Profiting From Your Passions

I have frequently maintained that the key to wealth, health, fame, power, love, happiness, and personal fulfillment is simple. All you have to do is do what you feel passionate about. In fact, it seems to me that doing anything other than what you love is a total waste of time.

Whenever I write (or say) something like that I am deluged with questions and rebuttals. Folks inevitably point to the innumerable starving artists, musicians, writers, and actors who are, well, starving, even though they are following their passions.

I also hear from guys who tell me the sole reason they were put on earth is to run an animal rescue operation or some such low-paying/no-paying occupation. And then they challenge me by asking how are they going to get rich/famous/successful doing those things?

On the other side of the bell curve, I hear from people who say they are passionate about a bazillion things. They ask how can they possibly decide which one to pursue.

Here is what I tell all these folks:

I believe that it is not enough to begin your journey by following a path characterized by only one passion. I have noticed that success comes when you incorporate several passions at once. It seems that an activity that combines several passions is a more complete reflection of who you are. Not only do the possibilities seem greater when more passions intersect, but the joy of doing is fuller.

For example, I love sports (playing them, watching them, reading about them and talking about them). I love to see the mystical/spiritual side of stuff. I love to meditate. I love paradigm shifting ideas. I love to write (or more accurately, I love having written). I love starting businesses. I love promoting them and growing them. I love to collaborate with other people. All these passions (and probably many more) are intersecting in my latest project. I couldn’t be more stoked.

But the key question is how does one get there in the first place? Here is what I do to identify my next project when I am in a lull:

I just start playing around with lots of small projects and ideas – whatever strikes my fancy. The vast majority don’t amount to a hill of beans. But every now and then, one shows a glimmer of liveliness. When that happens, I go by the following maxim – where there’s smoke, pour gasoline. I feed those little glimmers with more of my energy, attention, and enthusiasm. If the glimmer gets brighter and the idea starts to sprout into something viable, I know I am on the right path.

This way I don’t have to go through any intellectual gymnastics trying to analyze which is the best opportunity or which will be most lucrative or which is the best fit for me. I let nature decide. I just go with the projects that grab me. If they take flight, I hop on board and enjoy the ride for as long and as high as it takes me.

The operative word, however, throughout the whole process is PLAY.

www.lazyway.net

Comments

[A Guy]

Easy to say that once you've made it. For the rest of us, following dreams leads to pain, woe and bankruptcy.

I followed my dreams. I poured my heart into it like you wouldn't beleive. Five years later, I'm about to be homeless.

It's nothing personal. I'm sure you're a swell guy. I'm just tired of all this "Think positive and you'll make it" crap. It's a myth designed to make sure that when the system screws you, you blame yourself instead of the bankers.

[Fred Gratzon]

You just inspired me to write one of my next posts on how to find success in failure.

By the way, you are right; I am a swell guy. And I don't waste time blaming anyone or anything. I just do what makes me happy and if it sprouts, great. If it doesn't, equally great because there is something better that will. Plus I'm having fun and that's the whole point. Success is just as much process as goal. Life isn't like a Hollywood movie where there is a neat tidy beginning and a neat tidy happy ending. Every second of every day is the whole story. Enjoy each one. Otherwise you are missing out on the best part.

[Ben]

Interesting post Fred, thanks for sharing.

A Guy: would be interesting to hear your story. I'm also following my dreams and still struggling.

"If the glimmer gets brighter and the idea starts to sprout into something viable, I know I am on the right path."

I found thins one of the most difficult parts. When do I know an idea starts to sprout into something viable? When I get my first order? When people tell me it's good?

More importantly, when do I know it doesn't? When finishing my project seems endless and more work than expected? When is the point reached to say: this idea is a failure? I find this particularly difficult to say.

Fred, are you saying an idea is good only when I have fun all the time? I think this is almost impossible. You have to pour your heart and sweat into something of any value. And this requires do go through fear, doubt and loneliness from time to time, doesn't it? Or are we supposed to be free of that when an idea is good?

My problem seemed to be that I didn't go completely through those hard times. Instead, I thought "Hmh, when it's so hard, maybe this is not my dream and I should do something else." And then I started something different. Result: since three years I didn't get anywhere.

However Fred, what you say makes perfect sense to me. But the execution is not that easy. Maybe you have better instincts or, what I suppose, you are less afraid of following your inspirations. I don't know. But I keep trying.

A Guy, I hope you don't give up and manage to get where you want to.

[Tarun]

'Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?' - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams ... and we search in vain for their original ... Much would have been gained if through timely advice and instruction young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them." - Arthur Schopenhauer

[Fred Gratzon]

I am stunned by the depth of ignorance expressed by each of these two quotes. It is actually pathetic that these two authors have experienced life in such a way.

[Case]

Most of us need a job in order to live. To the extent that it overlaps with our passions, I think it makes for a better experience when there are things inherent to the job that are enjoyable. But even then, after 8 hours a day 5 days a week, anything gets old.

[Fred]

"Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves."

Larry King

[Ecne]

Tarun, knowing that S. Platt intentionally poisoned herself with kitchen gas and died in her thirties, I wouldn't take her books and poetry as a life guide.

[Kloudiia]

I totally agree that passion is the core for all things to be successful. Having went through a business that we chose to cease in the end, if we weren't passionate, I am very sure that when all the obstacles and challenges mount up together at the same time, no one will be able to ride the waves, come up slightly injured but yet stronger, and still say "Come, let's continue and do this".

Passion is not all it takes, but it is what it takes.