Strategy Notebook
Transcript
I thought about all the people who know and love who are still very much on the search who are still really unsure about what their purposes who aren't totally certain that they have one central burning passion who are still moving from this to that trying a trying b be trying c.
Some of these people who I know and love who are in their 40s 50s 60s and they're still trying to figure out what they're going to be when they grow up does that sound like anybody in here you know?
I know that some of them are really at ease with the shape of their journey, but I know and I should have seen all this long ago, that many of them are not. And they carry that anxiety about the fact that in a culture that fetishizes passion and fetishizes certainty they are uncertain and they're not totally sure that they have this great burning purpose; and they're not totally sure what their legacy is going to be; and it makes them feel stressed; and it makes them feel, I should have seen this already, every time somebody like me says just somebody like that it's really easy to solve your life all you gotta do is just follow your passion it probably twists like a knife in their guts.
So I don't do it anymore it don't say that anymore I don't preach there is only one path, I don't preach that anymore...because I don't even know if I believe it anymore.
A these days when I meet somebody who's on the search who's feeling lost who's feeling confused who's feeling purposeless who's like I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here, I actually say to them the exact opposite thing of what I would have said a few years ago, and the very first thing I say is do yourself a great service do yourself a great kindness and just for now...just take the word passion off the table, just relieve yourself of that, because there's so much pressure around that; just take it up to forget about just for now; let it go.
And where that was instead of that anxiety and that urgency in that panic about chasing a passion that you're not even feeling, do something that's a lot easier a lot simpler just follow your curiosity.
Because curiosity is such a gentler kind more welcoming more humane instinct than passion.
I thought about all the people who know and love who are still very much on the search who are still really unsure about what their purposes who aren't totally certain that they have one central burning passion who are still moving from this to that trying a trying b be trying c.
Some of these people who I know and love who are in their 40s 50s 60s and they're still trying to figure out what they're going to be when they grow up does that sound like anybody in here you know?
I know that some of them are really at ease with the shape of their journey, but I know and I should have seen all this long ago, that many of them are not. And they carry that anxiety about the fact that in a culture that fetishizes passion and fetishizes certainty they are uncertain and they're not totally sure that they have this great burning purpose; and they're not totally sure what their legacy is going to be; and it makes them feel stressed; and it makes them feel, I should have seen this already, every time somebody like me says just somebody like that it's really easy to solve your life all you gotta do is just follow your passion it probably twists like a knife in their guts.
So I don't do it anymore it don't say that anymore I don't preach there is only one path, I don't preach that anymore...because I don't even know if I believe it anymore.
A these days when I meet somebody who's on the search who's feeling lost who's feeling confused who's feeling purposeless who's like I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here, I actually say to them the exact opposite thing of what I would have said a few years ago, and the very first thing I say is do yourself a great service do yourself a great kindness and just for now...just take the word passion off the table, just relieve yourself of that, because there's so much pressure around that; just take it up to forget about just for now; let it go.
And where that was instead of that anxiety and that urgency in that panic about chasing a passion that you're not even feeling, do something that's a lot easier a lot simpler just follow your curiosity.
Because curiosity is such a gentler kind more welcoming more humane instinct than passion.
