Have You Gone Off the Trail? Let Passion Be Your Guide.

20 Oct 2009

I’ve battled this question for years, and I think I’ve finally found the answer. For a long time I thought I could find a middle way to happiness, but I was wrong. The truth is, although it might be more profitable to pursue interests outside of my true passions, there is little hope in being happy during that process. So this leads us to what I now believe to be the true barometer of whether or not you are doing what you should be. If you are doing it for money, then your heart is in the wrong place. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to make money, but in my experience, doing anything other than what you love to do is a surefire recipe for disaster.

Greed Projects

During my progression as an Internet Marketer, later as a blogger, and now as an author, I’ve found that every time I try to slip in a little “greed project,” as I like to call them, I end up wasting time and money in the process. Not only did most of those projects fail, but they shattered my confidence. I thought I had it figured out, but these cases proved me wrong. On the other hand, the projects that I created out of passion, such as my triathlon and running blogs, Buddhist Children’s Books, and this website, all make me money. Funny how that works isn’t it?

This is why I want to smack my head against a wall when I hear about the next Mass Control spin-off coming out or another watered down version of the Product Launch Formula. Yeah, there are ways to do what you love and do it better, but you don’t have to make every project all about money. Take a look at some of the most successful bloggers in the industry, such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Leo Babuta, or Chris Brogan. Each of them lives and breathes their blog…it isn’t just a front. Gary doesn’t stop talking about wine when he gets home and Chris doesn’t go to the Bookstore and start creating websites for Prepaid Legal (at least I don’t think so).

I Do It Because I Cannot Bear Not To

Musicians don’t make music because they want to be rich (at least most do not), they make music because they can’t bear not to. Poets write because they have to get it out and painters have to brush their passion onto a canvas. Obviously, there are many exceptions to this example, but for the most part, doing what you love should become second nature. If you start to think about how to plan your day, not to see how happy you can become, but to see how much money you can make, then you are probably heading in the wrong direction. You can apply this principle when planning and evaluating your next project, working on content for your blog, or just planning your weekend.

During my interviews with our Beyond Blogging partners, I realized that not a single one of them was doing anything other than living their passions on a daily basis. I think that is an astounding example of why you should be doing what you love and figuring how to work a business around that, rather than trying to do what you love around a business that you’re not into.

Live a Life of Passion

This is one of the reasons that I am abandoning and/or selling all of the projects I’ve started that don’t fit within my purpose and why every day I’m working harder to make this blog a replica of my true identity. I honestly don’t see how anyone can survive living a life without purpose. I’m amazed by the man that can work for 40 years in a factory and give every good hour of his life to a company that doesn’t appreciate him. This is also why I admire mothers, who work tirelessly based on love alone. The difference between the two though, is that one group is doing what they love to do (mothers), while the other is living a life based on money.

If you let money be your guide, then you’ll end up in a place that you don’t recognize. It might be secure, but it won’t feel good. On the other hand, if you do it because that’s what you feel born to do, then regardless of whether you make 20k per year or 100k per year, you can rest easy at night knowing that you spent each day the way you were meant to. If you ask me, there’s more peace in that than anything else in the world.