Why Finding Your Passion is Overrated — General Thoughts (Part One)
Before we progress with this topic, let’s lay out the foundation of the issue we have in our hand. Many of us get caught up mixing our passion with the purpose of life, when in fact, they’re two separate terms.
Passion is something that we love or want to do, while purpose is something that we need to do.
The purpose of life
Well, according to Sadhguru, the purpose of life is to live your life by exploring yourself.
I don’t think we came a long way with the idea of democracy, to still have someone telling us how to live our lives. Right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy, eventually our life purpose is going to boil down to the choices we make.
Of course among those choices, we can seek guidance, but we still need to decide the purpose of that guidance. So for example, if you are sick and you want to get well, you seek the advice of a doctor. You are weak/thin/fat and you want to get physically fit, you seek the advice of a fitness coach. You want to become rich; you seek the advice of those who are making big money. Even babies, when they want to learn how to talk, they pick up the skill from those who are speaking around them.
So far, we conclude that the purpose of life is not necessarily something that we are passionate about, but rather, a set of priorities, a set of things that need to be done to progress us in our life, and furthermore, things that we are passionate about.
Although, I have to mention that it helps if we are passionate about our purpose. But once again, it’s not a necessity, but definitely a bonus point.
How Do I Find my Passion?
Now a smart head will pop up and ask “so how do I find my passion?”
If you personally ask me that question, my answer would be “I don’t know and screw your passion.” Sounds like a harsh answer, right? But I have to hit you with some reality checks.
First, let’s discuss the part of why I don’t know, by underlining the word passion and understanding what does the word mean. If we take a trip to the Oxford dictionary, we’ll find the following meanings:
Strong and barely controllable emotion.
State or outburst of strong emotion.
Intense desire or enthusiasm for something.
Something arousing great enthusiasm.
So passion is something that we have emotions towards, something we know that when we do we simply enjoy. So what makes you think that I or anyone out there, will able to know what you are passionate about or even helps you in finding it? The only relevant advice I have found is to go out and experience the world yourself, discover different things and try them out.
Put it this way, when we were kids, we were passionate about living life. We did that by wanting to do anything, we didn’t have any fears or limitations in our minds, and we just wanted to try things out.
Author of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” Mark Manson, mentions in his article “Screw Finding Your Passion” that as a kid when we hit the playground for the first time, we don’t stand there and wonder to ourselves “hmmm! So which game am I most passionate about and going enjoy?” NO! We burst into the playground we the purpose of wanting to have fun, enjoy our time and try out every single game.
Passion vs Purpose
Again, passion and purpose are two separate terms. Passion is driven by your emotions and feelings, while purpose is driven by your whys and reasoning.
For example, I’m passionate about basketball, I enjoy watching and playing the game of basketball, and I strive to always up my game in it, therefore, the purpose of me playing and watching basketball is because I’m passionate about the game.
On the other hand, I’m not passionate about football, but I have friends who are. Sometimes for me to catch up with them, I watch a game of football with them. While sometimes when basketball is not available, I play football instead to maintain my level of fitness.
It’s clear that I’m not interested in watching the game of football, as much as I’m interested in my friends’ company, neither am I interested in playing the game, as much as I’m interested in maintaining my fitness level.
Therefore, although I’m not passionate about football, I still watch and play it for certain purposes, to keep my passions alive, whether my fitness level or my friends. (Remember how I concluded the first part about the purpose of life)
This last part shows us that passions can live and die, which will be further explained in the next part. It also falls under the category of “how not to find excuses” but that’s a topic for another day.
The upcoming part is going to be so truthful, a tough pill for many to swallow, and will elaborate on the second part of my answer.
So why screw your passion?
First, I don’t hate what you are passionate about. Second, passion is not necessarily something that we make a living from. And third, who in the world? Or where did you read? That we are entitled to enjoy what we are doing to make money out of it?
Truth be told, the reason they make fun of us millennials, is because we are lazy. Truth be told, it’s not that you don’t know or can’t find your passion, because that’s the point of life, not knowing and then finding out.
Truth be told and brace yourself for this hard slap, the reason us millennials are lazy is because we think we know everything or we want to know everything easily, the result, is linking passion with making money!
In other words, we think we can make money just because we are passionate about something we love doing. When in reality, making money is not a passion but more of a purpose.
Because whether we like it or don’t, money is power, and that’s something we all want, but it won’t be easy.
Entrepreneurship and Passion
Somewhere along the way, entrepreneurship became a trend and the cool thing to do, “follow your passion and become your own boss”
And snap, people started losing track of their purposes and started wondering what they are passionate about. NO IDIOT!
To become an entrepreneur you need a solid plan with a clear purpose, along with the appropriate tools and resources. Yes, it could be revolved about something that you are passionate about, but passion is not something that is developed within one night, but rather something we get exposed to multiple times, and no matter how many times we do it, we still want more of it.
Unless you are passionate about the idea of entrepreneurship, don’t convince yourself that you are going to become an entrepreneur just because you are passionate about baking for example.
What’s wrong with working a 9 to 5 job?
All of a sudden having a fixed job became this negative thing portrayed as slavery. Well, the way I see it if you can’t convert your passion into a business of your own to serve others, then you are better of serving someone else who will provide you with food on your table and shelter on top of your head.
What’s wrong with having a day job while working on our passion(s) during our free time?
I mean you could be passionate about spending time with your girlfriend/husband/kids, but how is that going to make any money for you? They can motivate you to make money, but just loving them is not going to serve the purpose of making money.
Therefore, we need to understand that passion is something that can be alive today and dead tomorrow. That passion could be towards a man or a woman or a sport or any type of food or anything else, but not necessarily something permanent, or something to depend on for a living.
In part two, I will share my personal experience with passion, so stay tuned.
“Always remember, quick fixes are temporary, while determination and consistency are long lasting.”
