“Follow your passion and never work a day in your life.”
The aspirational quote comes from Mark Twain, who said “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
It’s easy for a celebrated author to wax poetic about following your dreams, but the idea is far more controversial than it seems.
Should You Follow Your Passions?
Many dream of following their passions for a living. They think living authentically is crucial to happiness, and spending their lives pursuing the things they love is the secret to authentic living.
Others argue that the things you love will turn sour if you’re forced to do them for a living. Molding your passions to someone else’s specifications will suck the life out of everything you enjoy.
So, which is right?
Should you follow your passions and work a job you love, or settle for a decent job and pursue your interests on the side?
The Joy of Following Your Passions
There’s no greater joy than pursuing what drives us. When you have something burning inside you pushing you forward despite everything else – follow it. See where it leads.
These inner passions created majestic works of art, innovative changes in technology, and wonders of human ingenuity. The human drive to achieve greatness makes the world a better place.
When following that inner voice, you’re living a life true to yourself. You’ll never have to wonder “what if,” or look back and wish you followed your heart. You did it. You’ll live your own personal dream life.
Why Shouldn’t You Follow Your Passion
Unfortunately, that joy of following your passion only works in an idealistic world, and we need to live in reality.
Reality tells us following your passion is wrought with danger. It’s bad advice for most people for three massive reasons:
- You might end up hating it
- You won’t make enough money
- You are on your own
You Might End Up Hating It
Imagine you are passionate about art, and decide to follow your heart to see where it takes you. You attend art school, spending all your time exploring color theory and perfecting your painting techniques.
Then one day, you paint a portrait of your best friend’s dog as a gift. They love it – they post it to social media, it goes viral, and now you have thousands of commissions for pet portraits.
You’re the pet portrait master.
Sure, it pays the bills, but did you spend all that time and effort mastering your craft to paint the family dog ten times a week?
Do you still love painting, even though you don’t have the time or energy to paint what you love, experiment with new techniques, or explore your passion in the way you desire?
Does your passion for painting fade every time a customer demands you repaint a whisker?
Imagine instead that you’re passionate about traveling the world. You score your dream job as an on-location reporter with a world-renowned travel magazine. They send you all around the globe to uncover hidden gems. It might be fun for a while, but will you get burnt out after your sixth flight this week? Will you ever be able to travel to places on your bucket list, like Paris or London, or will you always have to go to the “new” locales?
When you’re pursuing your passion to make a living, you’ll often have to follow the money, no matter how far it takes you from what you love.
You Won’t Make Enough Money
Following the money becomes essential when you’re trying to eke out a living off your passions. You wouldn’t need to paint pet portraits or go to undesirable travel locations if you didn’t need that paycheck to survive.
The uncomfortable truth about pursuing your passion is that most of our passions won’t pay us a living wage. The idea of the “starving artist” thrives in our collective subconscious for a reason: many artists can’t afford to eat.
Sure, some will get lucky enough to make a living creating pet portraits, and others win the jackpot, becoming world-renowned artists who can sell anything they create for thousands of dollars.
But the vast majority will struggle.
And it’s not just artists. Authors, actors, researchers, educators, caretakers, childcare workers (and parents!), conservationists, biologists, animal rescuers, and other careers people love offer notoriously low wages or work/life balance.
The big businesses behind the jobs know people have a passion for these highly competitive fields, so they know they can get away with paying pennies. There will always be someone else willing to contribute because they believe in the mission.
Each person must decide for themselves whether it’s worth it. Can you afford to follow your heart? Are you willing to sacrifice creature comforts or other life goals like a family, home ownership, and a secure retirement to pursue your dreams?
It might be. Only you can answer that question.
You Are on Your Own
Society tells kids they can do whatever they want. We instill a sense of hope and idealism into our youth, driving them to follow their passions wherever they lead.
Eventually, they learn the truth. Only kids with a safety net and rich parents can follow their passions.
Everyone else must toil to survive. If they try to follow their hearts and fail, society scoffs at them, telling them they should have chosen a “smart” career. There’s no safety net. Nobody will help you if you fail.
You are completely on your own.
The terrifying prospect makes it impossible for a large swath of the population to follow their hearts.
How Do You Follow Your Passion?
Who is Danny via Shutterstock.com.
The good news is you don’t need to follow your passions for a living.
There are many opportunities to pursue what you love. You can do it for work, as a side hustle, as a hobby, in pursuit of Passion FIRE, or a volunteer capacity.
