On Work, Passion, and Life Purpose

I've been bedeviled recently by the question of passion and work. It began with this thread on Lawrence Cheok's website, continued with a comment to this post here, and then spilled over into conversations with family and friends.

Every day I come across stories of people seeking to not just infuse their work with passion but to put passion at the very core of their work life.  But identifying our true passions can be harder than it seems. And what if our passions belong in a realm that can seem hard to integrate with the world of work – such as art or music or trekking in the great outdoors?

I myself spent years trying to figure out my passions. The typical exercises of trying to connect to something I'd felt passionate about in my childhood didn’t get me far. The only thing I could come up with was dancing, but by the time I was in my late-20s it was obvious to me that I wasn’t going to build my life’s work around dance.

Passion and Life Purpose

I've now come to believe that what made my search fruitless for so long was that I confused passion with interests and talents. I kept skimming the surface, searching for some special artistic gifts I might have overlooked, believing that passion was hiding in those.

I learned that I loved to travel. I visited art museums and discovered art that moved me. I took salsa and flamenco lessons. For years I spent several evenings a week at an independent movie theater in Cambridge, learning all there was to learn about the world cinematography. These were all enormously enriching, but they turned out to be largely surface interests that were not going to become the centerpeice of my work life. After a while they all moved into the background.

The one thing that brought me close was the discovery that I enjoyed writing and was fairly good at it.  This made me toy with the idea that, perhaps, I was meant to be a writer.  This took me on a great exploration of the world of non-fiction writing and journalism.  In and of itself, though, the joy of writing didn't quite qualify as a driving force that would propel me forward on my life's path.  Journalism came close, but I knew that in order for it to become a true passion, I'd have to have the freedom to report stories that truly moved me, and to do so in a way that would improve the lives of the people I wrote about.  Mainstream journalism wasn't going to offer me this opportunity and without that writing just wasn't enough.

What this made me realize is that true passion is something that lies deeper than interests - even those that put us "in the zone," as Lawrence refers to it so eloquently in the article I linked to at the beginning of this this post. Being "in the zone" is a great indication that we are coming close, but that alone may not suffice. 

Passion is something that runs as a thread throughout our whole lives. It is present whether we are at home or at work and, like the Genius in Dick Richards’s book we discussed here, it is something that’s a core part of who we are. If you succeed at tapping into that deeper stream in your work, you will not be needing coffee to energize you in the morning or a boss to set your agenda for the day or even the prospect of a nice bonus. Your passion will be driving you independent of all of that, and almost independent of yourself.

Ultimately, I believe that this question taps into the question of our life's purpose.  I realize now that in my own search, the real question was not about what special talents I possessed but, rather, what was that special something that I was meant to accomplish with my life.

Richard Leider, one of America's greatest gurus on calling and life purpose, defines passions as being closely related to issues or causes that really move us. In his book Whistle While You Work, he recommends that we ask ourselves these questions:

• What issues or causes really move you?

• What problems in the world or work world do you think need solving?

• When you lie awake at night obsessing over the state of the universe, what obsesses you most?

He says:

"In the answers to questions like these we discover our passions. Our passions are the issues we care most deeply about. When we connect our gifts to our passions, we have a clear reason to get up in the morning."

The Calling Cards Exercise

I discovered what I now believe to be my true passion when I did Leider's "Calling Cards" exercise.

The exercise consists of sifting through a stack of 52 cards, each of which contains a single phrase – a gerund and a noun – expressing a particular gift: Instilling Confidence, Building Bridges, Inspiring Others, Creating Joy. (This exercise is very similar to Dick Richard’s search for the Genius, which we discussed in the post I linked to above.) You are asked to select five cards that appeal to you, then to narrow them down to three, and, finally, to select the one card that appeals to you the most.

Several cards had jumped out at me at once, but the card that made me do a double take was "Awakening Spirit."  This made no sense to me, and I tried to turn my attention to the other cards, but this one persisted.  I was mystified. “Awakening Spirit” seemed to be appropriate for someone with an inclination to go into ministry - not someone who had grown up in Russia with no religious background whatsoever.  True, at the time of the exercise I would have described myself as "spiritual," but I don't think I really knew what it meant anyway.  Why, then, was this calling card calling to me?

The idea of the exercise, however, was to go with your most intuitive response, and so I let the idea percolate. Over the next several weeks, as my mind began to catch up to what my core self had recognized within a spilt second, various pieces of the puzzle began to come together.

I came to realize that what I loved doing more than anything was helping people awaken to something great within them – to the enormous potential of their spirit.  I was forever trying to get my friends and family excited about some recent trend that I thought was going to transform everybody's lives - from the miracles of yoga, to the insights of meditation, to the magic of essential oils. I wanted to share with everyone the beauty of Kripalu retreats and the inspirational messages in the books I read.

And when I applied this lense to the question of what issues I felt most passionate about, I remembered that nothing caused me more indignation than situations - be it oppressive political regimes or dispiriting work environments - that stifled and suppressed people's spirits.

Once all of this began to come together, the "Awakening Spirit" card began to make sense.  To this day, I check in periodically to make sure that it still holds, and it does. I've realized that even the interests that have attracted me throughout my life - art, film, dance - were really about the way that people - individuals - expressed their true, authentic selves through the medium of art.  I didn't just enjoy watching the shows:  I often found myself wondering what it was like to be in the flow of that creative expression and how much courage it took to be so vulnerable, to express yourself so fully and openly.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Leider suggests asking yourself these questions as you go about exploring the connection between your passions and your life's work:

• What do I obsess about?

• What am I constantly reading about and talking to people about?

• What problems do I think need solving?

I would add to this my own questions. If the interests or things that inspire you don't seem to necessarily connect to your work life, it maybe useful to ask yourself: What specifically that you love about the things you love?  If it is music or art that energize you and put you "in the zone", what is it really about?  Is it about inspiring others?  Is it about creating joy?  Is it about helping people transcend their current reality and remember that there is more to life than their current worries and the daily grind?  These are the things that come up for me because these are the issues that I care about.  What is it for you?

This inquiry is not simple. It requires paying attention to patterns and common threads.  And it may take some time.  But by asking yourself these questions on a regular basis, by applying them persistently and intentionally to every experience of elation or frustration in your life, you are likely to accelerate the process of discovery.  And that will inevitably help you tap into the kind of passions that are really about who you are in the world and how you use your particular gifts to make a difference in it - passions that will allow you to make an authentic and meaningful mark in the world. 

These are just my impressions, of course.  What are your thoughts on this subject?   

Comments

[Tom Volkar / Delightful Work]

Izabella, I love your style of writing and your thoroughness in covering a topic well. You are off to a fabulous start and I'm sure the blogosphere will soon find you. Thank you for sharing so much of your personal journey.

I haven't yet read Leider's books but I'm sure I will eventually on your recommendation. You've posed some excellent questions and I'm looking forward to answering them just for the heck of it.

Interestingly, I've always stayed away from "cause like" questions. Perhaps I considered their nature too much outside of my core being. I'm usually drawn more to questions that cause me to look deep within. In all fairness I probably need to read the book, answer his questions and then comment. Thanks again for making me think in new ways.

[Izabella]

Tom, thank you so much for your comment and for your words of encouragement. It feels great to finally be able to speak my truth. Let me know if do have a chance to read Leider - he's really great on the subject.

(I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "cause like" questions? Could you elaborate?)