You've Been Told to Follow Your Passion...But This Is Better

Over the past few posts we've taken a look at the idea that life is hard.

It's good and bad, it has highs and lows, but basically I have suggested that life is almost always both/and not either/or. It's an on-going combination of ups and downs, good and bad, positive and negative.

So maybe you're thinking, well if life is hard, and it always will be, even if it can be good too, what can we do? How do we keep going? Or why do we keep going?

You've probably heard or been told, in order to get the most out of life, you should follow your passion.

A similar recommendation would be to just do what makes you happy.

Sounds good right? I mean, we all want to be happy, don't we?

I'm sitting in a cafe as I write this, and a lady literally just passed me, and her t-shirt said, "Do more of what makes you happy"

Here's the problem...

Our passions (or what makes us happy) can change over time, to the point where we keep chasing something that never materializes or they just don't deliver.

Think about it. What were you passionate about when you were a child...a teenager or young adult?

I know some people who seemed to know at an early age that they wanted to be an artist or a doctor, or fill in the blank.

When I was 5, I wanted to be a garbage collector, because I thought it would be cool to ride the back of the truck all day. (I was also the kid that washed his hands in the middle of playing outside, so there probably wasn't much chance of that happening).

When I was a teenager my passions were football, skipping classes, pool halls, stealing for kicks, and pushing boundaries at every turn. I might have been happy (debatable) but I followed my passions.

Hey, I acknowledge we all have passions; things we enjoy or are curious about. But those things alone won't lead to a meaningful life. At the very least they are incomplete.

Hers's why.

If you and I want to live a meaningful life, we need to do more than follow our passion...we need to find our purpose.

Purpose trumps passion!

I have found that we can have passion without purpose but when we have purpose we will have passion as well.

Passion does not guarantee purpose but purpose guarantees passion! What I mean is, when we discover our purpose, it will connect with us in a way that brings out our deepest passions.

One of my favourite authors, Donald Miller argues that every great story, movie etc involves a person who overcomes something significant to accomplish something meaningful.

From his book, "Hero on a Mission"...

There are four characters in every story: The victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide. These four characters live inside us. If we play the victim, we’re doomed to fail. If we play the villain, we will not create genuine bonds. But if we play the hero or guide, our lives will flourish. The hard part is being self-aware enough to know which character we are playing.

So yes, life can be hard; it can throw unexpected challenges in our path. It can be filled with ups and downs.

But in the midst of all that, if we know our purpose and pursue it and live it out, then we can finding meaning in a way that helps us overcome whatever comes our way.

So let me ask you...

Do you know your purpose?

Do you know why you're here?

Next time, I will go deeper into how we discover our purpose.

Until then - Dan