https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sZdcB6bjI8

Why some of us don't have one 

true calling | Emilie Wapnick

Raise your hand if you've ever been asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" 

Now if you had to guess, how old would you say you were when you were first asked this question?

You can just hold up fingers. Three. Five. Three. Five. Five. OK. 

Now, raise your hand if the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" has ever caused you any anxiety. 

(Laughter) 

Any anxiety at all. 

I'm someone who's never been able to answer the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" 

 See, the problem wasn't that I didn't
have any interests -- 

it's that I had too many. In high school, I liked English and math and art and I built websites and I played guitar in a

punk band called Frustrated Telephone Operator. Maybe you've heard of us. 

(Laughter) 

 This continued after high school, and at a certain point, I began to notice this pattern in myself where I would become interested in an area and I would dive in, become all-consumed, and I'd get to be pretty good at whatever it was, and

then I would hit this point where I'd start to get bored. And usually I would try and persist anyway, because I had already devoted so much time and energy and sometimes money into this field. But eventually this sense of boredom, this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this, this isn't challenging anymore -- it would get to be too much. And I would have to let it go. 

But then I would become interested in something else, something totally unrelated, and I would dive into that, and become all-consumed, and I'd be like, "Yes! I found my thing," and then I would hit this point again where I'd start to get bored. And eventually, I would let it go. But then I would discover something new and totally different, and I would dive into that. 

This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety, for two reasons. The first was that I wasn't sure how I was going to turn any of this into a career. I thought that I would eventually have to pick one thing, deny all of my other passions, and just resign myself to being bored. The other reason it caused me so much anxiety was a little bit more personal. I worried that there was something wrong with this, and something wrong with me for being unable to stick with anything. I worried that I was afraid of commitment, or that I was scattered, or that I was self-sabotaging, afraid of my own