Why it’s okay not to know your passion 

Passion is variable. 

Following your passion does not make you happy. I was speaking to a client recently. 

He shared, 

I’m at my dream job, I love the airlines, but…

I don’t know why I’m not happy! 

I guess the passion doesn’t balance out with other parts of the job, like culture or colleagues. 

Yes, you didn’t hear that wrong. For all the Steve Jobs-esque advice on following your heart, and never having to work another day of your life… that’s not accurate. 

I’m not saying that following your passion makes you sad. But I’m saying that it will not make you happy ever after. 

You tie your job satisfaction to how you feel – because that’s what passion is. 

It’s an emotion. 

Somedays you are red-hot with passion, and other days, you’re not. 

What do you do then? Quit? 

Nope. 

Passion can fuel the development of your skill, as you grow interest in what you do. It can be a virtuous cycle, where passion fuels skill growth, and the resultant skill growth then fuels your greater passion. 

You love it, and you’re inclined to spend more time in it as you get better. 

But there are going to be times when you are going to plateau. Where you find yourself not growing, despite your best efforts. Or you find yourself even regressing. 

Skill growth is difficult. Its meant to be! It’s painful. 

You are pushing yourself out of your traditional comfort zone, into areas that you’ve never explored before. 

It will hurt. The question is, when it starts hurting… are you going to switch out because it doesn’t feel as good as before? 

The distance between one level of skill to another, as you can see from Angela’s graph, is huge. But the units of time between the growth in your skill level can vary from person to person. 

It can be a year. Or it can be a decade. 

The question is: 

Will you stick it out long enough to see and reap the benefits of your skill growth? 

Passion takes time and uncertainty 

When you go to bed each day, you’re not sure how you will feel the next day. You’re not sure what you might even do at your job. 

It’s uncertain. 

If you want to follow the advice of Steve Jobs, look at the life of Steve. He got sacked from the company he founded. He went through immense pains in battling his pancreatic cancer. 

His passion came with time and uncertainty. He never knew whether he would succeed. 

But he stuck through it for the long haul. 

Today, we are increasingly taught to play the short game for the long one. We are given what we want, instead of what we need. 

We get the dopamine hits our minds crave from the validation we get in likes. We can curate, edit and filter what we want in terms of the personalities we want to follow, or the friends we want to have, or the posts we want appearing on our feeds. Everything is centred around me, myself, and I. 

Or the instant gratification of reaching for sugar, fat and satisfying ourselves with it. 

We play the short game for the long one. 

If you want passionate work, play the long game. Take the time to develop a skill that you do for the sake of doing it. Not because it makes you feel better about yourself when compared to others. 

Here’s an example. I used to think that I had a passion for medicine. I wanted to be a doctor. But when my A Level results came out, I got bad grades. 

They spelt, 

B 

B 

A 

D

Bad. The irony. 

For two years, as I served the army, I chased after organising event after event, so that I could put them on my CV. I thought that this would allow me to qualify for discretionary criteria, where I could get into medicine! 

But it didn’t. 

My world fell apart. 

As I looked back, I saw I didn’t have the passion. But all I had was a desire to show my friends, 

Hey, look at me, I got the white coat too! 

I was looking for social approval, not skill. I didn’t have the skill for science. My results had shown that. 

Passion takes time and uncertainty. It takes a journey of discovery. If you don’t know what it is now, that’s fine. 

But see this journey as a time where you are discovering. Not whereby you’re anxiously asking yourself each day,

What is my passion? 

Am I there yet? Is this what passion feels like? 

People can describe what passion feels like for them, but they can’t describe it for you. 

It may be manifested differently. 

But don’t wait for it. 

Because getting it is no guarantee of eternal happiness. 

Instead, find the joy in what you do now, however dull it is. 

Doing something without passion, is okay. 

You might have this impression that if you loved your work, you would be skipping to work. 

If you don’t have it, you would be dreading work, looking at the clock. 

Look. You’re making your life satisfaction something external, not something internal. The best people show up day after day, for their work, whether they like it or not. They are still able to produce at an incredible quality, even though they may have had a poor night yesterday. 

Your aim is to get to a level where you can produce consistently, whether or not you have the ‘feeling’ for it. Don’t depend on emotion. 

There’s a Navy Seal quote,

“Under pressure, you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training.”

When you’re under pressure, you don’t expect passion and emotion to lift you above the fog. 

You expect your training, your habits, your skills, to push you up to the occasion. 

Here’s a caveat. If it’s not about what you do at the job, but instead what is outside of the job scope, get out. 

This means that if it’s about things like:

1. Culture
2. Colleagues 
3. The location of the work 
4. The ethics of the work goes against your own values 

Because if it’s those things, there’s little you can do about it. 

Do what you love doesn’t always work.  

Two days ago, I received an assignment to design a training plan for students. By all accounts, this was my ‘passion’. I loved training, standing in front of people, and leading them from A to B in their skill level. 

It was also my skill, which I had deliberately worked on for the past 5 years of my life. 

But still I stared at the paper. I didn’t know how to start. I sputtered and eventually spat out a shitty first draft. It was by no means perfect. 

But it was something I could work with. 

That’s the point. 

You don’t have to know your passion. 

If I had waited for passion to strike me, to be caught up in the throes of my emotions and suddenly produce something inspirational, I would still be sitting there. Waiting. 

It doesn’t work. 

Don’t wait to know your passion. 

Anchor yourself on the skill you have now. 

Final story. When I started pivoting into a writing business, I simply thought about this being my ‘passion’ and strength. But then I realised I couldn’t make enough money from writing, and took bigger projects in Annual Reports for the likes of listed companies and charities. I even had to invest in stocks like Multi-Chem on the side just to make enough money.

It had ceased to be about the passion, but was now also about the money.

But today, looking at the team of 10 that I’ve built, I don’t feel any less proud about it. I think it’s better that I combined, money, passion, and strength.

That’s what you should do too.