like me.”
So I’d try something different. New style. New angle. New format.
Two years of this. Nothing felt right.
Then I made one decision: publish one essay every week for a year. No exceptions.
Week one was terrible. Week eight was worse. Week fifteen I almost quit because everything I wrote felt forced and fake.
By week twenty-five, something shifted.
Not because I “found my voice.” Because I built one.
Through repetition. Through choosing to show up even when I had no idea what I was doing. Through making decisions about what to keep and what to cut based on what actually worked, not what felt “true to myself.”
My voice didn’t exist before I started writing consistently. It emerged from the act of writing consistently.
The person I was looking for didn’t exist. I had to create them through action.
Why You’re Still Searching After Three Years
Here’s the real reason you’re still exploring: searching is infinite, building is finite.
When you’re searching, you could be anything. A writer. An entrepreneur. A designer. A coach. Whatever.
The potential feels limitless. And potential feels better than reality.
Because once you choose, you have to face the gap between who you want to be and who you actually are right now.
If you commit to writing, you have to face the fact that your first hundred essays will be mediocre.
If you commit to building a business, you have to face year one being slow and unglamorous.
If you commit to a craft, you have to face being bad at it for longer than you’d like.
Searching lets you avoid that gap. You never have to be bad at anything because you never fully commit to anything.
But the gap is where growth happens.
You don’t become a writer by thinking about writing. You become a writer by writing badly until you write well.
You don’t become an entrepreneur by reading about business. You become one by building something that fails, then building something else.
You don’t find your purpose by soul-searching. You build it by doing things and noticing what gives you energy.
The Three Things You Need to Understand
If you want to stop searching and start building, you need to accept three realities about how identity actually works.
Reality 1: Identity is built through repeated action, not discovered through introspection
You think you need to know who you are before you act. It works the opposite way.
You act, then you become.
I didn’t know I was a writer before I started writing consistently. I became a writer because I kept writing.
The person in great shape didn’t discover they were athletic. They became that person by moving their body consistently for years.
The person with deep relationships didn’t find their people. They became someone worth knowing by showing up consistently.
Stop asking “who am I?” Start asking “who am I becoming through what I do every day?”
Reality 2: Every day you don’t choose is a choice to stay the same
Not choosing feels neutral. Like productive limbo between where you were and where you’re going.
But you’re not neutral. You’re choosing to stay exactly where you are.
Staying “open to possibilities” is closing the door on actual growth. Because growth requires commitment.
You can’t get good at something by dabbling. You get good by doing the same thing repeatedly until you build real skill.
While you’re “exploring,” someone else is building. While you’re “staying open,” someone else is getting reps.
Five years from now, they’ll have ten thousand hours in one thing. You’ll still be sampling.
Reality 3: Clarity comes from action, not contemplation
You’re waiting for clarity before you commit. But clarity only comes after commitment.
You won’t know if writing is for you until you’ve written consistently for six months.
You won’t know if the relationship is right until you’ve worked through hard things together.
You won’t know if the business will work until you’ve actually built it and tested it in the market.
The confusion you’re experiencing isn’t solved by more thinking. It’s solved by doing something long enough to get real feedback about whether it works.
Action creates clarity. Thinking creates more confusion.
What You Should Actually Do
Pick one thing. Not the perfect thing. Not the thing you’re most passionate about. Just one thing that seems interesting enough to commit to for six months.
Then do it. Every day. Or every week. But consistently.
Don’t question whether it’s the right choice. Don’t worry about whether you’re missing out on something better. Don’t search for signs from the universe.
Just show up and do the work.
Some days will be boring. Some days you’ll want to quit. Some days you’ll wonder if you should be doing something else.
Do it anyway.
After three months, you’ll know more about who you are than three years of soul-searching will tell you.
You’ll know what energizes you. You’ll know what drains you. You’ll know what you’re naturally good at and what requires effort.
You’ll know whether this thing is worth continuing or if you should pivot to something else.
But you’ll only know by doing. Not by thinking about doing.
What This Actually Changes
Once you see identity as something you build rather than discover, everything shifts.
You stop waiting for permission. You stop expecting magical clarity. You stop telling yourself you’ll start once you “figure out who you really are.”
You start. Messy. Uncertain. Not knowing if this is the right path.
And you become who you are through the act of choosing a path and walking it.
I know people who’ve spent a decade “searching for their purpose.” Still taking courses. Still reading books. Still waiting.
Then I know people who picked something and committed. They’re not more talented. They weren’t more certain at the start.
They just chose to build instead of search.
And the gap between those two groups gets wider every year.
The searchers are still waiting for clarity. The builders have created skills, businesses, relationships, identities.
Not because they found themselves. Because they built themselves.
You’re not lost. You’re not confused about who you really are.
You’re avoiding the discomfort of committing to something before you know it’s the perfect choice.
But perfect choices don’t exist. There’s only choosing, then making it work through repetition.
The person you’re looking for doesn’t exist yet. They won’t exist until you build them.
So stop searching. Pick something. Start.
You become who you repeatedly choose to be.
Thank you for reading.
– Scott
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