Finding Your Passion is Overrated

The whole “finding your passion” blitz is getting on my nerves.  There’s an onslaught of books, classes, blogs and life coaches all telling us that there is a specific reason we’re on this Earth and we should be spending time and money figuring out what that is.  In fact, if we’re not able to articulate our life’s passion in a mission statement format there’s something lacking in our lives and we’ll never be happy until we figure out what it is.

I met a life coach at a networking event a few weeks ago who seemed annoyed when I shared my thoughts on this topic.  She informed me that her job was to help people find their passion whether it was their work or a hobby.  “If you talk to someone long enough, you eventually find what lights them up,” she said.

OK, well that’s great if some people need helping figuring out what they’re interested in at $90 an hour.  But I don’t need a coach to know that I light up talking about animal welfare issues.  I’ll talk to you for a half-hour about what makes a good or bad sanctuary and then I want to stop talking about it and go on with my day.  I like to visit sanctuaries and donate money to them and sign online petitions but I’m not compelled to do anything else about it.  Maybe someday.  Or maybe not.

When I conducted interviews for my book, I met people who are living their passion after quitting their corporate jobs.  One woman’s most important hobby was scuba diving.  She bought into an existing scuba business and now spends her work and leisure time on her favorite activity.  I love those stories and think people who have a clear conviction about what they want to do with their time are fortunate to have a singular focus.

But I’d like to reassure the rest of us that there’s nothing wrong with our lives if we don’t have a specific calling.  Maybe it’s more important to be happy, satisfied and at peace with our daily lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been an avid consumer of the “find your passion” type of book and class and coaching for years.  Life coaches are a great resource for gaining clarity and taking action to increase satisfaction with our lives and I think that is more important than pursuing a validation for your life that you might never find.

Coaches are also helpful to overcome blocks.  My sister, Kristen Sutich, is gifted at coaching me to feel at peace during difficult times and helps me make plans that sustain my goals.  (She specializes in grief issues and helping moms send their kids to kindergarten, but I recommend her for general life coaching, too.)

I also took a tele-class this fall called “Find Your Calling Now”.   It was led by Martha Beck who is my author-idol and whose books have inspired me for years.  In the class, Beck talked about the Hero’s Journey, which the geeky writer in me loved, but in the end, I was nowhere closer to finding my life’s calling than before.

During the time period when I took the class, I was writing my book, working on a small startup company and spending a LOT of time wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.  Even though I believed in the value of my projects and still do, they are not my life’s burning passion.  I don’t jump out of bed at 5AM every morning because I’m filled with excitement to revise my book.  My book is important to me but it isn’t magic.  It takes energy and focus and discipline to work on it.  It is similar with the startup business.  The business model is compelling, but it doesn’t drive me.

At the present, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with my work life.  My main consulting gig provides interesting work that pays the bills, my clients are nice and I work from my home office.  The freedom of doing my work in my own space is a huge part of my happiness.  I make a healthy breakfast and lunch every day and can take a break to go for a walk from my own front door.  I drive to the office for meetings and make a point of checking in with people when I’m there instead of taking for granted that I’ll see them each day.  This arrangement also gives me the time and energy to work on my other projects outside of business hours.

It took trial and error to get to this point.  In some ways, my life resembles the one I had a year ago.  I’m doing marketing for the same company that I left last June.  I’m even in the same office complex – how weird is that?!  But now I’m billing my hours from my home office as the owner of my own consulting company and that is a world of difference.

It is a satisfying feeling to look back at the week with gratitude because every day was a great day.  Am I living my life’s passion?  No.  But I’m deeply happy.  And that’s more than enough for me.

Tags: finding your passion, life's calling, life's purpose