‘Be yourself’ and ‘find your passion’ are perhaps the most substandard, shabby, useless pieces of advice around. The first is anti-self-improvement—and we all have work to do on ourselves. Further, it is significantly easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting; how can one do this, when they ‘be themselves’!?

The second is just as bad. Very few (and you could say, very lucky) people actually know what their passion is—and usually, they know it from a very young age. If this is you, then yes, Pursue Your Passion. If you don’t know your passion now, you’re likely never going to ‘find’ it; passion finds you. Follow your interest, become really good at something, and one day, if you’re lucky, you’ll wake up and say, ‘you know, this might actually be my “passion”‘.