Passion

I can’t honestly claim I was ever really passionate about energy. There, I’ve said it.

And yet I lasted more than 16 years and enjoyed myself a lot. I loved bp’s culture, scale, people and many of the projects I worked on.

I don’t believe passion is compulsory for a good career.

But when you leave a corporate job – and if you’re fortunate to have time and funds to choose what’s next - all of a sudden you find yourself wondering should I be following a passion?

Finding your passion

For some passion comes easily: you love baking, become a baker; you draw, sell your art. I am a keen gardener, I’ll become a plantsman; I’ve started beekeeping, so I’ll sell rare breed honey (I have actually considered both).

You know the type who’ve found their passion. They’re often a bit smug: “I have that get-out-of-bed feeling every day - I don’t think of it as a job” and “Making money is just a happy by-product of something I love doing”.

Cue panicky internal monologue: “What’s my passion?  Why haven’t I got one? I’m going to have to settle for another job I only partly care about.” Tick tock. Tick tock…

Research suggests that fewer than 20% of people feel passionate about the work they do – and that feels high to me. Is everyone honest with themselves?  I may well have lied if asked, kidding myself I cared more than I did.

I’m not even sure during my time at bp I knew what my passion was.  I was like Keith in The Office when asked to list his strengths: “accounts”.  Asked about my passion, I’d have answered “marketing” and hoped that bought me time for a hasty exit.

Chicken or egg?

When I was reading Designing your life for last week’s blog Not worthy, I read a line that stopped me in my tracks:

“Many people operate under the dysfunctional belief that they just need to find out what they are passionate about. Once they know their passion, everything else will somehow magically fall into place.”

It’s just one way.

What Bill Burnett and Dave Evans say next should give us hope:

“For most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery - not before. To put it more succinctly: passion is the result of a good life design, not the cause.”

Phew.

Sorry/not sorry to keep promoting my own blogs, but it underscores why we need to keep experimenting, trying new things, pushing ourselves outside our comfort zones.  In this lies the route to passion discovery.

But there are some short-cuts.

1. Look back at what you’ve done and where you were in ‘flow’: that magical feeling where you didn’t notice time pass by.  There is a lot I didn’t enjoy about marketing at bp, but I often lost myself thinking about how to delight customers, writing stuff, creating beautiful products. Understanding these things gave me ideas which led to Familiarize.

2. Passion isn’t fixed. It’s obviously not something you are born with.  You need to work on it - try lots of things out – it’s all about experimentation.

3. Talk about what you’re doing and notice yourself – and even ask other people how you sound. I had a good experience of this last Sunday with my friend Illai. Unprompted he said “Wow your whole energy changed when you talked about X, compared with when you were talking about Y”. There’s a clue.

4. Imagine you’re a teacher, what do you teach? How do you help someone know something you know? This one has also worked for me recently when I did a training session for some Carbon 13 startups I’m mentoring.

5. Focus on what you create. A passion is often something you’ve created – it could be a feeling, like confidence or clarity or an answer you’ve helped someone find, or it could be something more tangible. Looking at times when you felt proud of something might offer more clues.

Of course, you might prefer to keep your passions well away from your income stream for fear that money or routine will taint it - which is perfectly understandable.

Becoming

But I write this from a place of smuggery. Because I think I’ve actually found my passion. Sorry. And maybe I could make a life with it.

In this case, I did actually practise what I preached above. Only time will tell if I’m right…more experiments…

The main thing is don’t get hung up on passion. Don’t panic. It didn’t help me. Doing the things above did.

Leaving corporate life presents an opportunity to design your life – and if it can be around something you care deeply about, something that lights you up and something that helps you connect with others – why not?

But like I tell my kids when they’re standing gormless “looking” for something, it may not jump out at you.

***

I’m trying to speak to one or two of you each week, just to see if talking helps any more than reading and writing…if you fancy swapping notes, drop me a line. And please do share this with anyone you think might need it.