The Darkside Of Passion

One of the things you often hear in business is how you need to have "Passion" for what you do.

People who often speak on this topic say a lot about how your work should feel.

"You should wake up every day and jump out of bed!"

"Everything in your work should feel amazing!"

"No matter what happens, you should always feel like "this" is what you want to do!"

There is a trend I see with people who try to live this kind of lifestyle with their work, though.

They end up going from one endeavor to another endeavor, never finding the thing they are "passionate" about.

At the end of the day, they generally feel passionless and struggle to find joy in their work, always seeking something they can't seem to find.

There's a reason for this though - it's not possible to achieve.

Here's the dark truth of "Passion" culture.

The Truth

Most people who talk about Passion use a bad definition of what "Passion" really is.

You could say that how most people talk about Passion has the exact same problem that occurs with Perfection.

The standards can never be achieved.

Waking up EVERY day jumping out of bed?

EVERYTHING in your work feeling amazing?

You should ALWAYS feel like "this" is what you want to do?

All of these are "Perfectionistic" standards that can never be reached!

The truth is you won't jump out of bed every day - some days you will not want to wake up and will desperately want to press snooze!

There will always be some things in work that don't feel great - especially as your business or teams grow in size!

There will be some days (often MANY) days where you question if this is what you really want to do!

The truth is that life is hard - it always will be, no matter what you decide to do with it!

If you believe that every day is going to be full of "Passion" you are setting yourself up for extreme disappointment and stress.

Plus, If you were to actually look at the lives of people who claim that they live their life this way, most of the time they are lying (and worse, are trying to sell you something that doesn't exist).

The "few" that actually have a lot of passion (most of the time) know the reality that it isn't "all the time" - they also rarely talk about how much passion they have.

You don't really need to talk about Passion when you really feel it.

The longer you try to keep impossible standards, the more unhappy you will feel.

What you focus on, you will always find more of.

So, if you focus on an impossible standard, something you literally can never achieve, you will ALWAYS find how you fail to live up to the impossible standard in your work.

If you feel like you are constantly failing, it is only a matter of time before you quit - it's a natural part of our Psychology.

You will go from one endeavor to the next, looking for something that doesn't exist, and finding failure.

However, it doesn't need to be this way.

The Better Path

If you don't want to live life this way, there are a couple of ways you need to rethink "Passion".

The first is that you need to realize you will never feel "Passionate" every single day.

Give yourself some grace - you're human just like the rest of us.

The goal should be to feel it more often than not.

Honestly, if you feel Passionate over 50% of the time, you're doing better than 99% of people - that's the reality of the world we live in.

The next thing you need to understand is that you can make parts of your life "Passionate".

That's right YOU make it filled with passion, it doesn't make you filled with passion.

Passion comes from inside us and gets expressed through what we do.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Passion can change, adapt, and move over time.

You may be Passionate about something today, tomorrow, or for the year, but it can also change over time - that's ok.

Rarely is anyone Passionate about something their ENTIRE life.

Think about it this way - most people are not Passionate about children until they have their own children, then suddenly they are EXTREMELY Passionate about their kids.

Passion changes over time.

It doesn't mean you weren't Passionate before, or that it's "wrong" to not feel the same way now, it just means that you've grown and adapted, which is ok.

If you understand that, you can look for aspects of your work to be Passionate about, and you will find more Passion in your work.

On top of all of this, you need to know that Passion can be created by understanding our Psychophysiology.

Specifically, understanding and mastering Flow States can create Passion in your life.

If you can add more Flow States into your life, you will feel more Passion in what you do - the neurochemicals that are released during these states lead to feeling more Passion.