原文：https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-find-my-passion-9

第一次尝试翻译，请多指教。

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How can I find my passion?

怎样找到自己的热情所在？

Answer by Oliver Emberton（https://www.quora.com/Oliver-Emberton）

Too many of us believe in a magical being called ‘passion’. “If only I could find my passion”, we cry. “Finding my passion would make me happy”.

我们中的太多人都相信一种名为“热情”的神奇的东西。“要是我能够找到我的热情所在”，我们呐喊着，“找到热情所在就能让我快乐。”

（现在我找到了你，热情，我可以去任何地方了！）

Well, passion is real, and very powerful. But almost everything people believe about finding it is wrong.

是的，热情是真实存在的，而且十分具有力量。但是人们相信自己找到的几乎所有事情都被发现是错误的。

Rule 1: Passion comes from success

规则一：热情来源于成功

All of our emotions exist for good reason. We feel hunger to ensure we don’t starve. We feel full to ensure we don’t burst. And we feel passion to ensure we concentrate our efforts on things that reward us the most.

我们所有的感情都因为好的理由而存在。我们感觉饥饿而得以保证我们不会饿死。我们感到饱腹而得以保证我们不会撑死。我们感到热情而得以确认我们将努力专注于最能回报我们的事情上。

Imagine you start a dance class. You find it easy. You realise you’re getting better than others, and fast. That rising excitement you feel is your passion, and that passion makes you come back for more, improving your skills, and compounding your strengths.

想象一下你在上一节舞蹈课。你发现它很简单。你意识到你做得比其他人都好，并且学得更快。那种你感到的渐长的激动就是你的热情，并且那种热情让你更多地回想反思，提升你的技能，并且综合你的长处。

（努力→成功→热情→更多的努力；这很简单！我很擅长这个！）

The enemy of passion is frustration. If you constantly struggle with something, you’ll never become passionate about it. You learn to avoid it entirely, guaranteeing you never improve.

热情的敌人是沮丧。如果你持续地在某件事中挣扎，你将不会变得对它怀有热情。你学会完全地抗拒它，这必然使你不能进步。

（努力→沮丧→更少的努力；我不能做到！呃，无所谓了！）

Most people get this backwards. They think we discover our passion, and that makes us good at something. It’s actually finding that you’re good which comes first. Passion comes from success.

许多人得到这样的退步。他们认为我们发掘自己的热情，这让我们擅长做一些事情。但事实上，首先应该是找到自己的擅长之处。热情来自于成功。

Rule 2: Childhood is where passion goes to die

规则二：童年就是热情准备死去的地方

In theory childhood provides a great opportunity to try a bit of everything, find your talents, and with them, your passions.

理论上说，童年提供了许多机会让我们尝试几乎所有事情，寻找你的天赋，并且随之而来的，你的热情。

But think for a moment how badly the system is stacked against you. Say school lets you try 20 subjects, ranking you against thousands of other children. Those aren’t good odds. Most kids are, by definition, around average. And it doesn’t matter how much we improve education, because people need to feel exceptional to feel passionate, and improving education simply moves up the average.

但是想想这个体制是如何严重地阻挡你的瞬间吧。如果学校让你尝试二十门功课，并把你与数千的学生排名。那些都不是好的胜算。大多数孩子，定义上说，都是处在平均水平的。并且无论我们如何提高教育水平，情况都难以改变，因为人们需要例外来感到热情，提高教育水平只是拉高了平均水平罢了。

（为了提升士气，而不是A到F的成绩，我们现在用“好”，“真的很好”，“令人惊叹”，“更加令人惊叹”，“最令人惊叹”来为学生划分等级）

Say you’re one of the lucky ones, and you’re top of your junior math class. The education system will keep rising your difficulty until you find a level – like college – where you’re not exceptional anymore. Even if you actually are objectively pretty great, once you feel merely average, you’ll find your passion slipping.

如果你是幸运儿中的一个，并且你是你所在的趣味数学班级的第一名。教育系统将会持续提升你的难度直到你发现一个层次——比如大学——在哪里你不再特别了。即使在客观上你确实十分出色，一旦你觉得自己仅仅是平均水平，你就会发现热情溜走了。

And that’s if you’re lucky. What if your passion was for art? From an early age that passion is compromised by its social consequences. “It’s hard to make a living from painting” say your parents. “Your cousin is doing so well from engineering. Why can’t you be more like him?” And so you put your passions to one side, and let them wither.

这还算是幸运的。如果你的热情是对于艺术的话，会怎样呢？从热情被它的社会结果妥协的早年开始。“从事绘画为生是很难的。”你的父母说到，“你的侄子在工程方面做得那么好，为什么你不能更像他一些呢？”就这样你将你的热情放到一边，让它们枯萎。

In a population of billions, it’s obvious that not everyone can be unusually great at a handful of academic subjects. What if your true skills are in speechwriting, or creative dance, or making YouTube commentaries of videogames? None of those things are even on the syllabus.

