“Follow your passion” is Terrible Advice. Here’s Why.
“If we would all follow our passion, the world will not have any street cleaners.“
You spend a lot of your life having people tell you to follow your passion. Easy quote to hang on your wall and a GREAT piece of advice if you have one clear and obvious passion staring you in the face.
Scenario 1: But what happens when you have a lot of hobbies but cannot really call them passions? What if you do not have a passion at all?
Then this piece of advice can create a lot of anxiety and expectations — you must have had a passion by now (“How come you don’t have a passion?”) and you’ve done something wrong for not finding it yet.
No, this is not the case. In this world, you have a perfectly balanced amount of amazing people with a lot of passions, some of them with one dedicated passion and some with no passions at all — each living in perfect harmony, having a great life.
Scenario 2: Let’s say you have a passion, but that cannot be remunerated or you can’t see it in a paying perspective. So what do you do when you have a passion for painting model toys?
Scenario 3: You follow that one true passion, let’s take for example for painting. You start painting and you study painting and years down the line you make this into your career. But then, you start having to deal with difficult contracted work, moody clients, demanding art galleries, difficult market to position yourself in. All or some of these factors can still demotivate you, make you feel your work is meaningless.
What I am trying to get at is that sometimes following your passion will not automatically lead to a happy life —even then, you are still prone to hating your job.
In this case, it can be even more dangerous because you will be even more confused on the following your passion advice. “If not even my passion makes me happy, nothing will.” And depression starts setting in 3,2,1….
So what should we focus on instead?
Let’s take a different approach. Write down your skills, talents, and various interests.
You don’t know any of that? Ask people around about who you are, your skills, do a personality test online, reflect on various situations in your life and how you acted. Reflect on what you love reading, what you love doing and WHY. The WHY is very important and can be the clue of your next step.
Now let’s start creating some profiles:
1. You are communicative, you love people, like reading and the only thing you do consistently is journaling. Maybe you can look into a journalistic future? Content writer for a company?
You like short copy instead and you are obsessed with social media …. Then maybe a social media manager.
2. You love geeking out on things, but nothing in particular. You do not like the heavy human contact, yet you can stand behind your computer for hours. You love playing online games and binge on random Youtube videos.
How about a video editor? Or a developer?
3. Dedicated vegan, completely confused about his/her purpose in life. You started an Instagram vegan cooking profile and you fight for animal rights on Facebook. You are a keyboard warrior, but face to face confrontation will never be your thing. How about working for a company with a social impact? — join their cause and channel that wish to do good for the world.
The idea is to start building a couple of career profiles based on those skills, abilities, talents, wants, and hates. Choose one at a time and go deeper — start researching, sign up for a course, go to networking events, volunteer if possible.
Give it a reasonable and steady amount of time to dive into it. Do not give up at the first feeling that this is not for you. Let’s say after a couple of months, you are ready to move on to the next profile.
Process repeat — Research, meet-up, learn, work.
Once you found your calling, good job! Now go even deeper. Study harder, become better, and better at your craft. Be curious about your new passion every day.
Last pieces of advice
1. Remember that this search is not in vain — it’s an incredible process in which you discover skills and abilities you did not know you possess. You learn what you do like and what you don’t like and that is a very powerful weapon for your future. Even holding on to something you do not like for a couple of months will build your endurance and boost your self-esteem.
2. Enjoy the process — this may sound very tedious, long, and confusing, but imagine that you have found that one true passion or career you would like to follow. You have traded a couple of months for decades of freedom. This process has comprised of introspection and reflection and experimentation — and these alone are the best gifts you can give to yourself.
