How to Leverage Your Passion to Unlock Success
Don’t let unmitigated passion hold you back
Passion is a frivolous word in the blogosphere. Follow your passion. Your passions will dictate your career. Don’t do something that you’re not passionate about. You’ve read the type of posts, and so have I.
While I agree with the sentiment of these storytellers and writers, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that they’re selling an idea rather than anything actionable.
The truth is, telling someone to follow their passions is a lot like telling someone to follow their dreams. It sounds good and works great for driving views — but almost aways, readers are left with a heart full of positive feelings and absolutely nothing to do with them.
We don’t live in a society that grants financial success and internal fulfillment to anyone that’s ever dreamed of self-sufficiency, entrepreneurship, or being a paid creative. Our society is built off of self-starters and marketers — people that know making a product or making content isn’t enough.
As sad as it may be to hear, talent isn’t rewarded nearly as much as tenacity is. Success is a combination of natural talent, marketing, skill, and luck.
And sometimes, even that isn’t enough.
But the worst part about telling someone to follow their passions is that many people don’t know what those passions are. How can you expect success when you’re not even sure what that is?
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
— Lewis Carroll
If you’re looking to be successful, you have to do more than feel good about your passion or work only when you feel like it. If you can learn to leverage your passion, you can begin to build your path to success.
But we can’t start leveraging something we don’t define.
Define Your Passion
When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a writer. I spent my free time drawing up plans for novels and picturing my name in golden lettering on the spine of a hardcover book. I worked and worked to become an author — until I felt as if it might not have been for me.
When I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a composer. I wrote music for a film my friend was working on, and fell in love with the art of eliciting emotion from nothing. It was an enthralling high that I enjoyed — until I didn’t. Eventually, the process of production became a nuisance to me.
When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a screenwriter. I produced several short films and wrote up more than enough features. I studied the craft. I dropped $30,000 on a higher education before realizing that I had worked myself into a corner. I felt constricted by the label — neutered, even.
Have you noticed a pattern?
Each time I tried to hone in on what I thought my passion was, I grew tired of the limitations I had placed upon myself. I had developed a false equivalence between vocation and passion.
I eventually learned that my passion was for storytelling. I wanted to tell stories for a living. However that manifested itself was irrelevant.
After I discovered my passion, I desired success. But first, I had to know what that was.
Define Your Success
I became content. I now tell stories for a living. My work in freelance allows me to write music, pen scripts, and work on novels on my own terms.
Every time I tried to limit myself to one field, I could never make ends meet. I defined success in a constrictive manner. I had to make a living only on books. Or only on scripts. Or only on music. It was only after had I redefined success that I achieved it.
It’s important to issue a disclaimer here — I am not suggesting that you lower your expectations. Defining success isn’t that.
Defining success is determining the root cause of your passion, and making that the desire that drives you. If you allow your passion to ebb and flow with the tide, you can never achieve success. If you don’t know what will make you successful, how do you expect to achieve it?
There’s an inherent danger to undefined passion.
It will lead you to spend too much time working towards projects that do nothing to further your success. Undefined passion is aimless — it spends too much time on things of little value and too little time on key projects in your life.
There’s also an inherent danger towards undefined success.
Life is a constant balancing act of ensuring your day-to-day needs are met, and your ability to grow and change as time goes on is unrestricted. If you don’t know what that looks like in practice, then there’s no way you can ensure future success and happiness.
The Solution is Balance
Know what you’re trying to accomplish. Leverage your passions to exemplify your future and lead you towards a clearly-defined finish line. You will find yourself achieving your goals and maintaining success far faster than you were before.
You will learn to prioritize what’s valuable in your life — what makes you happy, and what would make you successful. Sometimes, those two things are the same. Other times, they’re different. Having a litmus test for the projects in your life will keep you focused when you need to be and relaxed when you deserve it.
So follow your passions. Just know what they are, and know where you’re going. The road to success is easier when you can clearly see it.
Work hard, be kind to yourself, and keep at it.
You’re never alone in the ascent.
