Today's Business Lessons
Is it really passion?
We
work. Work is required of us. Some people think it’s a curse, a result
of Adam disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. May I suggest that this
theology is faulty? Sin entered the picture only in chapter three of
Genesis; long before that, Adam was already tending the garden and
naming animals while being sinless. Someone beautifully pointed out,
“Before sin entered the picture, Adam was a gardener. But after Adam
disobeyed, his garden became a farm, and he had to toil with the sweat
of his brow.”
Work isn’t a curse; not having work is!
The question is, are we churning out meaningful work, or do we see
work as meaningless toil for us to get our pay slip and pay off the
debts we owe?
You turn to self-help books on success and wealth. There are tons of
them available. And you attend seminars. You’re attracted to the
prospect of becoming wealthy in the shortest time possible and with the
least amount of effort. But what do you read and hear? The same clichés.
“Follow your passion!”
“Do what you love, and the money will follow!”
“If it is to be, then it’s up to me!”
And you get fired up. You feel like you’ve just discovered the
ancient secret to success and wealth. Then you go back to your work
place and continue doing the work you’ve been doing feeling guilty that
you’re not really doing your passion. Meanwhile, I’ve encountered people
who, after attending such a seminar, quit their job “to pursue their
passion”. Ask them what they want to do, and they’d respond with the
same answer: “I’m quitting this job because I’m not happy with my work,
and I want to do work that makes me happy.” So today, they’re happily
jobless, running out of their savings and still trying to pursue whatever it is they consider their
passion. They’re still looking for happiness but have not found it. What
many speakers fail to say is that you’ll never be happy unless you’re
productive and doing meaningful work. They don’t say that because they
don’t know what that means.
The “passion” we often hear is almost always associated with
feelings. The problem with feelings is that they’re extremely deceptive.
Feelings aren’t a reliable matrix for success and effectivity. If you
study the life story of people who have achieved much and made great
contributions to this world, most of them actually started out
reluctant. If you’re to measure their beginnings according to most
motivational speakers’ idea of “follow one’s passion,” they’d fall far
from the approval scale. Most successful people today – and I mean the
legitimately successful ones (not those who make claims about how rich
they’ve become in such a short time) – started with work they didn’t
like doing. But they worked hard on it, learned every aspect of it,
mastered it and poured their entire being into it. They didn’t abandon
ship. They were driven with a sense of – here’s the real magic word –
RESPONSIBILITY! Many of them weren’t happy with their work when they
started out. But they’re happy because they have work, and that work is a
platform for them to go to the next level of success. And they did get
to the next level. They worked hard, mastered the work, poured their
entire being into it and became so good at what they do, they were ready
for the next level and the opportunities that came their way.
Meanwhile, those who were sold on the idea of “following one’s
passion” are still searching for that passion, and have not developed
any skills or specialization. This is the curse of the young generation
today. They’re so “feelings-focused” and not responsibility-oriented
enough.
There’s no shortcut to success. You master your craft. You hone your
skills. You excel in what you do. And YOU STAY PUT, until you’re ready
to go to the next level. This formula still works today.
Dig your well today, and dig deep. A Japanese proverb goes, “When
you’re dying of thirst, it’s too late to think about digging a well.”
This is what passion is really about.
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