The Passion Economy
Exploring the belief that by taking risks, failing often, and turning a passion into a career, we create more positive outcomes for ourselves and the communities in which we live.
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passion is in the risk.
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take the risk
one of my favorite things to tell my friends when they begin to doubt things/life/choices…
“if you never try, you’ll never know”
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“”The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t...”
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Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
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“I’d rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.”— George Burns
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Day 5: Passion
This, my friends, is called Not-your-typical-German-chocolate-cake.
Baking is my passion. I feel this sense of accomplishment... -
I don't care if chasing my dream makes me ridiculously poor...
I refuse to do things in life just to get by. I refuse to do things in life with no...
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“Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”— General George Patton
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14 posts tagged passion
Strategy Consultant Dorie Clark writes a thought-provoking article for the Harvard Business Review arguing against turning a passion into a career. As detailed in her article “Don’t Do What You Love,” Clark posits four reasons to think twice before doing what you love, specifically:
- You love it — but you’re not great at it.
- You’re skilled at your passion — but hate the work that surrounds it.
- You’re too emotionally attached.
- No one will pay you for it.
You can read the full article at the HBR website (link above).
Profiles in Passion: Interviews Across America
This summer I drove across America in search of people have taken a risk to turn a passion into a career. From an export merchant turned baker in Chicago, to an electrical engineer turned pastor in Tulsa, I found stories that changed my perspective on both the benefits – and challenges – of entrusting in a motto I’ve long held dear, “behind every passion lies a business model.”
In a recent survey conducted by Manpower International, five out of six Americans intend to seek a new job in the coming year. If you are among those who’d like your new job to be rooted in a deep passion of yours, I hope the candid perspectives captured in this mini documentary may help you to make a more informed – and inspired – choice.
I’ve found that many who take a risk to follow their passion express a deep faith in the tendency for the universe to recognize their intentions, and reward their risk-taking by showing them a way to make it work (financially, socially, etc).
One great expression of this idea is the great American Road trip. From Kerouac to Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, road trips are a form of expressing clear intent (to cross the country) while embracing a faith in the ability of the universe to guide the way (to find food, shelter, and transport).
One current example of this is Chuteless, an experiment in “‘temporarily removing something in life that’s taken for granted and seeing what happens” or, put differently, “The Chuteless equation is: ‘We are going to XXX without XXX in order to XXX’.
Follow the link to follow the adventures of Simon Bray, Matt Donovan and Ben Bray as they “TRAVEL FROM NY TO LA without MONEY FOR TRAVEL/ACCOMMODATION in order to GET TO KNOW AMERICA.”
Nitin Rao sparks a conversation on how MBAs can follow their passion, in light of significant loan payments. Click through for more-
Next steps:
Take a safe job till I eventually pay off debt.Build a great company, and use entrepreneurial thought and action, starting with connections/resources at hard to find certain ways to cover monthly installments. Not to mention the much higher happiness and drive from being able to shape my experience!
The Simple Math of Passion
I’ve been curious to explore the link between passion and happiness and I’m starting to uncover a basic formula. Drawing only from my conversations (and very little research), here’s a rough proof:
To Be Passionate = To Be All-Consumed
When I’ve asked people how to find my passion, time and again the answer I’ve received is “any activity where time flies by.” Be it reading a book, working on a piece of art, or solving a tricky logic problem, it’s the experience of being so consumed in your work that the rest of the world fades away; the experience of one hour passing in five minutes.
To Be All-Consumed = To Be Happy
Case in point: yesterday Fast Company profiled a new study where participants’ iPhones pinged them several times a day to ask them what they’re up to and how happy they’re feeling. The scientists found that users who were most engaged in what they were doing reported the highest levels of happiness. Conversely those who weren’t engaged - whose minds wandered - reported a feeling of dissatisfaction. As stated in their report: “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”*
To Be Passionate = To Be Happy?
By the transitive property, if to be passionate is to be all-consumed, and to be all-consumed is to be happy, then does being passionate about your work lead to happiness? A logic that I’m continuing to explore, but I’m encouraged by what I’ve found so far.
* For those questioning cause and effect:
The Harvard psychologists compared each person’s moods and thoughts as the day went on. They found that if someone’s mind wandered at, say, 10 in the morning, then at 10:15 that person was likely to be less happy than at 10 , perhaps because of those stray thoughts. But if people were in a bad mood at 10, they weren’t more likely to be worrying or daydreaming at 10:15. “We see evidence for mind-wandering causing unhappiness, but no evidence for unhappiness causing mind-wandering,” Mr. Killingsworth says.
On a related note, last weekend I attended a talk by a Buddhist nun who touched on this very point. One of Buddha’s well-known statements is that “life is suffering.” As the nun explained, suffering as Buddha meant it is less about actual pain, and more about not being present in the moment. It’s that state of unease — some would call it stress — that comes from not being focused on the here and now.
The Value of Passion in an Uncertain Economy - Stever Robbins Interviews Martha Beck
One of my intentions for this site is to explore how following one’s passion can enable viable career opportunities for those living in cities that are struggling economically. I’m particularly excited about the impact that this could have in the Rust Belt communities of Buffalo and Detroit.
Today I listened to a brilliant interview with Martha Beck (best-selling author of Finding Your North Star) conducted by Stever Robbins, of Get-It-Done-Guy fame.
I thought this interview was valuable for two reasons: first, Martha described how to go about finding your passion (hint: it has a lot less to do with your intellect and a lot more to do with your body). Second, Martha ended with a thought that epitomizes the idea I hope to promote via the Passion Economy, and articulates it much better than I have so far. Namely,
The world is changing so rapidly that we are going to see things in the next five to ten years that you truly can not imagine. But your heart, the part that is not intellect, is aware of those things already. That’s where they’re going to come from. So do not try to stay with what is normative. It’s all going bye-bye. “Walking out with the word of God,” as one of my clients said, just going out with your own creativity, is the most secure thing you can do in today’s economic climate.
Thanks to Martha for sharing her wisdom and Stever for giving her the platform to do so. Click play (above) or download (below) to hear it for yourself. The interview is 24 minutes long.
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“Passion is a competitive advantage.”
“Behind every passion lies a business model.”
