Episode 07: Don't Follow Your Passion

[00:00:00] Seth: All right, just wanted to talk a little bit today about why you shouldn't follow your passion. See, the dream I was taught as a kid was to have your work and your passion be the same thing. You know, there's that phrase, if you, if you find a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I'm sure that's possible for some people, but you know, I'm a little older now.

I have a little bit of a little bit of knowledge in me now. And I can say at least in my case. I'm not so sure that there's that many jobs that could ever become my passion. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's effectively none. I mean, at least, at least people in my generation, we got this messaging for years and years and years.

You know, if I could do it, so could you. I can't tell you how many times I saw famous actresses and actors or athletes get up on stage and just with tears streaming down their eyes, shouting something to the effect of if I could do it, so can you. Or their reason for being is because they just want to inspire others to do the same thing.

It's like, you know, easy, easy to say when you're sitting up there and you've done it. There's really only so much room. For famous people. I mean, we just can't keep track of that many of them. So some are inherently going to be famous or than others. If everyone could follow their dreams and become rich and famous, I mean, assuming that's everyone's dreams, which it is a lot of people's dreams.

We'd have so many rich and famous people that we wouldn't know who any of them were, except for just a handful. So, I guess in that case, there goes the whole famous part. The other problem is, is if you do find a passion, a lot of times finding an avenue in which you can get paid to do it, that's tricky stuff.

And then on top of that, if you find an avenue in which you can get paid to do it, To do what you're passionate about. You better just pray that you've, that you're working for, for an organization that you like, or a person that you like, because they're going to, I mean, if you get a bad boss, they're going to make you hate it real fast.

There goes that passion. If anyone has not already learned this lesson, I just want to share it with you. Now we grow up as children being asked what we want to do when, when we're all grown up, when we reach adulthood, we spend a ton of time trying to think about it. But at the end of the day, most of us wake up and realize that.

We really just want to wake up on a given day and decide on that day what we actually want to do. Some people in life find a purpose that becomes a passion, and I think that's wonderful. I think that's definitely something to strive for. But expecting to find a passion, and also expecting it to provide a livelihood for you, is a tall order.

You're always going to be answerable to someone. The world operates through work. You know, hundreds of years ago, sometimes we didn't even have any options outside of, you know, whatever it was that we were born to. If I was born a peasant in feudal Europe, I, I was basically a slave. I belong to the Lord. I did what he wanted.

I was a farmer because that's what I was born to. And nothing was going to change that. You know, at least nowadays we have options and it's something. But I would say that most people in most situations just want the freedom to do what they want when they want to do it. That's why we retire. If we didn't want that, we would never retire.

If we truly loved our jobs, we would just keep on doing it, which some people do good on them. But most of the people that love their jobs are the ones that are sitting on top, the ones that grew the company. And so, yeah, they found a passion for a lot of them. It's a game. And I'm not even sure if that can always be, be called a passion.

I have a company, I guess you could say I'm passionate about its success, but that ultimately is driven from a desire for greater security and comfort. It doesn't come from any place of being ultra passionate about. Finding utilities in the ground using my equipment. It's just, that's a hard thing to really be passionate about.

I used to be I used to work in real estate. So on LinkedIn, on my little bio I used to put on, I used to have a little line in there. That said something to the effect of, I'm passionate about real estate. It's like, Oh my gosh. I mean, I, I put it in there. Cause that's what I thought you were supposed to do.

It's like, well, if I'm passionate, people will, I don't know, think I'm better. I'm not sure. Cause you're supposed to be passionate about your job. I remember seeing people saying stuff like they were passionate about the blender industry. And. What we can do to change the world of blending. I used to work for a, a meat packer and they were trying to start a retail chain where they were selling their meat.

And their, their mission statement was, we're trying to change the way people shop and consume. And it was this great big mission statement with such depth. I mean, I don't know. There's definitely not any depth in it, really. But it's, it's funny. We try to invent, especially companies, it's like we try to invent this, this passion around the company.

It's like, I'm just passionate to see this company succeed. And it's just like, no, you're not. You don't really, you just want to get paid. And we all know that. So we're not really going to let's, why don't we just stop pretending that we're passionate about working for company a, B, or C because in reality, most of us don't care.

We just want to get paid and because we just want to do what we want to do. And that's the thing is a lot of times the passions. They come when we're able to be free. They come when we're able to not be tied to a job. So my mother is I'm not sure how to refer to her. She, she's extremely crafty in the sense that she Loves all things cute and beautiful and she likes to sew, she likes to paint, I mean crochet, she likes photography, I mean like you name it, anything in that Realm she's done and she and she loves it and she's very good at it.

And I remember as a kid Asking her all the time. I was like mom you're good at this stuff You should you know, you should sell it and she would always be like, I don't want to sell it And I never understood that but I get it now Why would you take something that you really enjoy and ruin it like that?

Suddenly you're responsible for deadlines, clients, meeting people's expectations. I mean, it just, it adds an element that so many of us never, never looked for when we started in the first place. So what's my practical advice? I mean, generally I'd say for most of us, follow the money. Do something that you're not passionate about.

Do something that you don't hate. Cause that's a much more achievable prospect. Finding something that you don't hate. is always going to be significantly better than ending up somewhere that you do. So instead of thinking hard about what you want to be, what you want to do, what your best future is, focus on the money.

Oh, I'm going to use a joke that ChachiPT gave me. It said, and don't worry about finding your dream job. It's like trying to find a unicorn. They're rare and probably don't exist. So just find something you don't hate and pays well. Do that for a while. Get to a point where maybe you can find a job where you got a little more time or a little more money, one or the other, or in the best case scenario, maybe find one that can give you both.

And then that's when the magic happens. Now you got the time. Now you have some resources. Now you have the capacity to actually find that passion and to do it and to do it on your own terms. Just imagine if you just love learning. Just imagine if you can get to a point where you got that time, a little bit of money, and you can spend that time, or even, actually to learn you don't really need that much money, but just spending that time learning on your own timeline.

Learning things that you want to learn. It's a beautiful thing. This is why people retire. This is what they're looking for. But I think a lot of us get distracted along the way. simply trying to find some career that provides both endless joy and an income. And I would say at the core of most passions is, is usually something altruistic.

You know, there's, there's lowercase p passion and there's uppercase passion. And I'd say lowercase is things like I'm passionate about martial arts. I'm passionate about woodworking. You know, it usually falls into the categories of seeking variety, novelty. Connection with other people. Excitement. Seeking to learn.

Something that a person can compete in. People finding places to laugh. Dancing, singing, whatever. You know, it's, it's, it's, these things are kind of the source of those lower case passions. And you know, then the uppercase P is when you actually find a little purpose that, that pushes you. And that's the beautiful thing, is if you can find that purpose that drives you forward.

They can guide your life. And you know, sometimes the thing that's better about having a purpose than a passion is that in a lot of ways, the mentality around purpose lends itself well to the reality that we sometimes have to do things that we don't like, and that sometimes we just have to stick it out as long as we can until we can get to the next step that draws us closer to our purpose.

And when you find that purpose, it inherently becomes your passion.