数十亿人群中，不是每个人都能够在少数学术领域上做到不寻常的出色，这是很显然的。如果你的真实能力在于写演讲稿，或者创造性的舞蹈，或者在YouTube上解说视频游戏呢？这些事情中没有一个存在于课程大纲上。

And so most people grow up without much passion for anything.

因此大多数人的成长缺少对任何事物的热情的陪伴。

Rule 3: Passion can be created

规则三：热情可以被创造

It may help to know that the most successful people in life generally didn’t pick their passion off a shelf.

如果知道在生活上最成功的人大都不从书架上找到他们的热情可能对你有所帮助。

（治疗癌症；最畅销的作者；摇滚明星；披萨的发明者；脸书的创始人）

In fact, many of the world’s most successful people dropped out of education entirely. Not because they were stupid – but because they found other areas where they were more skilled that education did not recognise.

事实上，世界上最成功的人中的很多都辍学了。不是因为他们很愚蠢，而是因为他们找到了其他他们更加擅长而教育并没有触及的领域。

They created their own passions.

他们创造属于他们自己的热情。

Only a tiny fraction of people can expect to excel in the narrow subjects that childhood primes us for. And competition in that space is basically ‘everybody in the world who went to school’, which doesn’t help our chances.

只有很小部分人可以期望自己擅长那些童年为我们准备好的狭窄的领域。在那个空间里，最基本的竞争是“世界上所有去上学的人”，这并不能帮助我们提高自己的机会。

But if you look outside of that space, you’ll find less competition, and more options. And this is how you tip the odds of finding a passion in your favour.

但是如果你看向那个空间的外部，你就会发现更少的竞争，和更多的机会。这就是你如何增加找到在你喜欢的事情上的热情的几率。

Option 1: Create something

选项一：创造一些东西

When you create something new, you’re inventing something to be passionate about.

如果你创造一些新事物，你就是在发明可以拥有热情的一些东西。

You might design novelty cushions, or write Batman stories, or start a Twitter account dedicated to fact-checking politicians.

你也许设计新潮的靠垫，或者写蝙蝠侠的故事，或者申请一个推特账号，致力于核实政客的证据。

（他说的所有事情都是一个谎言，包括他的出生地点，种族和性别）

New things are relatively uncontested. By creating something new, you’ve made your odds of becoming exceptional far, far higher.

新的事情相对而言是没有竞争的。通过创造一些新事物，你就已经将自己变得与众不同的几率大大提升了。

Now it’s important to note that this doesn’t sidestep Rule #1: passion comes from success. So if your new Twitter account only has 5 followers after a year, you probably won’t be too passionate about it. If you had 5 million, you’d have quit your job. You must find success to fuel your passion.

现在重要的是要记住，这并不是回避规则一，即热情来源于成功。所以如果一年后你的新推特账户只有五个关注者，你也许就不会对它太热衷。但如果你有五百万关注者，你将会辞职。你必须寻找成功为你的热情加一些动力。

（努力→成功→热情→更多努力）

But at least you’ve drastically improved your odds, because your competition is so limited. Only a handful of people will even dare to try something new. And you can be one of them, just by starting.

但是至少你已经大大提升了你的几率，因为你的竞争是如此的有限。只有少部分人才敢于尝试新事物。只是一个开始，你就可以成为他们中的一员。

You see this pattern throughout history’s greats. A student called Mark was never going to be the world’s greatest programmer. But he started building cool websites, and he found he was unusually good at this because even better programmers rarely dared to try. It just so happens one of his little experiments became Facebook.

通过历史的伟人们，你会看到这种模式。一个名叫马克的学生永远不会成为世界上最伟大的程序员。但是他开始构建酷炫的网站，并且他发现自己是如此与众不同地擅长于此，因为甚至是更好的程序员都少有敢于尝试于此的。他的一个小小的实验品最终变成了脸书，就是这样。

Option 2: Lead a new trend

选项二：引领一个新趋势

The older and more established an area is, the harder it will be to compete in. Millions have got there before you, and the lower your odds of standing out, the lower your odds of being passionate.

更古老且早已确立的领域更难以竞争。千百万人早在你之前就已到达那里，你能够出人头地的几率越低，你变得充满热情的几率也就越低。

But there’s always a new frontier being born, a place where everyone else is hopelessly incapable, and even modest skills can be impressive.

但是总有新的领域正在孕育，在那里任何一个人都没有把握有足够的能力，甚至中等的能力就能让你使人印象深刻。

（我是表情大师，宝贝*^_^*）

Say you were a teenager who started making YouTube videos, back in 2005. You grow a modest following, and your growing success excites you. By the time the ‘grown up’ world had realised YouTube was Kind-Of-A-Big-Deal with 4 billion views every single day, you’ve become a passionate master of an invaluable new craft.

