We’ve all heard the advice: “Follow your passion, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” It’s a seductive idea – the idea that if we can just figure out that one thing we’re passionate about, we’ll be able to turn that into a fulfilling and financially rewarding career. But what if this advice is actually doing more harm than good?
The problem with the “follow your passion” mantra is that it assumes that everyone has a singular, clear-cut passion that they can turn into a career. In reality, most people have multiple interests and passions, and not all of them are viable career paths. But that variety of passions and interests is what can often lead to new innovations and breakthroughs, even when we think they are totally unrelated and not relevant to actually making a living. One example that has stuck with me is the story that Steve Jobs shared in his commencement ceremony at Stanford University in 2005. He talked about how he learned about typography in college and how it later influenced the design of the Mac computer. Here is an excerpt from his speech:
“I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
Another issue with the “Follow your Passion” advice is that it can set unrealistic expectations for what a career should feel like. No matter how much we love our business or our job, there will always be aspects of it that feel like work – tedious tasks, difficult co-workers, or challenging projects. By expecting our work to always feel like a passion project, we can set ourselves up for disappointment and frustration.
So what should we do instead? Rather than fixating on a singular passion too early, we should focus on developing a set of skills and experiences. Being interested in a variety of things and trying them out gives us additional knowledge and keeps us in ‘learner mode’ which is so important for growth and fulfillment. This could involve doing an online course in a field that interests us, doing volunteer work to gain practical experience in a particular area, trying a side hustle to learn commercial skills, or even watching a documentary about something that intrigues us.
Being open to exploring different career paths and interests means that rather than feeling like we have to find our one true passion, we can approach our career or business with a sense of curiosity and experimentation.
In the coaching field, it’s not uncommon to come across clients putting a huge amount of pressure on themselves to come up with that one passion or purpose so that they can go ‘all in’ on it. Your questions can help your client reframe their perspective, and open their mind to a broader perspective.
Ultimately, the key is to help your clients approach work with a sense of flexibility and openness. While “following your passion” may seem like an attractive option, it’s important to remember that fulfilling work can come from many different sources – and that it’s often a combination of interests, skills, and experiences that leads to true fulfillment in work and business.
