Passion
I was recently invited to join Jayne Harrison - an Executive Coach who I greatly admire and who happens to be tiny, wise and a whole lot of fun - on the Women Talking About Learning podcast.
Our topic was ‘Passion’; prompted by a now viral video of Professor Scott Galloway telling an auditorium (and now a world) of young people under no circumstances were they to follow theirs. For a fuller discussion on this please do listen to the podcast here. We meander and canter through a variety of peripheral and associated topics and Jayne and I make the case for why Professor Galloway is not only wrong, but probably needs therapy. And a hug.
We get passion wrong because we look at it through all the wrong lenses. Scott Galloway’s lens is that everything must be measured by the metrics of capitalist success. Have you ‘won’? Are you wealthier? Do you own more possessions? Have you had accolades or claimed status?
We also look at it, less consciously perhaps, through a rather more puritanical lens. ‘This is a whimsy, an indulgence’. Passion being a little too close to love for a lot of people’s liking it becomes even more scary to talk about it in relation to work. Passion feels unwieldy, risky, irresponsible.
Considered through both lenses together our vision of passion becomes even cloudier. If success or ‘goodness’ is measured by Scott Galloway’s metrics, and passion is a risky whimsy we better not do it. Give it up. It’s a luxury.
So, here’s a new lens: We are in the midst of crisis. An environmental and social crisis where the pursuit of Scott Galloway’s measure of success has created a tiny number of ‘haves’, far too many ‘have nots’ and an ocean of people swimming desperately to reach the hallowed shores Galloway describes and drowning in burnout, stress and an underlying ennui.
What if the pursuit of wealth, power and status isn’t what makes us human after all? In fact, if you observe colonies of apes, they have the possession/power/status game pretty much sewn up. It isn’t as highly evolved as we kid ourselves it is.
But creation, imagination, connection, joy - dare I say - passion? These are the enduring gifts of humanity.
After we released the podcast I was contacted by someone who said with sadness that they had almost forgotten what their passion is, and definitely felt they weren’t doing it whatever it was. Life had taken over.
I felt this keenly. This was how I felt about 7 years ago. I had a great job, nice house, nice car, good looking spouse - I definitely passed the Scott Galloway success test. And yet I went through life feeling as if I was missing something that was fundamentally me.
As a child, I lived to sing, dance and act out plays or stories. My earliest happiest memory is sitting on the swing in our back garden belting out Morning Has Broken at the top of my pre-school voice. My next door neighbour came running out to tell me how much they’d enjoyed listening to me and gave me a Kit-Kat. I was hooked - I’d done something that was just about pure joy and expression for me, it had tickled someone else and they’d shown me their appreciation. For me, life didn’t get much better than that and, even though I was a painfully shy child, every opportunity I had to sing or dance I took. Even though, at almost every step of the way, I received the message that my passion was all very well but not a thing to ‘make a career’ of. I soon learned that my first love was a childish love. To be left behind when I left education. Not a sensible pursuit, certainly not one that was going to pay for houses or cars. So I did. I gradually put a part of it down every time someone said to me ‘It’s really hard to make a living as a dancer’, ‘You’re too clever to do this for a job, it would be a waste’, ‘You might not have what it takes to make a career of this’… Galloway paradigm of course. But I heard the messages and I left it behind.
Until I couldn’t live that way any longer. Until the younger me became too loud. Until I finally thought ‘f**k it - this is my life’. And I booked singing lessons, joined a dance class, recorded, performed live… rediscovered my passion gradually and falteringly. But joyfully. And I want to share what I’ve learned in case it helps you walk back and pick up the pieces of your passion again, joyfully.
Recognise the Galloway paradigm and politely decline it. I don’t mean give up everything to pursue the passion you had when you were younger (although I know people who have done this and are happier than they’ve ever been). I mean, acknowledge that financial success and recognition are not the goal here. The goal is reconnecting with the thing that makes your heart sing, whatever that may be.
Think like a child. What did you spend time doing when you were small that brought you joy? Where were the places you could lose whole afternoons? This doesn’t have to be the things that you were praised and recognised for (the Galloway trap) but it may help to ask your family or childhood friends what they remember brought you joy as a child.
Give yourself permission to be sh*t. I arguably left off dancing at my peak. Returning to it in my late thirties required a whole bunch of humility and resilience. My inner voices (telling me I wasn’t good enough anymore, that I was too old, that I was kidding myself) needed a LOT of calming down. I’m really glad I did that - being choreographed upstage centre for my first dance performance told my inner voice that it may have been wrong. But, even if I hadn’t been, the mission here wasn’t to enter The Greatest Dancer, it was to reconnect with my passion.
Give yourself permission to invest in getting better. How much money have you spent on stuff to shore up the Galloway paradigm? Cars, clothes, holidays (remember those?). What if you took 50% of that and spent it on your passion? Once I knew that I wasn’t giving my newly reconstructed passion up, I invested in it. I paid for vocal coaching, I did workshops, I bought better dance shoes. These investments helped me do more of my passion with more skill and enjoyment. You will have voices in your head telling you you are wasting money, that this is an indulgence. Thank them, ignore them and spend what you can afford indulging your passion.
Protect your passion with the ferocity of a mama lion. Ignore any naysayers. Taylor was right; haters gonna hate. When I first started singing lessons, I had a boss who specialised in a certain kind of deprecating ‘banter’ and mocked me for doing something so delusional and indulgent. I had people ask ‘So, when are we going to see you on The Voice?’. It’s okay - they’re trapped in the Galloway paradigm, so just doing something because you love it and it brings you joy doesn’t compute. It needs to be mocked or forced onto the success scales. Quietly keep your passion away from those people, whoever they may be.
There are doubtless many other things that I’ve forgotten. The point is, I’m giving you permission to carve a little piece of your life out that isn’t for the Galloway paradigm, that’s just for you. Go and do the things that light you up, that bring you joy, that you love. Go and do them now before it’s too late. And, if you’re feeling really crazy, film yourself doing them and put them on the internet so other people can see it’s possible.