It’s said, “If you do what you love then you won’t have to work for a single day in your life”. But is it really so? Do we actually know what we love? If it’s that simple then why not everybody is doing it?
We are often asked to find our passion and follow it. The thing is that in some way or other we all are well aware about our various interests and somehow through it try to close in on our passion. But still even after identifying it we are not able to do much with it. Some of the varied interests look really good but they don’t seem to be financially sustainable or seem too late to undertake. So, we soon abandon our search for what should be the rightful work for us to settle for anything that would support us and would look respectable in the eyes of the society.
The thing that we fail to recognise here is that the word ‘Passion’ is just a label. It’s a word and like all words, it points to something beyond it, like a signpost pointing towards a certain destination. It doesn’t mean that the place is there itself. In the similar way the word ‘Passion’ points to something beyond it. You need to go great distance inside it to know what’s there in it that’s exactly meant for you. But we often forget this thing and believe that the label is in fact the destination, and start to look for the things around it. Due to it we tend to misinterpret our actual passion.
What we don’t understand is that our momentary thoughts are feelings. They are emotions which change with time. No longer at two different point of time do they remain the same. So, we completely can't rely on them. And due to these changing feelings, we end up assigning wrong meaning and direction to our interests. Sometimes it happens because we got impressed by someone’s lifestyle or we saw a kind of that living in the fictional world, and tried to purse it not realising that what we got to see was just a few hours of glory and not the actual life itself. There’s a long tedious work that goes in the background, the one we call the ground work, before they get the chance to enjoy the limelight for a short interval. So try to look at that thing too. It’s one of its part. You can’t do without it. You might love to do that thing, but ask yourself, can you go through all that that get you to do what you love to do? Will it be worth the effort? Will you still enjoy it? Possibly, you might not.
Now the question arises how to know what you really want to be? The thing is that no matter how complicated life might be there are always 3 main things you really like and enjoy. They are your top 3 hobbies. Try to figure them out and close in on them. The reason behind selecting 3 is: One to make you money, one to keep you in shape and one to be creative. This way you will really get to your enjoy life while doing the things you had always wanted to do. So ask yourself ‘Can I make a career in it? If yes then, do I want to look at it from financial perspective or just enjoy it?’ Try to know more about your strengths and weaknesses and see whether they are aligning with your values and beliefs while keeping your desired line in your mind. After you have sorted all the questions and weighed pros and cons of each situation, go with the one which looks more promising to you. And remember that it’s not just enough to find the best path and then walk on it. It’s also important to ensure that the path will take you where you want to be.
And one more thing I would like to share with you is, don’t target too many things. In targeting all you may end up with nothing. So, know exactly what you want from life and target the right things. In today’s time where there is no end to the luxury items one can have (as you view it), it’s possible to get tempted and carried away by the hunger of having more and more. The thing is that we keep on adding so many things to our list of success that we don’t realise the actual importance of having them. We don’t care to see whether those who have it are actually happy having it or not. In our quest for more and more we tend to ignore what really matters. We don’t appreciate what we have and how better we are off from others. To know it do one thing. Select the best item among anything of value you possess, the one you are proud of, and see how eagerly it has been sought by others or how you would have sought it if you didn’t have it or maybe how you sought it once. So rejoice in what you have. Celebrate your possessions. Don’t be tempted to have everything you can lay your hands upon. Instead know precisely what you want and then target it with full commitment. And it’s not only about possessions, it’s also about the different things we wish to attain like: Getting to power, having fame, creating a name or establishing an identity in the society and many more similar kinds of things to which there's no end.
Lin Yutang said “The secret of contentment is the discovery of every man of his own powers and limitations, finding satisfaction in a line of activity which he can do well, plus the wisdom to know that his place, no matter how important or successful he is, never counts very much in the universe. A man may very well be so successful in craving a name for himself in his field that he begins to imagine himself indispensable or omnipotent. He is eaten up by some secret ambition, and then good-bye to all contentment. Sometimes it is more important to know what one cannot do then what one can do. So much restlessness is due to the fact that man does not know what he wants, or he wants too many things, or perhaps he wants to be somebody else, to be anybody except himself. The courage is of being one’s genuine self, of standing alone and of not wanting to be somebody else.” So, sometimes being simple is enough.
