What does passion look like?
Is your passion a part of your identity?
Abstract
“Realising your passion isn’t possible without strategy.”
When listening to Reid Hoffman’s rationalisations on how he was positioned to become a billionaire, a common thread throughout his explanation was some sort of internal force.
Whether it be passion, enthusiasm, or an underlying belief, his predictions for the future always centred on a strong sense of self-awareness.
His journey exemplifies the power of self-awareness, and it got me thinking:
What is passion?
Is it an emotion, a feeling/sense, or an experience?
Alongside this, is it drawn upon from within or does it appear as a result of a culmination of our environment, circumstances, opportunities, etc.?
Finally, why is it everlasting for some people and temporary for others?
This thought piece doesn’t seek to define what passion is, rather it details my experience of it and offers perspective as to what it may mean for you.
Discussion
Passion as a driver/purpose
When I think of passion, I associate words such as compelling, exciting, interesting, enticing, and in some cases a passion can be so intense that it promotes mind over matter.
It shouldn’t feel like a chore, but discipline is required to maintain it amongst our responsibilities.
Not the type of discipline that connotes grit, but a discipline to uphold a part of you. A part of your identity.
On the surface, it can be a hinderance - that extra card that doesn’t allow the deck to fit into the box.
In short, it takes effort to deviate from what your current conditions encourage, in order to exercise this passion.
But this is where you thrive, and relapsing into autopilot only strengthens your desire to reconnect and incorporate it.
It may be an activity you wish to develop yourself in or even an intrinsic part of your life.
We know that a happier you = a more productive you.
The danger is that we stretch ourselves too thin, with unrealistic demands to integrate our passions into our day-to-day, especially if they do not fit the mould of what you predominantly spend your time on.
If you’re lucky, what you predominantly spend your time on can be leveraged to exercise the passion, decreasing the activation energy to start and the inertia to change the way we lead our lives.
There may be passions we never uncover due to a lack of exposure and lack of incentive to explore beneath the surface of our interests as a result of our fast-paced lives.
What if I said you can control the pace of your life?
In some cases, it is only fast-paced due to a lack of prioritisation, meaning that a lot of what you do feels out of your control.
If you can, slow it down to a pace where you are intentional with your actions instead of telling yourself ‘it is what is it is’ and continuing to live on autopilot.
Some desires are left dormant and are quickly forgotten because you squeeze the valuable time out of your day.
We perceive these desires as causing too much disruption to our lives as if there is an invisible rule stopping you from changing your routine.
Disruption may not only refer to a change in plans or routine. It could also mean discomfort; disrupting ‘the peace’ of the comfortable position you find yourself in today.
There could be fear of an external reaction, like judgement, or an internal reaction, like overthinking.
Pre-empting problems and failure is far easier than trying, hence why many will continue to postpone the things they once wanted to do.
Finding passion is like finding luck
My main passion for writing is a web of isolated experiences, skills, and interests.
I’d like to think of passion similar to luck.
The more exposure you have, the larger the surface area for luck.
The same way in which if you have a variety of wide-ranging experiences, the better you would understand yourself as you will have seen your reactions in different contexts.
But this takes effort.
I intentionally increased my exposure to new experiences when I was 16, where I noticed that there was an opportunity to explore different activities, interests, and potential challenges.
I wanted to challenge my preconceived notions about things I had never experienced, outside of a school setting.
Public speaking
Non-fiction writing and research
Career-related webinars
What I find fascinating is that I partake in all of these today in some form - retrospectively I could have left all of these experiences to chance.
But at the time I knew opportunities won’t arrive at my feet.
I would have to go for it.
Realising this today has made me even more grateful for the few opportunities I had as outlets away from school.
Simultaneously, I’m glad that I instilled the idea of having no regrets and therefore welcoming opportunities I was unfamiliar with and that they only would be fruitful if I put the effort in.
It is those experiences that brought me to my passions.
My main passion for writing is a web of isolated experiences, skills, and interests.
The advice of ‘just start’ couldn’t be more pertinent.