想象回到2005年，你还是一个刚开始制作YouTube视频的少年。你拥有一些关注者，逐渐增多的成功让你兴奋。当你到了“成年人”的世界，这让你意识到YouTube是一个每天都拥有四十亿观看次数的巨大的成就的网站，你已经变成了对一个无价的新事物充满热忱的大师了。

That isn’t fantasy. There are mountains of hugely successful YouTubers, and most started in the same way: before everybody else. It’s the same for the first bloggers, rappers, and videogame designers.

这不是一个幻想。有许许多多拥有巨大成就的YouTube人，他们中的大多数人都开始于同一方式：早于他人。这和那些最早的博主、说唱歌手和游戏视频解说者一样。

If you can find something new that’s growing fast, and get skilled at it early, you’ll find it disproportionately easy to excel because of the lack of competition. And that’s your new passion right there.

如果你能够发现并且尽早掌握那些发展迅猛的事情，你就会因为缺少竞争而发现优于他人是异乎寻常的简单。这就是你新的热情的所在之处。

Option 3: Fuse mediocrity

选项三：融合平庸

One limitation of education is it’s designed to narrow your skills. Education generally finds your One Best Thing, and pushes that thing as far as you can stand it:

教育的一个限制是，教育是被设计用来缩减你的技能的。教育给你找到一项出众的事情，然后推动你越走越远，直到你无法忍受。

（教育历程：学校（20-30个科目），我可以成为任何我想成为的人！大学（1-3个科目），我可以成为也许两者中的一个！博士（0.001个科目）我可以成为讲师！）

The problem is most of us, by definition, can’t be the best in any one area. But we can be exceptional in our combinations.

对于我们中的大部分人来说，问题在于我们无法成为任一领域最好的那个。但我们可以在综合领域中与众不同。

Say you’re an average artist, with a decent sense of humour. You won’t have much hope with an art degree, and you can’t study ‘humour’ as a subject. But you could be an awesome cartoonist.

想象一下你是一名平庸的艺术家，拥有还算不错的幽默感。你没有什么希望成为艺术大师，你也不能把幽默当作学科来学习。但你可以成为一名出色的漫画家。

Or take an average business student, with some programming ability, and decent sales skills. That person is surprisingly well suited to become the boss of others who were better than them in any one of those areas.

或者一名平凡的商科学生，会一些编程，还有不错的销售能力。这样的人就很适合成为在商业、编程、销售这些中任一领域比他们优秀的人的老板。

The most successful people are almost never defined by a single skill. They are a fusion of skills, often not even exceptional skills, but they’ve made their fusion exceptional. Steve Jobs was not the world’s greatest engineer, salesperson, designer or businessman. But he was uniquely good enough at all of these things, and wove them together into something far greater.

最成功的人几乎不是仅仅靠着单一技能的。他们是技能的结合体，经常不是在每个技能上都特别突出，但他们让这个结合体十分突出。史蒂芬·乔布斯不是世界上最伟大的工程师、销售员、设计家和商人。但是他在这些方面都足够优秀，并且将这些组合起来后，他就变得更加伟大。

This is the final route you have to finding your passion: combine skills into something more valuable. Remember, passion comes from success. If a new combination gets you better results, that could be your passion right there.

找到热情的最终路径就是：将技能结合成为更有价值的东西。记住，热情来源于成功。如果一个新的结合能够让你获得好的结果，那么它就是你热情的所在。

Why passion matters

为什么热情很重要

Passion is attractive. As passion comes from believing you’re unusually good at something, being passionate is a very sincere way of saying, “by the way, I’m awesome”.

热情是吸引人的。因为热情来源于你相信你比别人更擅长于某件事情，拥有热情就是以一种非常真诚的方式诉说：“顺便说一下，我很出色”。

（你实在是太令人惊叹了！）

Passion will persuade people to follow you. It will persuade people to believe in you. But most importantly, passion will persuade yourself. Passion is an emotion specifically intended to make you go crazy and work your ass off at something because your brain believes it could rock your world. That, like love, is a feeling worth fighting for.

热情会说服别人追随你，相信你。但最重要的是，热情会让你相信你自己。热情是一种能让你变得疯狂、让你拼命工作的独特的感情，因为你的大脑相信它能够改变你的世界。这，就像爱情，是一种值得为之奋斗的感情。

And like love, what we’re passionate about is too important to leave to the mercy of fate. If you haven’t found your passion yet, create new things, lead new trends, and fuse new combinations. But don’t ever stop looking.

就像爱情，我们热衷的事情实在是太重要了，以至于我们不愿意听从命运的安排。如果你还没有找到你的热情所在，那就创造新事物，或是引领新潮流，或是融合已有的东西，然后创造新的东西吧。但请你一定不要停止寻找热情。

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找到更成熟的一篇翻译：http://www.douban.com/note/452491633/