I Was Wrong About Passion This Whole Time

Have you ever heard of the phrase about “finding your passion?”.

I know for me, I’ve heard over and over again to “find my passion”. Because apparently, once I find my passion, I’ll get to live it and never feel like I’m working another day in my life. Every single day will be so exciting because I am pursuing my passion.

But there were a few things that I had gotten both right and wrong about passion.

Right – pursuing your passion does make your day more fulfilling and it’s a great way to add value to the world.

Wrong – I had misunderstood that while living your passion is one thing, creating that life of passion is another. It may take some time to create a life that you’re passionate about.

So what I am about to list here are five delusions of passion that were listed in one of the books that I read this year, The Delusion of Passion by Mark Nathan and David Anderson. I related to every single one of them and it made me realise that I had many misconceptions about passion. Lets list them here:

1. You’re not going to experience pain if you’re doing something you’re passionate about.

The Truth: Pain is part of pursuing passion.

We have all probably heard that if we have a setback or challenge in the midst of pursuing one of our passions, we are on the wrong path and we should just quit.

However, the truth is that pain is part of the process of achieving something incredible. Realistically, we are not going to love everything about the process of getting to our goals.

The challenges that we face aren’t there to stop us from pursuing our passion, it’s there to make our passion stronger.

Like someone who is passionate about playing a particular sport like football- it’s not like they can avoid the challenges of practices, injuries, and recovering from those injuries. If someone is really passionate about football, all those things wouldn’t matter to them.

The same with me being passionate about law. I obviously can’t avoid all the assessments and exams, and I haven’t been loving every second of that. It was also a bit painful when I failed one of my classes, but that setback didn’t mean that I was on the wrong path. That setback made my passion for law stronger.

2. There are going to be no problems when pursuing your passion

Truth: Pursuing our passions and overcoming problems are tied together

I’m sure that if you’ve watched movies before, you may have seen some storylines where the character would find their true calling because everything came together so perfectly. They had placed an idea that as long as we’re passionate about what we are doing at that moment, we will easily pass through any problems.

The truth is that problems are part of pursuing our passion. We shouldn’t ignore the fact that there will be many of them to deal with. Just like me with law, there’s so much to do beyond studying in order to become a practicing lawyer one day.

Of course, life would be so much easier if there were no problems to deal with – but how many stories of successful people have you heard of where they didn’t deal with any problems?

Since those are unavoidable, the best way to look at them is to view them as the opportunity to provide us strength to move on and identify our strengths and weaknesses. Then, the passion comes in to give you the spark to navigate the storm of those problems.

OR you can just complain about it and place blame – but when has that gotten anyone anywhere?

3. You need to have passion for it before you can commit to it

The Truth: Passion comes towards the end

The Delusion of Passion had mentioned an interesting point in relation to this delusion. It mentioned that the apparent formula for success goes like this:

In reality, the role of passion is in the wrong place. At one point, we may have known someone who had a hard time trying to figure out what they are passionate about without even trying anything.

But the truth is that passion belongs to the end of that process.

You don’t need to be passionate to engage, commit, and achieve. Passion is something you unlock after you’ve done that for some amount of time and realise how much you love it.

Like I had never liked writing much before, and if I had relied on having a passion for writing before I started this blog, this blog would’ve never existed.

I engaged by reading other blogs on topics that I enjoyed.

I committed by writing a few of my own personal blogs based on travel and some on lifestyle.

Then I achieved some small goals such as writing a few blogs and launching them.

It was only after this entire process that I realised that I was passionate for writing blogs.

Another example was when it came to one of the non-law class I took at uni. It was so easily tempting to just be mentally absent in class because I just looked at it and said that I wasn’t passionate about it without even… starting it.

It was only until I got involved, paid attention, and actually tried that it ended up sparking an interest in me.

So you see, passion comes towards the end of something that we do, and the only way to have passion is to actually start.

4. You must be passionate about the process

The Truth: We’re going to have to push through boring stuff

While being passionate is somewhat important to accomplishing our goals, realistically we can’t rely on it to make us keep on going.

Have you ever had gotten excited about doing something new? Maybe doing a new exercise routine, or a new diet, maybe a new hobby? We have so much excitement and inspiration but shortly after we just got bored and couldn’t be bothered?

We can look at this like sort of a honeymoon phase – the initial excitement wears off and we’re left with the reality of what’s suppose to happen (all the boring stuff).

I always thought that if I was truly passionate about something I would love every second of what I do, so there would be absolutely no moments where I get bored. But yeah, if only.

I’m sure that for anyone that had studied in high school would know that in order to pass through the next grade, we had to do well in the subjects that we didn’t like. Like if we got bored with one particular subject did that mean that we were on the wrong path in high school? Yeah, no.

5. Passion is All About You

The Truth: You only get fulfillment with your passion when it has an equal effect on someone else

The full truth is that pursuing your passion is not going to be about you. Like for instance, if you’re pursuing a passion for cooking, you’re not going to bring a lot of value from your passion if you’re just cooking for yourself right? No, the passion is fulfilled when you’re cooking for other people.

Our passion is really a tool that allows us to add value to the world, whether that’d be a career or hobby we’re pursuing. It’s not about our talents, gifts, and our accomplishments – it’s about how we utilise them to bring value to other people.

One way to know whether we’re really passionate about our jobs is to question whether you’d still do your job if you weren’t being paid for it. Like when you look at an accountant who checks the time constantly and leaves work exactly at 5 and a musician who’s up until the early hours of the morning producing music – who is the one with the real passion?

That’s why we don’t want to always attach money to our passion. While earning money through a passion would be great, the real value comes from focusing on that passion to help other people.

Just Start

I loved how the book The Delusion of Passion had outlined these delusions clearly because there are so many misconceptions about passion that we have been exposed to our whole lives.

There are so many statements that we need to let go of and be more open-minded about the reality of passion.

Because at the end of the day, when we think about it, passion is something that is completely overrated when it comes to accomplishing our long-term goals, and is a much smaller ingredient than we think…

So just start somewhere, engage, commit, and accomplish, THEN decide whether you’re passionate about it or not.

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