STOP TELLING ME “FOLLOW YOUR PASSION”
15' scribbles from a young confused mind
I first entered the world of corporates at the age of 20. I was a kid and still am. I would run around and always be proud of myself as I could confidently say that I am the youngest person in the company.
Being young is good until it hits you that you actually do not know yourself that much. You do not know what you are good at and what you suck at. What do you do? You look at those at the other end of their career- leaders, people with knowledge and experience, and hopefully a bit more wisdom. They all told me one thing, that bothered my mind for a long time- do what you love doing, follow your passion.
Still confused, I am reaching out to my old “reliable” friend — Internet. Here yet again, I am swamped by people like Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates who drew me a picture that screams drop everything, drop school, all you got to do in life is ‘follow your passion’.
Ha! That should be easy, life is sorted- just follow your passion and you will live a happy fulfilling life. But wait, something is wrong. What stops me from following what I am passionate about? Why at this age, I have not figured out that yet? And here is true LSE fashion I started to question what does passion actually means. What is it? Do I have it?
I like a lot of things. I get easily excited with anything that requires a certain level of creativity or sense of challenge. There are 3 things I like the most:
- Movie editing
- Baking
- Cycling
Am I passionate about those?
I will swear and scream after 6hrs heavy focus movie editing and drop it for few weeks until I find inspiration. I would lose all my focus and patience when I get my profiteroles messed up. Cycling- I am questioning if my city bike counts as a bike. To call myself as a true cyclist I must be completely arrogant.
Not until my friend shared with me a great podcast from ‘Art of manliness’ channel titled ‘The myth of following your passion’.
Finally someone managed to explain to me what has bothered me for so long. Finally someone makes some sense. Bless you, bless podcast, bless my friend because listening to it, changed my life.
Here is how it goes.
There are two reasons why you should not give “Follow your passion” advice to anyone, especially to young kids like me:
1. You assume that people have passion. Let me tell you this- most of us, including me do not have pre existing passion. Do you have any idea what the impact your words have on me? You leave me anxious, worried and confused.
2. Pre existing interest in your job plays little to no role in whether you will actually like the job. It has little to no correlation. If I like pho, it would not necessarily mean that I will love running a pho restaurant. There are many other factors that play around whether you will be happy with the job but not passion to the subject itself.
Key learning from this all for me was:
Having a goal of having a job that you are passionate about and creation of a strategy to follow your passion are two separate things.
If you do not have passion like me, which means ‘don’t-worry-you-are-just-one-of-us-welcome-to-the-club’, it is all not that gloomy. There are ways to cultivate this passion, but expect to put some if not a lot of work in it.
There are key traits of the job that will help you cultivate your passion:
- Autonomy
- Creativity
- Impact
- Connection to people/ mission
- Mastery
Mastery is the one that intrigues me the most.
Chicken and egg question: Do I get passion in the subject first then I become good at it or do I firstly become good at it and then suddenly adrenaline kicks in and realise 10 years down the road, this is what I would call passion.
Mastery is the one that is most time consuming; most painful- requires most commitment, mental and physical. In this Internet age when you expect anything to come at a blink of an eye, within a click, I am sad to say mastery cannot be bought of the shelve that easily. Mastery takes years, if not decades. That is exact reason why most people are average at most of the subjects. And only a few, a few can call themselves masters in certain fields.
To truly appreciate the concept of mastery, you would need to try to be master yourself.
Watch a beautiful documentary ‘Jiro dreams of Sushi’- which will showcase mastery in its purest forms.
Let me leave you with one last note:
Every single one of us was born with a mission. Mission is our mastery, a skill that makes you, you.
So my question is:
Have you found your mission?
