“You should find what you are passionate about and go do that” is something that I remember hearing in my 20s many times. This was well-meant advice coming from thoughtful people I came across early in my career. The reason I heard this was two-fold: First, I thought people who were more experienced than me knew a lot more about life and I sought advice from such mentors and teachers; Second, I found, over and over again, that things that invigorated and inspired me became stale, boring, and unenjoyable a year or two later. This advice used to fall into my lap often at a time when I would have achieved a major milestone in a professional goal and was looking for a new assignment; it obviously would come from a well-meaning manager. When one of my mentors said that you need to stay on until the fat lady sings if you want to reap the reward of your hard work, I began to wonder if there was something that was my true passion; something that will take hold of me and never let go.
If you have received this advice you know it is totally worthless, although well intentioned. While working on building a program to enable managers become effective innovators, yesterday I came to a point where my key message to the participants will be “you should find what you are passionate about and go do it”. This made me wonder how to make this more helpful so that it is actually actionable. What did I learn after that quest that I can share with the participants today in a way that would really help?
What I found back then was that many people were quite clear about what they were passionate about and pursued their passion vigorously. I, on the other hand, used to wonder why was it so hard for me to figure out something as simple as what my passion was. I would yearn for new challenges and walk into them with a lot of energy, achieve a lot, and then get bored. The same cycle would continue over and over again.
This roller coaster would happen on both professional and personal front. On the professional front, I found many roles very interesting. Roles such as writing speeches for a CEO, designing and developing complex IT systems, building simulation models for financial forecasting, turning around a business, and leading organizational transformation were all very exciting in the beginning but became boring once the project was over and the goals were met. On a personal front, it was about learning the Piano, sailing, real estate investing, financial planning, photography, coding, and many other pursuits. It was the same pattern: I would fall in love with a pursuit to a degree of obsession for a time and then wouldn’t feel the same way after major milestones were achieved.
When I use the word obsession to explain my love for every pursuit, it is because it was alway quite intense. For example, I was intrigued by dividend growth investing strategy a few years back and went ahead and read over two dozen books on the topic; a few years before that I was intrigued by real estate investing and I went to the library and issued (over time) over 50 books on real estate investing. I didn’t realize there was anything strange about this until I mentioned to a few friends that I just finished reading two dozen books on dividend growth investing and saw expressions on their faces silently telling me this is not average behavior.
What I eventually realized was that most people use ‘energy’ as a proxy for passion. Obviously, if there was something so energizing that calls you, engages you and makes you feel great after you complete your engagement it must be your passion. This makes sense but is not true as I found out.
While a strong correlation between passion and energy may be true for some people, I found that for others passion and energy have a relation that is same as a musical scale and notes. If activities that energize them are notes, the underlying pattern (the scale) points to the passion. Another way of saying it is that for many people, energy is to passion that ocean wave is to a tide. For them, the various invigorating activities point to something deeper where the passion lies. Moreover, while the energizing activities may be enjoyable, true passion is for which you are willing to suffer.
Two other things make it hard to use energy as a proxy for passion. First is personal scripts we live with and the second is the power of ambition. Personal scripts are schemas that make us accept some societal norms as our personal deep beliefs. For example, money, power, fame etc are sought not because we all want it but because the scripts we inherit from the society and family make us believe so. This is why a miserable investment banker wonders why after having it so good, he is so miserable. Second, ambition is such a powerful force that when leveraged properly, supersedes passion, energy, and scripts. Peter Keating in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead has some powerful scripts from his mother coupled with a very strong ambition that superseded passion and energy proxies. In the end, Keating pays a huge price by ignoring his passion by living the scripts and using ambition to drive his life.
What I eventually found in my quest for passion is that your passion is alway with you like a silent witness nudging your actions at all times. What I eventually realized is that my passion from a very early childhood was building capabilities to achieve transformational results. This is what drove me to immerse myself in various areas and then need the next area to move to in order to continue to build new capabilities. What I also found out was that your passion allows you to build some unique skills that you take for granted. For example, I built the skill of mastering a new area very quickly and it really helped me in various assignments to move towards my goals fast. For example, when I joined the doctoral program at Duke University, I spent the first 4 months reading up everything that was written on the topic of survival to write a paper (titled survival – what else?). To my amazement, it got selected for publication in the best paper proceedings of Academy of Management, which is a very prestigious organization in management field. This would not have been possible if I had not spent a lifetime building the skill to master a knowledge domain quickly. Such a skill, when recognized can be another pointer to your passion.
Coming back to the question of how do you find your passion I would leave you with three proxies and one skill to become aware of. Use energy as a proxy for passion but try to see the underlying theme behind invigorating activities. Don’t forget your scripts and ambition are also driving your energy. Finally, look for those special skills that you have built over time that you take for granted (yes you do) but are unique to you. Once you have these four figured out you should be closer to finding (or articulating) your passion.
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