Knowing Where Your Passion Lies Does Not Guarantee You Success in Life
When the line between Talent and Passion are often blurred, it is hard to even begin talking about achieving any form of success in Life. Oftentimes, we do not understand the difference between discovering your own Passion and achieving Success. Even if some of us are indeed lucky to have figured out your own passion and that relentless motivation to stick by it at a very early age, it does not necessarily mean you will automatically be successful. If you have ever come across any of the mainstream motivational courses, spiritual studies, success speeches or articles by some of the most famous and influential people in the world, you would realize a recurring theme across most of them, and that is "you must love what you do in order to be successful". It naturally gives us the signal that in order to perform our job well, we must first be intrinsically motivated to love it. Conversely, it also means to say that if we do not have burning passion in the work we do, we can never perform well in any of our work. However, this recurring theme that these successful people often advocate misleads us into a form of misunderstanding. This misunderstanding can cause us to unconsciously create a trap in our logic. This trap can be a little tricky, so a simple analogy will be used to describe it.
Take for example, my dream of driving a top-of-the-range fast car to its full potential, which is analogous of Success. What is indispensable in achieving this is a well-tuned engine, which corresponds to Passion. If I do not have a well-tuned engine (Passion), I will never be able to fulfill the task of driving in a fast car with top-of-the-range car specifications, which correspondingly would mean I will not achieve Success. Until here, if you have not yet noticed, it would seem that we have entered into a form of contradiction. We are afraid of not achieving Success. Hence, all we seem to care about is the Passion, thinking that if we just discover and focus our attention on our Passion, we would find Success. Just like the prior example of "not having a good engine means we can never own a fast car", we inadvertently forgot about other numerous factors (or other vehicle parts and accessories), and going about our lives with the sole intent of finding out what our Passion is. However, simply having a good engine alone does not constitute a good overall car specifications, and so pursuing our Passion on its own does not necessarily amount to your Success. The more important thing is, after we understand the notion of "there can no Success if there is no Passion", we realize we mistakenly form a self-belief that we will succeed only when we found our passion, and so all we need to do is to myopically focus our attention on discovering it. Even though you may not be able to drive a car without an engine, it does not totally mean that when you have the engine, you will be able to drive in one.
The moment you gain clarity on this fact, you will realize that a fast car does not solely depend on just a good engine, but a combination of many other parts and accessories coming together. Similarly, Success consists of many other components as well. That is why it is very important to emphasize the fact that Passion alone will not make you successful. Many people are not willing to work on other matters, and commit themselves to finding that Passion of theirs in hopes that they can achieve Success.
Therefore, the first point to note is that "Finding your Passion is important, but it should NEVER be the only factor of consideration." Oftentimes, we drown ourselves in search of the elusive Passion of ours, and preventing us from looking at matters holistically. As a result, our attitude in the initial stage is very important. You would ask yourself, "How do I go about discovering my Passion then?", which leads us to the method in which you go in search of. The next important point to note is, our perspective on our individual personal lives is always varying and changes at different stages of Life. Many of your interests you have during your 20's may not last into your 30's. For example, some of us would hope to travel the world, living a carefree life in the 20's when we are still young, energetic and single. However, as we start to grow older and begin to think of forming a family nucleus, we may then believe that stability and being responsible to others, and not just to self, are more important than that once fleeting dream of travelling the world without any worries. If you had only care about travelling to many other countries during your 20's and made no plans for other aspects of your own Life, you would have given up many other opportunities along the way; opportunities that would have helped you pave the way for other forms of interests you could have developed in the future.
Hence, discovering your Passion is not simply a matter of looking around in your present and finding it out based on your Life experiences thus far. Rather, it is the experiencing of your day-to-day living and discovering along the way that there are certain matters you intrinsically want to do better for yourself; discovering that there are other matters you have the self-motivation to do well in the service of others. All of these self-discoveries are the possibilities and the root of Passion. We must never be inundated with the fatal notion that "since the job I currently undertake has got nothing to do with my self-interest and therefore, I will not succeed since I see no Passion in it.". For some of you, even if you may be performing in a job you like for yourself, there will certainly be some parts of it where you feel can be done better; there will be some parts where you obtain a sense of achievement after completing it. Working to improve yourselves in these areas can bring about an opportunity to cultivate your Passion.
