Follow your passion, they said, and you won’t ever have to work a day in your life.
I chased a passion of mine for a decade! And It was one of my biggest regrets in my 20s. I wish I could have watched a video that at least made me aware of why I should maybe NOT go all in on a passion, without weighing some of the factors that well talk about in this video.
Below is a chart from Google Ngram, which is a search engine that charts word frequencies from books that were printed within a preselected date range. This chart shows the frequency for the phrase “follow your passion” in books from 1980 to 2019.
This shows the increasing popularity of individuals being told to follow his or her passion. According to these authors, doing this will make you happier. You would work hard because you’re passionate about it. And because you work harder at it there is a greater chance that you will make a lot of money doing it. It won’t feel like work at all because it’s your passion, and nothing would get in your way or stop you from being successful.
Table of Contents (Click to expand)
Is following your passion BAD advice?
“Following your passion,” sounds good, but these vague, feel-good statements, don’t tell you the strategy to get the results. Do you know how many actors, who have moved to LA and slept in their car for years chasing their passion that you have never even heard of?
Do we then assume that they didn’t work as hard as the ones that have made it. Or can we say that maybe there is some luck and good timing, and they were at the right place at the right time, or had a family member that was already in the industry. So this is when preparation meets timing.
Sometimes the risk of chasing your passion does pay off, but oftentimes it doesn’t amount to much and you look back at your life and wonder what would have happened if you traveled a different path.
Possible, not Probable!
This article isn’t meant to stop anyone from chasing their dreams and passions, but ultimately to help to make an informed decision so that you don’t have those same regrets that I experienced.
If people didn’t chase their passions, then we wouldn’t have some the greatest artist, painters, musicians, actors, and actresses that we have.
From Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Steven Spielberg, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and the list goes one.
So this isn’t an article to say don’t follow your passion, just understand that “true passion” isn’t always what it appears to be.
Right Ambition, Wrong Passion!
In my 20s I chased my passion for becoming a music producer. I didn’t care about anything else but pursuing my dream and becoming successful in that space. I worked on this passion from the time I would get off work until 3 am every day. On my days off I would put in maybe 12-to-16-hour days.
I traveled to other studios all the time and so I was always away from my family, and there would be days where I didn’t even see daylight because I stayed inside of the studio the entire time.
I sacrificed everything to make my passion a reality. My hard work paid off and I was able to sign to the same manager as a very well-known and popular producer right now. I worked with some iconic artists and met a lot of people that I never thought i’d ever meet.
After all those years of hard work and reaching new levels, I realized that the passion was no longer there. I enjoyed making the music itself but the erratic hours, politics of the industry and time away from my family was taking a toll on me.
Something interesting happened around this time, I asked myself a question that ultimately led me to walk away.
And it was “If I were to continue chasing my passion, but never made any money, would I still be happy?”
The answer was no, I realized that I’d prefer success and money over my passion at the time. I wanted a certain quality of life and didn’t want to chase a passion where my probability of success was low, compared to something like starting a business.
Ok, so how is this relevant for you?
Oftentimes we don’t even know what we’re passionate about, or maybe were introduced to something early on and discovered that you were good at it, so it became a passion of yours as a result of you being good at that thing.
There’s a fundamental part of chasing your passion that we often don’t hear much about. Passion isn’t an emotion or a feeling, it’s the driving force in your pursuit of a purpose. It’s perseverance when things get hard.
Instead of “following your passion,” maybe ask yourself what you care deeply about. Look at what you want your life to look like 10,20, 40 years from now. So instead of chasing your passion, maybe focus on identifying your purpose and be fluid in the path that gets you towards that goal.
Often times opportunity will present itself and over time as you grow into something that was unexpected, and become good at it, you will learn to enjoy it, especially when it aligns with your purpose.
Here’s why “follow your passion” is bad advice
This may be a misconception, but often people assume that you only have one passion in life. We as humans evolve and over time our interests change. We are allowed to adapt and change as well.
Your passion, so to speak, will change over time, you probably don’t have the same passion as you had when you were 7 years old.
Also not everyone knows what their passion is, you learn as time goes on. Most people need to get some exposure in different areas of life, jobs and hobbies to hone in on what they even feel that they like and are good at.
You may not even know what your strengths are, and it’s ok to try different things, to see what you enjoy and what aligns with your purpose.
Also, just because you have a passion for something, doesn’t mean you will be any good at it. You ever notice that when someone is really tall, we assume that they should play basketball. We automatically think that their passion should be aligned with their physical attributes or skills. That’s just not always the case.
It’s important to understand that any passion that you have that becomes a vehicle to make money, will be a job. You won’t always enjoy doing those tasks, and this is when you may realize that, “Hey, I’m not as passionate about this as I thought!”
You can always make your passion a hobby and still take advantage of opportunities that present themselves and be open to discovering something different that helps you reach your ultimate goals in life.
One of the most important things to ask yourself when considering following your passion, is if you Can earn a living doing it?
Obviously, the difficulty is different from someone whose passion is to become a teacher vs someone who wants to be a famous actor or play in the NBA.
I remember all my late nights, lying there doubting myself, and wondering if I was crazy or being unrealistic for pursuing the path that i’ve chosen.
I was barely making it by, living month to month and my bank account would always be at dangerously low levels.
Sometimes, with certain passions, the sacrifice is far greater than you may have anticipated.
Here’s what I would tell my younger self. Try many things and see what you naturally gravitate towards and have a skill for. Reverse engineer your end goal and see if the current path can get you there.
Be open to opportunities that come along and see if it’s something that aligns with your purpose.
And ultimately pursue mastery of a skill over passion. You can do this by finding out what skills are valued by the market you want to be working in. Become very good at that skill and use it to grow in your business, job or life.
Always keep your end goal in mind and make sure that anything you’re doing aligns with what you want your ultimate goal to look like.
At the end of the day, finding meaningful work is a process and something that you may continuously have to work towards; it’s not a set it and forget it or something you mark off your to do list.
