The hunt for passion
I have a confession. I didn’t use to believe that passion was important. I always thought it was useful but far from necessary. I believed in the idea of cultivating a passion for something by doing that thing long enough and getting good at it. Is passion for what you do nature or nurture, I used to think it was the latter and now I’m not so sure.
I didn’t ‘Find’ my passion for marketing
Marketing is something I’ve know I want to do career wise since I was 16. I wasn’t born with a natural curiosity for marketing, in fact, I didn’t have any interest in the field until I was 15. I’d love to say I chose marketing because I had an epiphany one day or something like that, but I didn’t. It was something that happened completely by chance.
I knew it wanted to do something business related and marketing was the first thing that popped into my mind. Marketing was never something I was particularly passionate about but I’ve managed to develop a passion and enjoyment for it as I learned more and progressed in my skills in marketing.
Can passion always be cultivated
I’ve been trying to implement this strategy for something I am equally not passionate about. Writing content. The initial reason for starting my second side project, Dear-marketing-student, was to build and showcase my content marketing skills.
I’ve spent well over a hundred hours researching and writing content for the publication, published over 12 posts and have become quite advanced in my content skills, but still to this day I struggle to muster any type of motivation to write. I feel a sense of slight dread when I see a writing task due in my to-do list. It’s always been like this since the beginning, but back then I would tell myself what I felt was just the fear of the unknown, and push through.
Now I know, I simply just don’t enjoy it, and no matter how good I get at it I never will develop a passion for it. Lucky for me content writing was never something I planned on specialising in but rather was something I wanted to be good at. There are other aspects of marketing that I do enjoy though, and will focus more on those going forward.’
To go back to the earlier question I posed. Going through this has definitely changed my opinion on the matter. I no longer think it’s strictly nurture, I think it can be one or the other and even both.
Hello, I’m Ayo! I’m a writer, student, Digital marketer and founder of DearMarketingstudenT. Find me on twitter @ayo_af or check out my personal website. If you like this post give it a 💚 and share! :)
