Your passion won’t show up unless you do. It’s attracted to those who know what the hell they are doing. There are two ways to make a living. The first way is the traditional way of loving what you do and accepting joyfully whatever life throws you. The other way is doing what you love and have fun by doing it. These two extreme ways are apparently separate and far apart but in reality should be complementing each other. The first way suggests you forget about what you love and what you are passionate about and do the work constantly and consistently to be the best in the world at it. In so doing, you can make money and build a sustainable business for years to come.
The other way of making a living is through doing what you love. Finding your passion and following it, is the way, so they say, to reinvent yourself and make a living. Your passion is where your energy lurks and ignoring it drains you and renders you a mere clog in today’s ruthless business machine. While this group is self-centered and more into the “vision” thing, the first group is value-centered. While the first group is process and people-oriented, the other group is results and ego-driven. One group is seeking contribution and fulfilment while the other is longing for achievement and arriving. One group is pulled by their hearts and the other is pushed by their reason and rationality.
Related: How Your Focus On The Process Is More Fulfilling
Lack of passion is one of the reasons startup businesses fail. According to CB insights, 9% of startup post-mortem founders found that a lack of passion is a key reason for failure no matter how brilliant their idea is. One of those failing startups started news coverage business candidly declared that: “But we didn’t really care about journalism, and weren’t even avid news readers. If the first thing we did every day was go to news.bbc.co.uk, we should have been making this product. But even when we had News Tilt, it wasn’t my go-to place to be entertained, that was still Hacker News and Reddit. And how could we build a product that we were only interested in from a business perspective.”
It’s one thing to care for a thing and another to be passionate about it. The failing startup confesses that he had the passion for making money but lacked the caring for the industry he is in - journalism. Passion is a result, an effect not a cause. Caring on the other hand is a mixture of discipline, consistency and patience. It’s a process not a destination. Should he care for being useful and valuable to his readers, he would have committed himself to keeping abreast of what’s going on in the journalism world. Only then will readers feel this commitment and reward him with their money.
To combat the lack of passion that drains your energy, the following 3 strategies help you regain your power back and keep you committed. The first strategyis the 3-in-1Mix. You need to combine the two ways we talked about at the outset of our blog; namely developing your assets along with keeping your passion alive. The third element that should be added to this mix and make your business a success is to find a market for your product or service. You won’t be making money without commercializing your invention. And to do that you need to find a group of people willing to buy what you offer.
Keeping your passion alive is dependent upon keeping your assets and market demand under close scrutiny. The 3 elements are not static; they are evolving in a never-ending journey. You got to trust your journey and where it leads you. When you do the work and have mastery at the task at hand, you got to trust the process and believe that the dots will be connected somehow in the future. I encourage you to read the blog that I wrote about the Italian football coach Maurizio Sarri and how he started out as a banker but made a conscious shift to his passion of football.
The second strategyis combating resistance. You got to be aware of the ups and downs in your journey. You start out in your business journey high on passion and possibilities. After that you hit rock bottom and self-doubt creeps in. Inner resistance shows itself in the form of being bored with your own stuff. It kicks you when you are at the middle of painting or doing an enjoyable work. You feel like you want to throw your brushes away.
Getting your passion on track once again is key. You have to search inwards and revitalize yourself. Ignore your internal resistance and take a break. Take care of your body, eat nourishing food, and walk in nature. Recharge your mind by journaling and sorting out your thoughts. Connect with your loved ones to enrich your heart and soul. The importance of the break here is to help you get back energized and be able to push through the discomfort and uneasiness caused by your internal resistance.
The third strategy is Learnability. Your willingness and ability to consistently grow your skill set is valuable in today’s changing landscape. Technology renders us obsolescent unless we continue developing ourselves, learn new skills and master old relevant ones. To keep pace with the fast today’s technology, it’s not sufficient to be just a learner but to be a fast learner. You need to unlearn what doesn’t serve you anymore and learn what will help you move ahead. Unlearning proceeds learning. You need to get rid of the unnecessary stuff that burdens you in order to clear space for the new and relevant ones to emerge and take root.
Loving what you do opens the door for doing what you love. The two are inseparable. It is wise to start from a place of acceptance: from loving what is handy and possible. Developing and mastering the possible helps you reach the impossible: reaching what you love.