You can’t adapt for perfection before you know what the encounter will be like.
This quote from fellow writer Mark captures this perfectly: “Nobody expects you to be perfect. Except you.”
You have to start somewhere.
In my experience, passion was as a result of being tenacious and due to this I think of passion as something you cannot wait for and come across by chance.
I would be curious to hear what you think.
For me, it is as simple as:
If you stand still, the ground beneath you wouldn’t change.
How do you know whether something is a passion?
For me, the fire to continue analysing, think critically, and evaluate has stayed with me for years.
The way I see it is if after a long time of not exercising the ‘passion’ you are still reinvigorated with a burst of energy - that is passion.
When starting The Thought Base, I hadn’t written at length without parameters for 2 years, but I still experienced the urge to pick up a pen and start writing.
Although unchartered territory, I felt there was an untapped potential waiting to be revealed by aligning my favourite parts about storytelling and offering perspective alongside my interest in self-improvement and productivity.
I found this urge was accompanied by fleeting memories of how writing freely makes me feel, the curiosity to explore, and a focus that enables me to write with ease.
Sometimes when we de-prioritise a passion, that initial struggle of reinstating the rhythm that was once there causes us to doubt ourselves.
I experienced this when taking a break with writing.
But when the passion seems to slip away and is not expected to be exercised in the foreseeable future, that is when things become more difficult.
For one of my passions I asked myself:
Was it ever really a passion or was it all I knew?
This is how I felt when going to university and starting over with football.
Something that had taken a big chunk of my life and something I’ve grown up with:
Playing it in and out of school, summer camps, the park, the backyard, even in the house with a tennis ball when I wasn’t allowed
Playing football games (predominantly FIFA) on my phone, tablet, console
Watching it alone and with family
So questioning my passion for football wasn’t something I expected.
The reason I started over is because I de-prioritised playing for my Sunday League team and watching football in my final year of sixth form to focus on exams, as I should right?
Initially, I saw no problem with it and just saw it as a natural cycle that will pass.
But the shift to finding my feet living alone was eye-opening.
It all felt like a phantom of the past.
I saw the opportunity to start afresh by joining societies and being open-minded to the opportunities that university offered.
Despite this, I still saw football as a way to settle in, a foundation, and I continued playing for Semester 1 of my first year.
Even today, irrespective of what I do, I still find time to watch the football.
You can never be too busy to exercise a passion.
I realised that misconstruing your reaction in relation to a passion could be a life-changing one.
I say ‘could’ as it is based on my limited experience and is slightly dramatic. 😂
However, making the decision to leave a passion behind because you ‘grew out of it’ or it being ‘just a phase’ sets you up for an unfulfilling future.
Best believe that when my younger brother asked for me to play him on FC25 I cooperated.
I wasn’t there to get soppy over nostalgia - I was there to win.
Generally though, as we get older, the surface area to embrace new experiences continually shrinks as responsibilities pile up and stakes become increasingly higher.
I could conclude this post with the cliché of saying ‘the best time to start is now’ but there is a deeper lesson to this and it is not about adding or finding new passions.
It starts from within.
As a result of writing this post, I produced a reminder to take forward for whenever I reinvigorate a passion:
You haven’t lost love for it; as with anything that you leave for a while, you will need time to adapt. Give it a chance. Sometimes it will work out, sometimes it won’t and that’s fine.
Conclusion
Life happens but your passion shouldn’t feel like a burden.
Even with the responsibilities life throws at you, it can only be fulfilling if you let your passion shine through.
It provides meaning, a direction, a purpose.
We may question the importance of our passion amongst everything else.
For me, if the conditions allow it, my passion is a non-negotiable that gives me life every time I attend to it.
I have been lucky in encountering what I am passionate about whilst experimenting with a variety of interests.
‘Finding’ the passion shouldn’t be a chore; it should be a journey.
P.S.
Do you have a passion and how important is it to you? Is your willingness to incorporate it into your life reflective of how passionate you are?
Thank you 🙏🏽 very much