Everybody’s an expert on “following your passion.” They’ll tell you to find that one thing that makes you feel alive, that lets you get into a “flow state” where time just melts away. The thing is, this advice is almost always aimed at the “creative” stuff: painting, writing, making music. And it’s so romantic. So beautifully unrealistic.
It’s like we’re all supposed to quit our jobs and become a full-time, chai-sipping poet who lives off emotional resonance and followers.
Here’s the cold, hard truth: a flow state is a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t pay your electricity bill. And trying to force your creative passion to become a money-making machine is a guaranteed way to kill both the passion and your bank account.
We need to understand that the algebraic equation we learned in high school—the one with the left side and the right side—it applies to life. For a balanced life equation, you need two things:
- Something that brings in money.
- Something that brings you joy (the passion).
When you try to make your passion do both, you’re overloading one side of the equation. Your “left side” (passion) gets burdened with the pressure of performance, revenue, and client demands, and your “right side” (money) gets a big fat zero. The equation becomes unbalanced, and you end up frustrated, broke, and wondering why you ever started.
Think about it. Do you really believe that Mukesh Ambani always dreamed of being in petrochemicals? Or that the heads of these giant pharmaceutical companies grew up playing with beakers and wanting to sell medicines?
No. They found their passion in the thing that was generating the money. Money is a powerful motivator. It can breathe passion into even the most mundane things. That boring Excel sheet starts looking pretty exciting when it’s tied to a healthy bonus. A successful venture, even if it’s not “creative,” gives you the energy and motivation to keep going.
And that’s the real secret. You can find a flow state anywhere. You can find it while balancing a budget, solving a complex problem at your job, or organizing your bookshelf. The key is to let that job pay the bills so your passion can stay a passion.
A hobby that makes you spend money out of your own pocket to keep it going? That’s not a passion you’re following. That’s just an expensive hobby you’re doing to tell yourself a nice story.
So the next time someone tells you to follow your passion, ask them this: is your passion a source of income, or a source of expense? Because a true passion project should feed your soul, not just your ego. And an actual career should feed you.
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