Follow Your Passion

I recently saw a meme that said “Purpose is the reason you journey. Passion is the fire that lights your way.”  Unfortunately I don’t have a person to credit that to because there wasn’t a name listed, but it was timely that I came across it.  We always hear in motivational speaking, books, memes on social media, etc. catchy phrases such as “Follow your passion”, or “Do what you love”.  I have found it to be solid advice and letting passion light my way (as the meme says) has helped me on my own personal journey thus far, which is why I want to share my experience with you encouraging you to follow your passion.

As you read this blog post, it serves as substantial evidence that following your passion can lead to successful results.  All my life I’ve enjoyed writing in a variety of forms because I believed in the art of words and how they can touch someone reading them.  That passion lead me into my Master’s Degree program in Health Communications, but I digress.  While I was in the midst of starting an active job search about a year and a half ago, a close friend that I look up to, sent me a couple blog posts of a guy who had been in my similar position.  He started following his passion, which eventually developed into his own personal business.  Admittedly I was immediately emotionally touched by the posts and felt like they were speaking directly to me at a time when I needed encouragement.  The next day I taught myself how to start a blog site, and started developing content to post. 

My first post was “Coaching at Work” and went up on August 20, 2013.  I had no idea what direction my site would take, but I knew this is what I loved doing about topics I enjoyed writing about.  Fast forward to today and my writing has taken off.  I’ll be honest, I don’t have a job in it, but it has opened up doors for me in areas I never expected allowing for the potential for even more job opportunities.  Since that day, 3650 views, across 46 posts that I’ve written, it is now a part of the New World Flood website which I was not a part of previous to this post.  I’ve also been able to write a few articles for a statewide Texas Magazine covering events in Austin, TX, national ones such as South by Southwest, and the ESPN X Games as well as writing social media copy for a couple business websites.  I say all this not to brag, but to serve as proof that things can start happening if you follow your passion.  All too often we get sucked into empty motivation where people will suggest doing something and they have no proof that it works, or that success can come from it, and I’m sharing my own personal examples to prove that it can happen.

If you Google ‘Follow Your Passion’ you will find a fair amount of people who disagree with that line of thinking.  Those that disagree will assert that you should “Love what you do”, and “Do what contributes”.  They will also suggest that in areas where there are a small number of successful people at the top, professional athletes, political offices, company CEOs, that it can be discouraging if following your passion doesn’t land a person in those positions.  A person’s opinion is a person’s opinion, but I ask you to make your own decision and question, why does it have to be mutually exclusive? 

There is a chance that you are currently in a job that might not be in a field or involve tasks that you are passionate about.  That’s reality, that’s life.  But in the process of following the advice of “Love what you do” and unifying it with “Follow your passion” why not try to think of creative ways to incorporate something you are passionate about into the work that you currently do?  For example if you work at a call center but you’re passionate about knitting why not start knitting during your lunch breaks and offer to make items for coworkers.  If you work at a bank, but your passion is boating you can start a boating club that coworkers can join and you can teach them about boating.  This can even extend beyond the work place.  Once you’ve identified your passion, you live in a community that has a wide variety of people living in them with different interests.  In the process of “Doing what has value” and following your passion, your passion might fulfill a niche within your community that can engage and help others in ways you never imagined.

The bottom line here is that as a human being regardless of where you come from, how much money you have, or what your culture is, we share some very basic tenets of personality.  We all have things that we are passionate about, we all have a desire to matter and make a difference, and we all have a value of some sort.  If we can harness, and combine those things together, what we are passionate about can make a difference and provide a value (monetary or not) to the community we live in and beyond.  Sometimes that value can even be very validating of our sense of self and help to make meaning of the world.  As you finish reading this post I encourage you to find your passion, think of ways that it can manifest itself in your life, and then follow it to success.