Follow Your Passion

Follow Your Passion – doing what you love and loving what you do. Or, doing that thing you are excited about, that doesn’t feel tiring, and certainly doesn’t feel like a job.

I wish I can say many of us follow our passion. The reality is, many are not making a living doing the kind of work that when they wake up in the morning, they are excited to start their day because they can’t wait to do that next best thing that exciting for their day, week, and year.

In fact, a study done in 2017,( the link to the study is in the bio.) shows that only 13% of the US workforce are passionate about their job.

I read an article in Inc. magazine some time ago(the link to the article is in the bio)  The article was written in 2012 by Jeff Haden. In it, he wrote: “Passion is not something you follow, passion is something that follows you.” He also said following your passion resulted in more failed businesses than all the recessions. 

I am so against his words that passion isn’t something you follow, but something that follows you. Can you imagine what today’s technology environment would be like as an example, if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs didn’t follow their passion? 

Mr. Haden may have allowed his passion to follow him, but I hope that the future Jobs and Gates of tomorrow continue to pursue theirs. 

His pessimistic point of view aside, there are a few surprising reason why you should follow your passion, and I want to share a five of them. But before I share those five surprising reason, I want to share five conventional ones.

5 Conventional Reasons To Follow Your Passion

1. You should follow your passion because life is too short

You can’t get more conventional than this reason. While many of us don’t dwell on this, we don’t really have a long life. If we are lucky we may live beyond a hundred, but the quality of the years that matters is the relevance. Why not make those moments matter. Why not live a life, or follow a path that will make you smile everyday, excited to get out of bed, every day.

2. Your value to the world would increase enormously.

Anything you do because of love, passion increases its value. Increases the effort you put into it, and will almost guarantee will affect the lives of people you know and those you don’t. Let’s go back to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. What they were doing in their garage out of love and passion affected, does affect billions. I would like to think their work wasn’t just about doing what they love, but because they wanted to solve a personal issue. Look what happened. I am writing the script for this podcast on a Mac because of the passion of Steve Jobs. That’s so tremendously deep to me. 

3. You will amass an unbeliever sense of purpose

Sometimes finding a sense of purpose is just about understanding what you are trying to accomplish and working diligently towards that purpose. But when you follow your passion and you are doing what you love, you feel as if you are doing something that is synergistic. The sense of purpose you feel increases beyond measure. 

4. Here is another really obvious benefit. You are happier

I kind of feel I don’t need to expand on this reason. When you follow your passion, you embrace every part of that choice. The stress, the wins, you embrace all it happily.

5. The final conventional benefit is your tenacity.

I’ve written so much about setting goals and one of the biggest factor for not achieving a goal is giving up. But, when you are doing something you are passionate about, you are more persistent. You don’t approach a task with the intention of giving up. You don’t face obstacles with a plan to give up. You find a way because you are in love with the idea of achieving that passion.

5 Surprising Reasons To Follow Your Passion

The five benefits I’m about to share to me are surprising in that when you think about doing what you love, you barely focus on the conventional reason why you should. But to realize that there are reasons that can literally make you smile is actually making me smile. For instance let’s start with the first reason. You passion contributing to your self confidence.

1. Yes, to follow your passion is a path to Incredible Self-Confidence.

I talked about self confidence in the last episode, episode 20. I am more than willing to talk about it again in this episode because it’s one thing you can’t have enough of.

Self-confidence is not a trait you inherit, it’s a trait that must flourish within you. One way to flourish this trait is through the ability to set goals and reach them. 

Imagine how your confidence would expand if something you are passionate about blossomed to the point of success.  The decision to pursue your passion is not an easy one.  What’s easy is doing what you are passionate about.

2. The next surprising reason is that you are constantly learning

Another benefit of doing what you love and passionate about is the knowledge you gain. You’ve decided to do something new, something different. That decision forces you to learn, especially when dealing with the unfamiliar. To open a door in which the end result is not known, leads to new knowledge. That’s a great thing.

3. I love this surprising reason. You’ll Love Monday’s Again

This benefit would probably apply if you’ve worked in an office environment most of your adult life. It’s amazing how many 9-5er hate Mondays. Monday represent the beginning of a workweek, the beginning of redundancy of answering to the calling of others and not your own. To obliterate your Monday blues, consider pursuing your passion, even if it’s just part-time.

I’m sure if you put your feelings aside, you would realize Monday’s are just like any other day of the week. Is it possibly what you hate about Monday’s has more to do with what you are not doing? Pursue your passion and find out.

4. The next surprising reason to follow your passion will matter or not matter to some.

The idea that money loses its status, which is the fourth reason, matters if you have money in the bank or don’t. It’s easy for someone who have financial resources to say money is secondary or money isn’t the reason.  However, when your bank account is zero, in the negative, or you balance in moving faster than your payday. Then there is no point in saying money loses its relevance. Operating under the assumption that you are not living paycheck to paycheck, then this benefit may appeal to you.

The bottom line is we all know money is important.  You need it to survive, to create a comfortable life for yourself and your family. However, when you are doing something you love; that satisfies the innate part of you, it can lose its relevance. 

Yes, you want to make money for all the obvious reasons like the ones I just mentioned. However, you realize that given the choice of happiness over a larger wallet, you would choose the latter.

5. The final surprising reason is realize It’s the Journey Not the Destination.

When you are doing something you are passionate about, when you realize you don’t want to be anywhere else or do anything else, that is when you realize how important the journey is. Of course success is important to you, how you get to the point of success however means so much more.

To Summarize

Unless you are the exception, chances are you grew up in a family that instill the need to go to school, find a job, make a good living. It’s a right of passage we all go through, and to do anything less would be considered bohemian or unconventional. While I am sure there are families that still believe in this concept of work now play later, increasingly the generation of today is choosing to follow a path that offers satisfaction as well as success.

Increasingly, you will find individuals dedicated to living with passion. Sure, your decision may not be guaranteed, but what in life is. Make a choice. Choose to incorporate in your life the pursuit of your passion, or to continue with the tried and true method your mother and her mother knows. To choose the latter, the benefits can be even more than the reasons I shared in this episode. Even more than you expect.

Episode Highlights

• Following your passion defined.
• If it wasn’t for trailblazers followin their passion, technology wouldn’t be what it is today.
• Only 30% of U.S. workforce follow their passion
• The conventional reasons to follow your passion is what you would expect.
• The Unconventional reasons to follow your passion could be surprising to some.
• How we work today was passed down from from generation to generation.
• Choosing to follow your passion can produce more fullfillment than most would expect.

Episode at a glance

Resources & Action

Sources mentioned in this episode:

• Study
• Inc. Magazine Article

Learn more about the free resource raffle, sign up to share your story and access the give-away registration here
Register for SD Toolbox live notification here.
Review and comment on Evolving Life podcast here. Follow the instructions below if you use Apple Podcast to listen.

Your Thoughts & Support

If you enjoy this episode or find it helpful, please share the podcast with family and friends and leave us a review on which ever medium you are using to listen to your podcasts.

Also, if you have a topic you want to hear about on Evolving Life? contact me.

Share your Apple Podcast review here. To access the review page, click on the link listen on Apple Podcast. Once Apple Podcast opens, click on Evolving Life under shows. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the option to write a review.