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Friday, April 12, 2019

Caution on Turning Your Passion into Work


I don't watch much TV. But I caught an episode of Last Man Standing talking a little bit about passion and work. This resonated with me.

You should try to turn your passion into a career or at least a side job or find a way to integrate your passion into your work to make it more enjoyable. (When I did a stint as a merchandiser, I would write brief reports describing what happened on calls.)

I don't think it's good to doing something you hate. Since you're spending a lot of time working and hating it, it can affect you and those around you negatively. So, if you have a passion, pursue it. Make it something you do for a living. (Now, there are times when this isn't possible and you have to put food on the table and provide a roof over your head and your family's. I get that. In that case, keep your head down, eyes forward, and wait for a good time to follow your passion.)

Live with passion. If you don't have a passion, go find one. It's far better to live your life with something you're living for than just settling for passionless existence. I rather live than merely exist!

We can argue what are worthwhile or good passions. For those who read this blog, you might have inklings at what I'm passionate about. For now, I'm putting aside what passions people should follow. For now, I'm just urging you to seek a passion. If you have one, cultivate it into something more. But when we turn our passion into work, we must be very careful. Otherwise, we will turn it into a mundane job. 

When we turned our passion into work, it's too easy to go through the motions and forget why we're doing this in the first place. So, how do we safeguard against this? We need to examine ourselves regularly and then ask questions, such as why do I love doing this or what are my motives? Asking yourself about your motives is a good question when examining yourself. Your motives might have misled you. If your motives are not so good, where it was more about your ego than the passion itself, then either change the motive(s) or change the passion.

The last thing that needs to happen is when our passion morphs into a job we resent or get out burned out by.

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