So much of what you’ve heard and seen about finding passion is a lie. There is so much money to be made from people’s desire to find passion - and the feeling of inadequacy that comes from not stumbling upon it – that the world is brimming with misinformation and disinformation.

On this episode of the Stop Hating Mondays podcast, were going to cut through all the noise and tackle some of the most foundational aspects of passion.

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TRANSCRIPT

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Kent

Most people think about passion in a way that's fundamentally flawed and frankly damaging. As we outlined in our very first podcast, there's a popular belief that passion is something you stumble upon while you're going about your everyday life.

Sure, that can happen, but it's not common.

So, you a person who like almost every other person on the planet, would like to be more fulfilled and find something you're really passionate about are made to feel inadequate when you're not stumbling upon your passion.

And that feeling of inadequacy is incredibly demotivating.

Why would an idea like that be so widely promulgated? Because it sells. That feeling of inadequacy that comes when you haven't magically discovered your passion drives a lot of product sales and it is foundational to the attention economy. It drives the vicious cycle of endless scrolling and passion FOMO. But almost all of it's a lie, so let's get to the truth.

Passion arises when you align your strengths and values with different aspects of your life. In order to do that, you have to put in the work to know what your strengths and values are. We call that simply “figuring out you” and you need to have a full grasp of your life, which we call – also, simply “figuring out your life.”

We'll be getting into these things this season, but first, let's cut through all that misinformation and disinformation surrounding passion and talk about these fundamentals.

I'm Kent and this is Caanan. On this episode of the Stop Hatting Mondays podcast, we're going to tackle some of the most foundational aspects of passion.

Caanan

Well, this is an exciting one. I've been really looking forward to talking more about passion since we did our very first podcast on it and we received such positive feedback

Kent

A very popular topic for the reasons we're talking about today. Everybody feels like they're the only person who doesn't have their passion and nobody knows how to access their passion.

Caanan

Yeah, and frankly, there's a lot of – as you said – misinformation, disinformation out there. But there's also some positive or good information, but it falls into really extreme schools of thought, so I just want to cover that really quickly. There's a big camp of people who think you should just be stumbling upon your passion. And as you said in the intro, that just doesn't happen.

Kent

Well, you're talking a lot of the people who say “no, if you're focusing on it, it's false and inauthentic. So if you're not stumbling upon it, you're inauthentically accessing passion.” Passion as these people often talk about it, like childlike wanderlust. Like if you're not living with that sort of unrestricted gut-level want of a child, then you're not pursuing passion in the right way. So yeah, that's a nice…

Caanan

Oh, it sounds so nice, but it's totally unrealistic. On the other hand though, there is a lot of seemingly good advice that is just too extreme in that it's overly structured, so it doesn't provide the freedom to authentically discover your passion.

It's too restrictive.

Kent

Yeah, it doesn't allow for things to arise naturally and to for you to sort of grow and learn as you take the journey to your passion.

Caanan

Yes, absolutely. Anyway, I I'm glad we got that out of the way. There's one other thing I wanted to say and I think everybody will be happy to hear this.

That we’ll use terms like passion and purpose and fulfillment interchangeably. And we do that because they are essentially the same thing, which is really good news because you don't have to find your passion, get on purpose, and figure out how to get fulfilled. You do one, you're going to do all three. It's a three-fer.

Kent

Definitely! You're going to be making progress on all those fronts. So yeah, this tip number one, determine if you were on purpose.

It's such a simple tip because it's the thing that holds most people back. Everybody wants to find their passion…their purpose…they want to be fulfilled, but it's so daunting sounding and you feel again like “everybody else has it and I don't,” so you tend to shut down so number one, which is why this is tip one… You've got to determine if you're on purpose.

And the way to do that is to look at the opposite. That we often don't know if we're on purpose or people don't know if they're on purpose. You know, like what is that? I don't know that I even know what purpose or passion or fulfillment is. You may not know that, but you definitely know if you're off purpose.

So this simple thing to do is the first tip. Acknowledging that you're likely off purpose, not living with a passion. Or maybe you are and you're just kind of on this journey of passion. Naming this is tip number one.

Caanan

And I'll just add, because you've really said what needs to be said here, but I'll add that we typically don't like to talk about things in the negative sense. It's just not a good way to look at the world. But you know, we don't like to talk about what you're against or who you're not. But this is one of those rare cases where it really is helpful to look at the negative and say, “am I off purpose?” because it's really, really easy to answer that question. Asking the question “Am I on purpose?”… That's much harder to answer.

Caanan

So in the beginning of this podcast, Kent, you said passion FOMO, which is a term I don't think that's like a popular term. I love it, though, because it so accurately describes that feeling of… the endless scrolling as you said… looking at what everybody else is doing and thinking “Oh my gosh, I'm not a wildlife photographer, I haven't found my passion.” Or you know, all the myriad things you could see on social media and think “oh, that's what passion is.”

Well, here's some more good news. You can define passion for yourself, and – in fact – you have to define passion for yourself.

Kent

Another thing, this seems like a small tip, but massively powerful if you define passion for yourself. In a world where we are clobbered with content and updates on what our friends are doing, and more is demanded from us in all areas of our life and all the roles we play. As I said before, we don't even know where we're at on the passion Continuum, which is why tip one is so important.

We're seeing so much “passion” thrown in our faces, particularly on social media, etc. that we've gotten out of the habit of defining passion for ourselves. So, number two is just committing to… “I can appreciate what everybody else is up to, but this is my journey and I am defining passion for myself.”

Caanan

So now that you've determined that you're off purpose, which means that you're not on purpose, and you've committed to defining passion for yourself – two very critical and foundational steps in finding your passion – we've got another very, very foundational tip. It's so foundational it might seem silly that we're even saying it, but trust us, it's really important and that is to commit to moving closer to your passion.

You've got to realize that passion is not this binary thing. It's not “you don't have passion and then one day you do.” Passion is a journey, as you said Kent. And if you can commit to moving closer to your passion, you're already on the right track.

Kent

Yeah, and that's why we queued this up. This very first episode of this season, focusing on passion as foundational. These are just some very basic things, but high impact things that you can do to kind of set the right tone and vibe as you embark on this, look at your level of passion, purpose, fulfillment.

So that's exactly what you want to do. You want to understand that passion is not something that drops in your lap – or that comes to you watching an Instagram worthy sunset – that it's a journey and there's so much power in acknowledging that little steps will bring so much fulfillment and at the same time that you're acknowledging that.

You know, little barriers may stand in your way. Why have you not been chipping away at passion prior? Have you thought of it as an all or nothing thing?

A lot of people to fear change, right?

Caanan

Oh yeah, that's a huge barrier.

Kent

So, it's just getting in touch with this fact that it's not a binary thing, as you said Canaan, and it's a journey that you move closer and closer to.

Kent

So that's episode one. Our foundations of passion. Our three tips are

1. Determine if you were on purpose.

2. Define passion for yourself

3. Commit to moving closer to your passion.