Throughout our lives, we often design our personalities in a way where we are constantly trying to impress everyone but ourselves. It all starts with our teachers, our coaches, our parents, our siblings, our bosses, our social circle, our neighbours, our relatives, then the people whom we don’t even know, the list can go on.
And in the process we slowly forget who we are and what we are meant to do in our lives. We could be great at singing but we keep our passion aside to impress our calculus teacher, we could be great at Tennis but we keep that aside to impress our parents and study hard to crack that engineering entrance test. We could even be passionate about making documentaries but we keep that aside to end up taking “more safer” jobs to impress the society. The cycle starts from there and in a matter of time we are lifting the weights of our family’s endless responsibilities and forget about what we were passionate about and what made us happy when we were young. Eventually a day comes when we have to leave everything and everyone, staring at our last moments.
The opposing but equally valid view is, most of us are not sure of our passion for the most part of our lives. Most of us take life the way it comes until a particular moment. So, passion is actually a made up phenomenon by the so called self help gurus who usually ask us to “follow our passion”.
In my view, both are partly right and partly wrong.
Let me explain, It is true that most of us do not really know what we could be good at for most part of our lives (except a few, who are really aware of it and are encouraged to pursue it from early days) However, it is important for our own satisfaction and fulfilment, we act on it once we do realise what we really want.
Let’s say, I was raised in a middle class family where all we know is to study really hard, get a decent and steady job , get married, raise family, build a house, have a bit of savings for my retirement and leave all that to my offsprings once it is my time to go. Though this life is ideal, it is not how it ends up being for the most part. Life has it’s own way to deal with every individual. It is not always all rainbow and sunshine and it is definitely not easy. We face heartbreaks, we face layoffs, we face financial emergencies, we face health emergencies, we face sudden loss of loved one’s, the list goes on. And in the midst of all this something else comes up and we really are tested beyond what we can handle and we somehow try to survive them.
Unfortunately, we really cannot avoid any of the challenges we encounter but we still fight them and come out stronger and in the process sometimes, we realise what our potential is and our real passion is. The objective then should be to act on the learnings and our realisation of the passion. If we discover what our true passion is, we must acknowledge and start working towards making that happen.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let’s say I am a car mechanic and usually spend most of my day at the workshop, I love coffee and I am usually told by my friends that I make great coffee. What I can do is, work 9-5 or even longer at my workshop to continue getting a steady income to support my family and on the weekends instead of spending time aimlessly, I set up a shop and sell coffee. This will get me started on the thing I am passionate about and I get to test waters before going all In on the business plan too. During this process, I also have an advantage of working on 2 separate things I am good at which allows me to be flexible with my future aspirations. Over time if I start liking mending cars, I can continue that for rest of my life or even set up my own workshop and become a workshop owner. And in due course, if I start to enjoy making coffee and liking the business prospects of it (probably it is starting to make enough money due to my weekend hustle) I can shift to this as a full time job. Either way, I am setting myself up for success because both will teach me something valuable. One will teach me getting better at fixing cars and the other the business side of things.
If I stick to just mending cars throughout my life I might end up being a disgruntled employee who just comes to clock hours and soon I’ll be staring at my end disheartened with a unfulfilled life. And on the other hand if I go all in on the coffee business idea, I might later come to know it is not enough for me to survive financially and end up getting frustrated and lose interest completely.
“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.” Cal Newport – So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Now if you haven’t realised your “passion” yet, think of some of your life’s experiences. Go to your memory and try to remember something that you are good at. I can guarantee you that all of us have something that we and only we can do better than most of the people. Is it drawing? coding? good with people? farming? fixing cars? It could be something very small but you know you are good at it. Then make conscious effort to get better, be relentless in your effort and have lot of patience, because building something valuable takes immense patience.
I’ll conclude by saying this, no one’s life is similar to another individual. So, write your own story, own it, make changes to it when required. But most importantly do the things you love (even part time would do, if full time is not feasible)
Some might call it passion, some might call it a weekend activity and some might say it’s just work I am meant to do and will do with all my heart. If you do the things you love even for short intervals, the satisfaction of doing it will have ripple effect in all the other areas of your life positively and suddenly your life would seem (and will be) fulfilled.
Be Great!
Praveen.
Praveen's Blog 