No matter how you decide to inject purpose into your life by pursuing what you love, you must first identify your passions.
How to Identify Your Passion
Many of us already know what we’re passionate about. We’ve had this desperate longing in our hearts for as long as we can remember, whether for creating art, helping people, caring for animals, cleaning the planet, or whatever drives us.
But some of us flounder at the question. We’re so bogged down with the necessities of life that we can no longer remember what excites us. The things we were passionate about as children no longer bring us joy.
We can help.
We created a printable workbook to help you discover your passion. Our Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Passion includes over 50 pages of worksheets and prompts to help you rekindle your passions and discover what you truly love.
Find it on Etsy too!
What if I’m Not Passionate About Anything?
You may not know what drives you, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t passionate about anything. It only means you must dig a little deeper to discover it.
Listen to your inner voice; what does it love? What types of things do you enjoy doing?
You might have several passions, and that’s okay. I’m passionate about my website, helping people, my cats, and life in general. When you have multiple passions, you have a wider array of things to choose from!
If you’re stuck and you don’t know, grab our guide. It’s loaded with introspective questions, worksheets, and ideas to help you discover what you’re passionate about. It also includes a 30-day action plan template to help you start pursuing it!
You will need to bring some curiosity, grit, and open-mindedness to complete the worksheets, and you will need to dive deep into your own mind to discover your passion, but it is in there, and we will help you find it.
How to Pursue Your Passion
The old way of following your passion as a career doesn’t work for most people.
There is another way. It’s a bit more nuanced and a little less exciting, but the advantage is that it WORKS for most people.
Pursue your passion with Passion FIRE.
Passion FIRE
Passion FIRE encourages you to pursue the things you love as a side hustle while striving for financial independence.
With this path to financial freedom, you work a normal job, following all the tenets of the traditional FIRE movement: frugal living, smart investing, and saving as much money as possible.
In the meantime, you also start working on your passions, striving to turn what you love into a money-making machine. Once you’ve gained some life experience and developed your talents through your traditional job, you can start a business with your passions.
Find ways to monetize it, either through creating content, selling products, or something like coaching. Most passions lend themselves to some form of monetization, even if it takes a little creativity to determine how.
The downside is that sometimes, you won’t make enough money to pay the bills. That’s why we pursued financial independence while growing our side business. You might not have enough money for traditional financial freedom, and you might not earn enough money through your passion business to pay the bills, but if you combine the two, you can bridge the gap.
Passion FIRE shows you how to pursue your passions while building your own personal safety net.
You Don’t Have to Start a Business
Passion FIRE doesn’t hinge on starting your own business. That’s only one path.
Once you’ve built your safety net, you can follow your passion in other ways, like changing careers to a lower-wage field you love. For example, maybe you spend time as a programmer to achieve Coast FIRE, then quit to work as an elementary school teacher because you love teaching kids.
With Passion FIRE, you can find a fulfilling job that covers the basics, while your FIRE investments ensure you maintain financial security.
Pursuing Your Passions as a Hobby
There’s no rule stating you have to make money through your passions. Some people prefer the stability of a regular job and don’t want to stress about making a profit from what they love.
You can pursue your passion as a hobby or through volunteer work. Spend your evenings knitting or your weekends volunteering at an animal shelter.
The idea that you must monetize every aspect of your life is one of the horrible downsides of hustle culture. Though I love the idea of Passion FIRE, I realize it’s not for everyone.
There’s no shame in enjoying your hobbies for yourself without trying to monetize them.
Follow Your Passions Through Balance
The best way to follow your passions is with balance.
If you don’t have solid financial backing from your family, pursuing them as a career can lead you to a life of destitution. If you ignore your passions completely, you’ll feel lost and directionless.
You don’t need to pick one of those terrifying paths. You can have both.
Focus on earning money while you’re young, so you can explore your passions through hobbies and side hustles as you age. Find a job that provides a path to financial freedom, and follow that money for a while.
But always remember that it’s just a paycheck. Put in the hard work to succeed, but don’t overwork yourself.
Become financially secure so that you can pursue your passions risk-free.
Live Your Dream Life
Passion FIRE allows you to follow your dreams without limiting yourself. With it, you can pursue a life of meaning, fulfillment, and passion. You can create that delicate balance between pursuing your passion and earning a living.
So yes, follow your passions, but not in the way you traditionally think. Follow your dreams with Passion FIRE, and you’ll be able to live your dream life.