Sourness of Passion hypothesis

So today I am discussing the conclusions drawn from the passion hypothesis.

CONCLUSION #1: Career Passions are Rare

Passion means an intense desire and enthusiasm for something. 

Now, what is the relationship between this intense enthusiasm and career? Are they related or not?

I always enjoyed altruism and did it most often without complaining, but I am not a rich person, and I cannot become a philanthropist at this moment. So, my passion and career go nowhere. 

Similar are the results of the study done by Robert J. Vallerand in 2002. He found dance, hockey, skiing, reading, and swimming as the common passions of college students. When it comes to offering jobs, it seems very difficult. Does dance actually materialize in a promising career? No. Does skiing provide any jobs? No. Reading provides a good job. No. 

I still remember daydreaming about being an artist or a painter and earning a lot. But, in reality, a painter has a very tough life. Then for a while I wanted to be an army officer and go and save the nation, but in reality, at the front, life is much different. This wider incongruence between passion and real life makes things challenging. If we don't realize this, we end up ruining our lives. 

CONCLUSION #2: Passions takes time

Having written the first conclusion, I am already in a state to see passion as nobody. The more I dive into this world of passion, the more clarity I am gaining. Now, I know that career passion is rare, but what is a passion all about? I wanted to ask the question, what passion actually is. As I was writing this section, I had a feeling to see what my favorite scientist, Albert Einstein, had to say about passion. The findings were mind-blowing. He says, "There is a passion for comprehension just as there is a passion for music. Now, this passion for comprehension is common in children and is lost as one grows." As I read his section here, I was driven to see what passion really meant. The dictionary defined it as an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. What is this something? It is the comprehension or the ability to understand something. So, in our life we become more mechanical than being a person of comprehension. Now this fits well as I present the findings of Amy Wrzesniewski’s research.

The organizational behavior professor at Yale University, Amy, defined "job," "career," and "calling." A job is to pay the bills; a career is making work better, and calling is the work that is an important part of life and integral to our identity. 

This scientist did not stop here.She found out why a person wants to be in a job like a college administrative assistant. She tried to find out what makes an administrative assistant see their job as a calling. The answer will surprise you. Maximum responses said that they felt this assistant job as a calling because they have worked for so many years in that post and now they have started liking the job. In other words, as the experience increases they start liking their jobs. This findings gave a big blow to the passion hypothesis. So, the finding says that the passionate administrative assistants are not the ones who transformed their passion into a position, rather they are those who stayed long in their position and developed skills to work more efficiently and enjoy it fully. This gives them the sense of self efficacy, an element which makes you feel content and satisfied and brings great joy. The joy hence received materialized over time and gives people a sense of meaning in their lives where as the joy of passion is instantaneous.

In my reflection,  passion is essential but it does not materializes as we plan it. Passion develops and matures over time. In this waiting period we should not lose our patience and perseverance. Passion gives direction to our lives, but not the money and food to survive and meet our needs. Here we should make wise decisions. We should remain open to all opportunities that come in our way and stay there developing our skills. Once, we ripen, we will move further to next move towards our passion. Whole of our life is to find the meaning of our lives which ultimately comes to our passion.

Further, as I was searching for passion, I wanted to counter check my understanding of passion with one of my role models, Albert Einstein. He once said, "There is a passion of comprehension just like passion for music. This passion is commonly found in children and dimnishes as one matures. Without this passion there is no mathematics and no natural sciences." Why I brought this is because this is the passion that keeps us driving. How we understand our passion and how we try to make our passion materialize, being connected to the now and the self is the real catch. 

I still remember my younger days when I was mad at doing what I wanted to do, forgetting what are my responsibilities, my capabilities, my daily chores etc, making my life so complicated. The road blocks on my path to passion taught me to understand what it wants me to do and how to skill myself to make it real in my life. Life has its own ways to teach the lessons and this was a great achievement. 

CONCLUSION #3: Passion is a side-effect of mastery

As we are discussion for passion, we need to talk about the fuel which energizes our passion. It is our motivation that keeps us follow our passion. Danial Pink talks about self determination theory (SDT). Self determination theory was one of the greatest achievements in the field of psychology. It was given by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan in 1985. This theory talks about high-quality motivation, a motivation that comes from within. You don't have to depend on other to feel motivatied to work, rather you have within yourself the power to push you to do the works. We call this intrinsic motivation.

Now this high-quality motivation makes you wholeheartedly invovle in something and have best experience as well as best performance. How do we get this best experience as well as best performance on the same page with SDT. This SDT highlights 3 psychological needs that actually gives us best experience and best performance motivation. They are

a) Autonomy : You feel that you are in-charge and you can regulate things as per your best possible combinations.

b) Competence: The feeling of skillfulness and capability to accomplish given tasks. 

c) Relatedness : The feeling of connections to others.

The real beauty of motivation lies in feeling related and belonged in the place we are working. This gives us the true energy to work. In the world of passion also we see how much we feel related and belonged that sustains our passion. We actually look for this segment first. Once this need is well satisfied we look for competence. We see how much skills we have to fulfill our passion or at least our work. If we don't have skills we don't feel confident and we can't perform well and get good experience. Once competence has come we now look for autonomy or how much freedom we have in bringing innovation and changes. That streches our horizon of better experience and better performance. This is how we climb our ladder of mastery and ulitimately start loving what we are doing. 

Thus, we see that we did not find a pre-exixting work that matches our passion. Instead of this we found that competence can be upskilled and improved every time we invest on it. It can be in any work field. Once we become competent, we look higher for autonomy to show our own expertise in that field, something that is related to self actualization which brings maximum satisfaction to self. It gives a sense of meaning to our life. These all things happen because we have learned to relate ourselves with each other and work together for betterment of self as well as for the institute. 

In my reflection, these three conclusions have enlightened me much about passion and pairing actions that ultimately give meaning to our life and lead us to our passion which is yet hidden within ourselves. Passion is not what we want to do but passion is actually mastery of all that leads us to our true self actualization. So, just don't break down if you see that you are not allowed to follow your passion, try mastering out what might lead you to your true actualization years after your investment on yourself. Life has different ways to present things to us. So, be open and receptive.

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