There are so many good feels that arise when you hear the phrase “follow your passion”. But after spending years chasing multiple passions, I’ve ran into enough setbacks to know that following your passion is some of the worst advice you can ever receive. Especially when you consider yourself multi-passionate and know that your passions change as quick as your mood. Or, you’re struggling to figure out how to incorporate all of it into your online brand or business.
Now if you clearly have no clue what you want to do in life, sure, try everything until you start to get a clue of which direction you need to go in.
But if you’re ready to start building a career or business in something that you love AND can stick to, today’s blog post is going to share with you three reasons why you should not follow your passion, and why you should follow (or find) your gift instead.
Reasons why you should not follow your passion.
1. Our passions are ever changing and tend to come and go with the wind.
Maybe you like to paint. But after doing it consistently for 3 months, you realize that although you do like to paint, you just don’t enjoy painting at the required productivity level to run a successful Etsy store. This is all too common.The truth is, just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you actually enjoy doing it full-time.This was a hard reality I had to face when I knew that it was time to stop building my coaching business. I loved coaching women on how to build their online business, but I did not enjoy constantly selling and filling one coaching program after another. It was after a hard talk with myself that I realized that the reason why my business wasn’t growing past a certain income level was simply because I didn’t want it to. Once I identified that I was building the wrong business, I was able to offer coaching services with even more passion and soul than before, simply by just removing it as my primary income.
2. You actually might not be good at it.
Ouch! But it’s the truth. Trying to make a passion work that is not your actual gift is painful. I can’t tell you how many times I came up with a genius idea to start a business surrounding one of my passions only for it to fail. I thought because it was a passion, that that meant it should be a business. I didn’t actually consider whether I was good at it, nor what being bad at it would mean for the long term success of that venture.
A great example of this for me is music. I used to be a songwriter (THAT I was good at) but I wasn’t necessarily a great singer and I was so far behind all of my peers musically that were trying to make it in the music industry. Unlike Michael Jordan, who, when he sucked at basketball, put his all into developing his skill, I had no desire to develop mine. I just enjoyed songwriting. While I am no longer pursuing anything in the music industry, from time to time I get invited into the studio because of my songwriting skills, and I write, and then leave the session with no desire to pursue a career in that industry. Not every passion needs to be a business. It’s okay to love fashion and not open up a boutique if you aren’t good at styling or hate retail. It’s okay if 99% of your passions just stay passions, especially if you’re not actually strong or gifted in these areas and it’s just something you’ve taken interest to. But this doesn’t just apply to creative fields.
There are incredible thought leaders and influencers that make terrible CEO’s and struggle with the day to day execution of a business. If that’s you, that is okay. Find a partner or hire someone that would make a great CEO for your company while you stay in your genius as the marketer and face of the business.
3. There is just a way more effective way of discovering what kind of work you should actually be pursuing.
Instead of focusing on your passions, focus on your gift. You know that thing you naturally do everyday without any effort. If you’re a really great cook and the thing you do every day without effort is throwing it down in the kitchen, become a food blogger, launch a cookbook and open up your own restaurant.
For me, my gift is storytelling. And it lends itself in being monetizable in many ways.
- As a marketer, I’m really good with storytelling in Facebook ads and have helped beauty and lifestyle brands generate millions in revenue.
- I’ve launched a really amazing course on how to use storytelling in your social media posts to drive customers to your business. Through this course, my students have had $20k days, signed their first clients, and revived even dead businesses.
- Storytelling has also lend me to become a really great YouTube creator, blogger, young-adult writer and sought after brand strategist and digital talent manager.
- Now I lean on this gift to act as a compass giving direction to everything that I do versus depending on passions that may come or go, or prove to highlight my greatest weaknesses.
When we follow passions that we suck at, we quit. Because nothing makes you more miserable than to realize that the passion you’re struggling to make money with, is also a passion that you just aren’t gifted at. The great thing about your gift is that it’s easy to stay excited and passionate about it because it’s super easy, and you’re so good at it that it never feels draining even with it’s challenges. This makes it easy to stay consistent. It’s easy to build a routine around it. And through repeatedly executing from your gift, people notice and that’s how you get people to pay for your services. It’s through your gift that you’re able to build your empire, not your passions.
