How to Find Your Passion (When You Have Too Many)

Most passion-finding advice assumes you have one passion, quietly waiting somewhere to be discovered, and that your whole job is to find it. But what if you have twelve? Genealogy, building apps, coaching, writing, reading, philosophy, studying, drawing, making my own soil from kitchen scraps, growing things, sustainability, eco-friendly living. That's not a hobby list I made up for this post, that's a non-exhaustive (oups!) inventory of what I'm actually into, right now, at the same time.

I'm Murielle Marie, master certified coach, entrepreneur, and creative generalist, and I spent most of my life treating that list as a problem to solve. Then about 15 years ago, right around when I started coaching, I stopped trying to solve it. This post explores what changed for me, what the research actually says about "finding" a passion versus building one, and the actual system I use to run twelve-ish passions at once without losing my mind.

Why "Find Your Passion" Assumes You Only Have One

"Find your passion" carries a hidden assumption most people never question: that passion is singular, fixed, and waiting to be discovered, like a key under a doormat. Once you find it, the story goes, the rest is supposed to be easy.

A Stanford study revisited in a recent piece on the psychology of passion found exactly why that assumption backfires. Students who believed their interests were something to discover lost enthusiasm the moment the material got hard. Students who believed interests were something to develop kept going. These students received the same article with the same difficulty, but experienced completely different outcomes because of one belief about where passion comes from. The researchers' own conclusion was clear: urging people to find their passion teaches them to put all their eggs in one basket, then drop the basket the second it gets heavy.

"Find" implies passion is singular and pre-made. "Develop" implies it's plural and built. That one-word shift changes everything about what you're allowed to want.

The Real Problem Isn't Having Too Many Passions

I carried that "find the one" belief for most of my life, and it made every single interest on my list feel like evidence against me. Not "here's another thing I love," but "here's another thing proving I can't commit and that there’s something wrong with me."

I realized, about 15 years ago, that this was never actually a problem of having to choose. It was a problem of how I was looking at the whole situation. With good planning, and by combining instead of choosing, and by choosing what gets my attention in the moment rather than forever, I could have all of it. Genealogy didn't have to beat coaching. Drawing didn't have to lose to building apps. Nothing had to go.

A recent Inc.com piece on generalists in the AI economy makes almost the identical case from the job side: algorithms can already execute narrow, specialized tasks with incredible efficiency, which means a person whose entire value sits inside one specialty is, in the writer's words, a “depreciating asset.” The people who hold up are the ones who can move across disciplines and translate between them, exactly the muscle multiple passions will help you build without effort.

Passion Isn't a Weakness. It's a Mosaic.

Here's the surprising part when you dig into what current career writing actually says about this. Passion by itself isn't even the advantage. A 2026 Inc.com piece on career strategy argues that passion has become a commodity: millions of people are passionate about the same things you are, and increasingly, so is the algorithm. What actually sets someone apart is the unlikely, specific combination of everything they've done, what the writer calls a "mosaic." I don't think it's a coincidence that word is basically a synonym for combine.

Twelve passions isn't twelve competing loyalties. It's twelve tiles. Genealogy taught me how to trace a thread through a mess of scattered information, which is most of what coaching actually is. Building apps taught me systems thinking, which shows up in how I structure a coaching practice and how Coachmila's behavioral-change system is built underneath. Philosophy and ethics are the reason that same platform is built to safeguard people, not just engage them. None of these connections were planned. But they all strengthen each other, and inform the work I do one way or another. In my book Get Unstuck! I call the reason this Mosaic exists your “glue,” that binds all your passions together.

How I Actually Have Twelve Passions Without Losing My Mind

Combining instead of choosing sounds nice as a philosophy. It only works with a real system behind it, and mine is not complicated.

1. Ask what's essential right now. What's my current focus, what's actually making money, what's moving the needle forward. That's the layer that gets my attention today, this week.

2. Let everything else wait its turn, on purpose. When something new pops up, and with twelve passions something is always popping up, it goes on the plan to address later. It doesn't get chased the moment it shows up, and it doesn't get dropped either.

3. Review at steady intervals, not whenever I remember to. Weekly, monthly, quarterly, and one big planning session every December where I look at the whole year and decide what's getting real focus next.

4. Choose in the moment, not forever. Choosing what gets my attention this week isn't the same as choosing what I am. I can pick genealogy this month and app-building next month without abandoning either.

That last point is the one that actually changed things for me. I wasn't choosing between passions. I was choosing what gets my focus right now, which is a completely different, much smaller, and, most importantly, a temporary decision.

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Common Questions About How to Find Your Passion

How do I find my passion if I have too many interests?

Stop looking for the one you're supposed to find. Research on implicit theories of interest shows that believing passion is something you discover, rather than something you build, makes people give up faster when any one interest gets hard. Instead, pick what gets your focus this week or this month, and let the other interests wait their turn rather than trying to eliminate them.

Is it normal to have multiple passions?

Yes. Having a wide range of interests, sometimes called being a multipotentialite or creative generalist, isn't a focus problem, it's a different operating pattern. Career research increasingly points the other way too. In an era where AI can replicate narrow specialties quickly, the ability to combine several areas of experience is becoming the more defensible position, not the less serious one.

Should I pick one passion or pursue several at once?

You can pursue several, as long as you have a system for deciding what gets your attention in a given week, month, or quarter. The mistake isn't having several passions, it's trying to give all of them equal, immediate attention at the same time with no review cadence to sort them.

What if I never find "the one" passion I'm supposed to have?

You might not, and that's not a failure. The framing that there's one predestined passion waiting to be found is exactly the belief the Stanford research found makes people quit early. Passion that's developed, worked at, and returned to over years tends to outlast passion that was supposed to arrive fully formed and effortless.

Ready to combine your passions instead of picking just one?

If you've spent years trying to narrow a long list of interests down to "the one," you haven't failed at focus. You've been handed the wrong question. The real question isn't which passion to keep and which to let go of, it's how to build a system that lets all of them coexist without any of them stalling out.

Book a free 20-minute coaching clarity call, and let's map out what's essential right now, what can wait its turn, and how to build the same kind of weekly, monthly, and quarterly review rhythm that's let me run a dozen passions at once for the last 15 years.

Book your free session

Or if you're not ready for a call yet, grab the free Portfolio Career Starter Kit and start mapping your own combination instead of hunting for a single passion to sum yourself up.