Passion always comes. It's what you're doing when it comes, whether you can recognize it, and whether you can run with it. Choosing to be gritty first is not a requirement. Chances are, you'd have still found passion elsewhere doing other things. You've just found a way to successfully seek it in labor.

The problem is:

1) We hate to admit it sometimes. If you're reading a comic book or playing video games, we make it not count. Parents are guilty of this with their children also. Passion is not a choice between school subjects or job titles. There are kids with a passion for picking their nose. It won't get them anywhere, but they toyed around, discovered it, and found it. It's passion. It's what turns you on.

2) It can be passion against. If you hate your job, it isn't because you don't have passion for it, and no, no amount of waiting will grant it. What you have is passion against it. And this is where most of the anti-passion sentiment comes from. They find passion too illusive and metaphysical, all not knowing it came and passed already. It was the loathing they had for their job. Sadly, they overcame it. They overcame their passion.

3) We don't act on it. Unless you're still picking your nose, we need to act on our passion more. There are youtube millionaires that play video games all day. Someone has to draw comic books, and they're all adults. Not all passions will lead to professions, but it should still be your goal.

Of course, passion does not equal happiness nor success. It's what you do with it.

Anecdotally, the parallels between love is uncanny. 1) We often hate to admit who we fell for, 2) we can be passionate against someone (opposite side of the same coin, just see 90% of romantic comedies), and 3) if we don't act on it, it never flourishes.

And love does not equal happiness nor success. It's what you do with it.

And we always fall in love. Maybe it's just who you're staring at when it happens...

I am unconvinced by the idea that passion comes only after labour.

Passion feels to me like a gift from the universe, you never know when or where it will strike. It feels intuitive to me that no amount of struggle will make me have a passion for cleaning toilets.

Of course, cleaning enough toilets could create a passion in me for not cleaning toilets, but I'm hopeful that there's easier ways to achieve it.

Also it feels like when I'm engaged in an activity as unpleasant as cleaning toilets, that expense of energy is actively preventing me from thinking about things that I am passionate about.

Well if that's the case, then whether we will undergo a personality change is not necessarily entirely in our control, because we may not develop the passion for the labor of personality change. It just might not "strike".