Take for example, my dream of driving a top-of-the-range fast car to its full potential, which is analogous of Success. What is indispensable in achieving this is a well-tuned engine, which corresponds to Passion. If I do not have a well-tuned engine (Passion), I will never be able to fulfill the task of driving in a fast car with top-of-the-range car specifications, which correspondingly would mean I will not achieve Success. Until here, if you have not yet noticed, it would seem that we have entered into a form of contradiction. We are afraid of not achieving Success. Hence, all we seem to care about is the Passion, thinking that if we just discover and focus our attention on our Passion, we would find Success. Just like the prior example of "not having a good engine means we can never own a fast car", we inadvertently forgot about other numerous factors (or other vehicle parts and accessories), and going about our lives with the sole intent of finding out what our Passion is. However, simply having a good engine alone does not constitute a good overall car specifications, and so pursuing our Passion on its own does not necessarily amount to your Success. The more important thing is, after we understand the notion of "there can no Success if there is no Passion", we realize we mistakenly form a self-belief that we will succeed only when we found our passion, and so all we need to do is to myopically focus our attention on discovering it. Even though you may not be able to drive a car without an engine, it does not totally mean that when you have the engine, you will be able to drive in one.
 |
| Priorities & self-interests are ever-changing at different stages of Life |
The moment you gain clarity on this fact, you will realize that a fast car does not solely depend on just a good engine, but a combination of many other parts and accessories coming together. Similarly, Success consists of many other components as well. That is why it is very important to emphasize the fact that Passion alone will not make you successful. Many people are not willing to work on other matters, and commit themselves to finding that Passion of theirs in hopes that they can achieve Success.
Therefore, the first point to note is that "Finding your Passion is important, but it should NEVER be the only factor of consideration." Oftentimes, we drown ourselves in search of the elusive Passion of ours, and preventing us from looking at matters holistically. As a result, our attitude in the initial stage is very important. You would ask yourself, "How do I go about discovering my Passion then?", which leads us to the method in which you go in search of. The next important point to note is, our perspective on our individual personal lives is always varying and changes at different stages of Life. Many of your interests you have during your 20's may not last into your 30's. For example, some of us would hope to travel the world, living a carefree life in the 20's when we are still young, energetic and single. However, as we start to grow older and begin to think of forming a family nucleus, we may then believe that stability and being responsible to others, and not just to self, are more important than that once fleeting dream of travelling the world without any worries. If you had only care about travelling to many other countries during your 20's and made no plans for other aspects of your own Life, you would have given up many other opportunities along the way; opportunities that would have helped you pave the way for other forms of interests you could have developed in the future.
Hence, discovering your Passion is not simply a matter of looking around in your present and finding it out based on your Life experiences thus far. Rather, it is the experiencing of your day-to-day living and discovering along the way that there are certain matters you intrinsically want to do better for yourself; discovering that there are other matters you have the self-motivation to do well in the service of others. All of these self-discoveries are the possibilities and the root of Passion. We must never be inundated with the fatal notion that "since the job I currently undertake has got nothing to do with my self-interest and therefore, I will not succeed since I see no Passion in it.". For some of you, even if you may be performing in a job you like for yourself, there will certainly be some parts of it where you feel can be done better; there will be some parts where you obtain a sense of achievement after completing it. Working to improve yourselves in these areas can bring about an opportunity to cultivate your Passion.
Since we have now established the differences between Passion and Success, and we are also clear that even though Success requires Passion, having Passion alone does not guarantee you Success. Henceforth, it is redundant to feel afraid that you will never succeed by not having any self-interests, or Passion of your own. This is because Passion and self-interests can sometimes be created out of nowhere, often through a series of some of the most ordinary process or experience you went through. It is perhaps normal to find yourself questioning how and where can your own Passion, if you have not already found it. More often than not, you can find it through seeking out your own motive and the method you wish to employ to seek out these possibilities for yourself.
Comments
Post a Comment