Why following your passion is bad advice

One of my great loves in life is sport. Mum got me trying heaps of sports as a kid, so whether it’s nurture, nature or a mix of the two, sport has been a large and important part of my life.

Aged 37 with 15 years in banking under my belt, I was ready for a change. I wanted to break out of this money-focused and stressful world. I had a great career but didn’t find it particularly rewarding — it was a strength but definitely not a passion. I decided to follow my passion for sport and fitness and become a personal trainer.

I got qualified and set up as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed outdoor PT in Bondi, Australia.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t me. It didn’t bring the satisfaction and enjoyment I hoped it would. While I had some wonderful clients and built a reasonably successful business, I didn’t love it. After four years, I returned to banking. I’d followed my passion, just like we are told to, but it had led me to a dead end.

So, what is wrong with this advice?

We haven’t stopped to ask ourselves: ‘Why?’

Start with why

Simon Sinek, in his TEDx talk that has amassed 58 million views, tells us to ‘start with why’. His talk is focused on business, however, the principle applies in finding our purpose and making decisions on how to lead our life.

He shows three concentric circles with ‘Why’ in the middle, then ‘How’ in the next circle and ‘What’ in the outer circle. In the talk, Simon says, ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’

We buy the ‘why’ because of how it makes us feel and that drives our behaviour. This is a clue to where our ‘why’ comes from.

Our passions are the ‘how’, they are not the ‘why’. They are our passions because of how they make us feel. When we search for the right career, if we understand the feelings we desire at work, we can consider if our passion, as a career, will bring us what we need.

Sport and training bring me many of my desired feelings, but helping others train and exercise does not bring what I need in a job.

Too often we rationalise our career choice or goal, but we do not unpack how that will make us feel and whether it matches our desired emotions. When we do that, we are only accessing part of our brain, our cerebral cortex, which is the thinking part of our brain.

It is our limbic brain that is responsible for our feelings and emotional states and drives our behaviour. We do our best work when it makes us feel good.

It is this that leads us to how we uncover our ‘why’.

How do you want to feel?

How we want to feel is our ‘why’. When we follow how we want to feel, we work out what we truly desire.

Have you ever thought that you wanted something, or to achieve something, but when you got there, it didn’t make you feel how you expected? Our choices and decisions may be driven by societal expectations or influenced by those around us, rather than being directed by what we truly desire.

My return to banking was a band-aid solution that bought me time to think. I had a great job, but I felt like the round peg being rammed into the square hole.

In my soul searching for what was next I came across Danielle LaPorte’s book, The Desire Map. Danielle explains that when we go after a goal, it’s not the goal we’re chasing, it’s how attaining it will make us feel. Her belief is that we need to get clear on how we want to feel and set our goals and design our life around that.

I read and did all the exercises in The Desire Map. It wasn’t easy and took time to dig into how I want to feel in various parts of my life — relationships and society, creativity and learning, body and wellness, livelihood and lifestyle and more. I found it a fascinating process and created a new level of self-awareness.

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. Audre Lorde

What are your desired feelings? It’s easy to say, I want to feel good, or happy. You need to dig deeper. You can use a feelings wheel (Google will lead you to one) and when you do something that makes you feel good, look at it and unpack the deeper feeling. Is it a feeling of accomplishment, being connected, fulfilled, proud, strong? Do the same when it’s something you don’t enjoy. What is the feeling and what is it about that situation that made you feel like that? What else brings those unwanted feelings?

Consider a ‘feelings’ journal, and narrow down what your desired emotions are. Then you can begin to assess what does and doesn’t make you feel like that.

Knowing how you want to actually feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have. Danielle LaPorte

One of my needs is feeling free. And that goes to more than just having personal freedoms of choice. It includes being healthy and having a body that gives me the freedom to do the things I want. So that drives my nutrition, my training and rest. The need to be free is driving my change in career, to not be bound by a 5-day working week, with just 4 weeks holiday. Each desired feeling will mean something slightly different to each of us.

Not long after reading The Desire Map, I came up with the idea to paddle the length of the Nile. With every cell in my body it felt right (and was right) — it was a visceral response that I struggled to put into words. As it turns out, the limbic part of our brain responsible for emotions doesn’t have the capacity for language, which is why it can be hard to fully put into words some feelings.

How and what

Going back to Simon Sinek’s concentric circles, after ‘why’ we have ‘how’. As I said, this is our passions and the things we enjoy doing. The feelings generated when we do them are why they are a passion. Then the ‘what’ is our goals and actions for those passions.

This could translate into:

Why: I need to feel like I help people and make a difference
How: I’m passionate about helping people recover from injuries
What: I work as a physiotherapist

Feelings are a compass for our life. How you want to feel, along with your values, are lenses to put your decisions through and create a life of meaning, purpose and enjoyment.

Have you ever stopped to consider your desired feelings? Could this be a lens you could use? If you haven’t, I encourage you to try this, perhaps give The Desire Map a go, and see what it uncovers for you.

It may not give you the immediate answer to ‘what do I want to be when I grow up’, but it might help you find clarity and direction.

Sarah

'Follow Your Passion' is Bad Advice