How to follow the passion without the passion?
Honestly, I have no idea.
Seven or eight years ago I was completely obsessed with American motivational speakers, or know-it-all gurus. I am sure you also know them, yes all the most famous ones. They all have podcasts and together with their guests they explain what exactly is wrong with you and what you have to do to change your life for the better. I spent so many hours on YouTube because I was completely lost in life, unemployed, in a very unhappy relationship and I desperately wanted to find the next direction in my life. It was very captivating. Many times we just want a manual, exact steps on what to do to get out of the situation we are dealing with. It is not bad to get inspiration from somebody who overcame something difficult in their life but essentially we have to find our own way. Now I don't watch these kinds of videos anymore. I actually found out that some of those speakers are kind of frauds. Meaning, when you go a little bit below the surface you realize that they don't exactly live what they preach. It is not shocking of course because they just learned what sells the best.
The most common topic of similar videos is definitely "quit your job and follow your passion". If I do that right now, I will be unemployed forever. Then the other narrative was created "follow your passion, start making money and then quit your job". If I try to do this, I will stay at my job for the rest of my life. I don't know what my passion is.
There was a time when I was so obsessed with personality tests because I was desperately searching for answers, I did them all, from MBTI, human design, Gallup to Ikigai diagram and many others. Still to this day I like to do personality tests but they didn't help me solve my problem. I hoped that they would help me discover my passion — that one thing/activity/hobby that would be so meaningful — because maybe I forgot about it, or I overlooked it. I have been searching for a passion very intensively for the last 8 years of my life and I still don't have any answer.
AI offered me the following definition:
- The true meaning of passion goes beyond simple excitement or enjoyment; at its linguistic and philosophical root, passion means a willingness to suffer, endure, and sacrifice for something that matters.
I have always imagined passion as something I would hold on to with my dear life, something I would be very consistent with. Something that matters so much to me that I would never give up. Something that I would love so much and I would be so good at that one day I will turn it into my business. And I became very frustrated and sad that I couldn't figure out such a thing. Am I the only one in the world without passion? What is wrong with me?
Today I was talking about this topic with my friend and she asked me: "How many people do you actually know who have this kind of passion you talk about?" It made me think and in that moment I realized that I know a few but most of us are non-passioners. Most of the people in my circle are like me, they have different hobbies and alternate them how they want. One thing that I took from those motivational videos was to try things. Because without trying I will never know the answers. This is a human experience, it is not enough to read about it or watch it, we have to try it ourselves. What I know for quite some time already is that I have activities that keep coming back to my life repeatedly even if I abandon them for some kind of reasons. The common denominator is creativity. Hobbies like dancing, writing, making art — even though I disconnect from them, they come back to me and say hello again. But however I try, I cannot keep that perfect consistency with them that I wish for.
The worst thing about anxiety is that it produces massive overthinking over everything. I am very excited to come up with new ideas and I am very excited to start them but usually a couple of days in I question absolutely everything and eventually give up. The most consistency I could ever sustain was learning foreign languages (since I was 7 years old) and learning to draw (about 2 years). I like those activities a lot and the other ones that I mentioned too but never felt super passionately about them. That kind of spark or fire that I cannot live without them even for one day.
Maybe I am "switched off" somehow because of my anxiety disorder, maybe I am looking for something that I don't actually need or maybe I am just still Americanized and influenced by social media where everybody seems to have their life together and seems to know exactly what they are doing. Maybe it's time to quit looking, and accept the fact that life can be also meaningful without passion. Maybe "follow your passion" is only another mostly unrealistic highly profitable concept that sells books, podcasts and courses and it all explains why sometimes people can feel so inadequate about themselves.