Follow Your Purpose, Not Your Passion
What is a piece of advice that sounds good, but is actually destructive?
Follow your passion. Do what you love.
For a while, it felt like the Steve Jobs commencement speech from Stanford would go viral every few weeks. In fact, it was enshrined as a Ted Talk (with almost 10 million views) long before Ted Talks became a TikTok meme.
One of the most idolized and revered figures of our era had this advice to pass on to the next generation:
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
The ideals of following your passion, following your dreams, and doing what you love are mantras commonly accepted at face value. Digging deeper, we find that advice like this is predicated on a number of problematic assumptions.
Myth: Do What You Love And You’ll Never Work A Day In Your Life
Why do we feel that we deserve to not have to do the work we don’t want to do? And how exactly does pursuing what we love somehow save us from doing work that annoys us? To make this a goal is, at best, a Sisyphean task.
Part of the stems from tying our identity, self-worth, and happiness to our vocation. If I am passionate about painting, I am made to feel as if I’m wasting my life working as an accountant. We speak about following our passions in a way that predicates happiness on being able to do what we love full-time. We are convinced that this is the only way to fulfill our potential in life.
Where does this sense of entitlement come from though? It is worth pondering. Who exactly owes this to us? Do our peers? Society? The “universe”? This sentiment requires contemplation on our relationship with Allah, reaffirming Him as the ultimate Sustainer (al-Razzaq), and examining why we feel owed something in this way.
Further, how do we define and understand potential? Why is fulfilling our potential always restricted to a vocational activity? Focusing on passion in this way obfuscates deeper reflection on fulfilling our potential as believers, as spouses, friends, community members, and the many other roles we play in our lives.
An important heuristic in assessing a statement such as follow your passion is to look at the opposite implication. If following your passion and doing something you truly love is the only way to be happy, then consequently, most of humankind would be miserable or living a worthless existence that fails to maximize their potential.
The funny thing about passion is that it is illusory. The things we were passionate about 5 or 10 years ago are no longer the same things we care about in that way. It actually creates a lot of stress and pressure to advise someone to follow their passion - what if they don't know what their passion is? Being forced to find and follow it shuts the door to the possibility of future discoveries.
Doing work that you love does not mean you suddenly get to avoid the work that annoys you. This is what gets missed.
Passionate about cooking and want to quit your job? Well yes, you can get out of working in a cubicle, working for a boss that sets a schedule you don’t like, and you’ll no longer sit in a cubicle making pivot tables. But now you have to learn marketing to get clients. You have to worry about learning to calculate food costs, margins, and overhead. You have to deal with people who promise to pay and then cancel at the last second. You have to figure out your own insurance and adjust to an irregular income. Many people quit their jobs to follow their passions, only to be left creating and owning a whole new job that they hate - doing everything but working on their passion in order to survive.
No matter what you do, you’re always going to be in the business of trading one set of problems for another.
While passion can be an initial motivator to push you down a certain path, it certainly does not provide the juice needed to sustain through difficulty as we assume it would. A purposeful intention (and Prophetic optimism) is needed to develop the resilience needed to push through the work you may not enjoy.
Myth: Follow Your Passion, The Money and Success Will Follow
It is quite curious that people who make proclamations like “I’d rather do what I love and be poor than do something I hate and be rich” have probably never experienced poverty. It is easy to tell someone to pick a major in college that they love, instead of one that would help them earn a living, if you have no fear of financial instability in your life.
People tell these stories after becoming successful because it’s a nicer story. It’s cleaner and more inspiring than reality.
Ryan Holiday points out, “one of the founders of Google gave a talk in which he said that the way he judges prospective companies and entrepreneurs is by asking them ‘if they’re going to change the world.’ Which is fine, except that’s not how Google started. (Larry Page and Sergey Brin were two Stanford PhDs working on their dissertations.) It’s not how YouTube started. (Its founders weren’t trying to reinvent TV; they were trying to share funny video clips.) It’s not how most true wealth was created, in fact” (Ego is the Enemy)
Reality is messy. Acknowledging it means recognizing much of the success we see wasn’t a deliberate result of following passion, but trying and failing at multiple things and then stumbling onto something almost by luck (or rather, qadr).
We are sold an ideal that does not reflect reality. We only hear stories (often revisionist in nature) that highlight the successes but overlook the failures. For every Hollywood actor who made it and became a movie star, hundreds (if not thousands) are still waiting tables struggling to make ends meet while auditioning for roles in hopes that they will one day break through. For every story we hear of someone who emptied out their savings, took out an extra mortgage, and bet on themselves to make their business successful - how many stories are there of people who lost everything that we don’t hear about?
This is what is termed survivorship bias, defined by Rolf Dobell as, “people systematically overestimate their chances of success because triumph is made more visible than failure” (The Art of Thinking Clearly).
One type of story is more popular than the other. And it is the same type of story that reinforces our ego. If we love something, if we just want it bad enough, and we put it on our vision board and try to manifest it - it will work out. What, exactly, is our tawakkul in?
The focus on the self creates a vicious feedback cycle. Find your passion. Follow your passion. Sacrifice for your passion. Then, if it doesn’t work out, we are told to double down. Work harder. Dream bigger. When that doesn’t work we start over again - ending up in precisely the type of misery we hoped to avoid. Our love for something was supposed to be enough to carry us over the finish line.
“Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance. You need to be able to spot this in others and in yourself, because while the origins of passion may be earnest and good, its effects are comical and then monstrous.” -Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
One of the consequences of pursuing passion is that it inadvertently forces a person into a fixed mindset. Growth happens when we push ourselves through discomfort as a means of cultivating a skill.
When we train ourselves to avoid things we don’t immediately “love”, we will never take on tasks that challenge us. Instead of seeing what should be a learning opportunity, we train ourselves to see something that may potentially cause misery instead.
Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you (2:216).
What happens if you get into a career because of passion and then grow to hate it? How many times do we pursue something fully confident we want to do it, and then later change our minds?
“I think a lot of anxiety comes from the assumption that your calling is like a magical entity that exists in the world, waiting to be discovered.” -Amy Wrzesniewski
Passion is not an endpoint. Treating it as such puts us at the mercy of our own whims and desires. Ultimately, passion is in service of ego. When we pursue it, we are limited only to what our own ego allows us to envision. We close off the possibilities of the larger world around us.
Have you seen ˹O Prophet˺ the one who has taken their own desires as their god? (25:43)
An interesting example from Islamic history highlights the more commonly taken path.
“One of the reasons I wrote the biography of 'Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak' was to debunk the idea (and myth) that people have a single talent and that their job in life is to find that one gift and pursue it with passion. No. For most people, Allah `azza wa jall has decreed that they pass through prisms in life and enter various battlefields and mazes; that they get to meet different people, tackle different obstacles, and open different doors (or indeed, walk through doors that have been opened for them). Like the story of Sibaweyh who began as an aspiring Muhaddith, but in one incident with his Shaykh, his curiosity of the Arabic language turned him into the greatest grammarian the Muslim world has known.” -Farhia Yahya
Myth: Passion Cultivates Purpose
Allah has indeed purchased from the believers their lives and wealth in exchange for Paradise (9:111).
Purpose driven instead of passion driven means we are driven by our servitude to Allah instead of serving our own ego (nafs). Passion is illusory. It brings a temporary happiness but lacks the ability to create fulfillment.
Bear in mind that the present life is just a game, a diversion, an attraction, a cause of boasting among you, of rivalry in wealth and children. It is like plants that spring up after the rain: their growth at first delights the sowers, but then you see them wither away, turn yellow, and become stubble. There is terrible punishment in the next life as well as forgiveness and approval from God; the life of this world is only an illusory pleasure (57:20).
We must take a different course of action from looking for what we love and pursuing it. Instead, we should be relentlessly looking for opportunities where our purpose aligns with our skills.
Ryan Holiday lays out a formula for this. “I am willing to endure ____ for the sake of this… purpose deemphasizes the I. Purpose is about pursuing something outside yourself as opposed to pleasuring yourself” (Ego is the Enemy).
When we experience a rejuvenation of iman, we are passionate about waking up for fajr the next morning. Waking up for fajr in the dead of winter is driven by purpose. In the long haul, the sacrifices we make in pursuit of purpose are the ones that hold up.
“Purpose is defined as the sense that you are contributing to others, that your work has broader meaning. Passion is the feeling of excitement or enthusiasm you have about your work.” -Chip and Dan Heath
When our focus shifts to something larger than ourselves, we are able to embrace a growth mindset. We are willing to keep trying things until we find a way for our skills to contribute to a larger purpose. We chase mastery, not passion.
“Oftentimes, We do something, we get really good at it, and then we become passionate about it. It’s a totally different approach than waiting for your passion for decades, without knowing whether it’s something you can succeed at or make a living from.” -Ramit Sethi
One level of cultivating purpose is looking for how we can best add value through our work. What are your strengths? What type of work energizes you? There are a number of assessments that can help with this, but two that I found to be particularly insightful are StrengthsFinder and Working Genius.
As you start to understand your strengths and where you best add value, you can look for people who do that type of work. Reach out to them, ask them questions. They will help you identify skills that you need to develop to find the type of work you need.
“Doing what you love is for amateurs, loving what you do is for professionals” -Seth Godin
Another level of purpose is looking for how you are serving Allah. Are you focused on Allah in your pursuits? Mohammed Faris explains this in detail while comparing “hustle culture” against “barakah culture.” When our intentions are for the sake of Allah, it reframes our efforts. Maybe you are working a job you dislike, but are doing so to fulfill your obligations to your family. Instead of this becoming a source of anxiety, it turns into a source of contentment. Our heart knows why we are sacrificing. Similarly, we may miss some opportunities we really desire because they may conflict with our faith values. Instead of seeing a loss, we are able to tap into a sense of resilience and continue pushing because we know we did it for the right reasons.
The Prophet (s) said, “Whoever is focused only on this world, Allah will confound his affairs and make him fear poverty constantly, and he will not get anything of this world except that which has been decreed for him. Whoever is focused on the Hereafter, Allah will settle his affairs for him and make him feel content with his lost, and his provision and worldly gains will undoubtedly come to him” (ibn Majah).
When we work for the wrong purpose, we will never be at ease. When we work for the right purpose, not only are we content, but we do not lose even the tiniest bit of worldly benefit that Allah had written for us.
The challenge is that purpose comes from patience, while passion comes from impetuous impatience.
Myth: Not Following Your Passion Means Settling for Less
“The box-checking exercise tends to be about my wants. Shifting it to others’ needs brings greater well-being. This is straightforward: Decades of research—and millennia of common sense—have shown that self-centeredness leads to fluctuating emotions at best, while a focus on the needs of others can bring stable happiness. And lest you think this makes a person passive or unambitious, note that there is a significant body of evidence showing that a focus on the good of one’s institution (as opposed to oneself) enhances career success as well.” -Arthur Brooks
The idea of being purpose driven is finding greater long-term success. This does not mean lowering your ambition. When our ambition is driven by passion or ego, we are never satisfied, and unable to define what success even looks like.
A person grounded in a faith perspective starts from a position of contentment and gratitude to Allah. Ambition then becomes about maximizing impact and furthering a purpose larger than oneself.
The Prophet (s) said, “Whoever among you wakes up physically healthy, feeling safe and secure within himself, with food for the day, it is as if he acquired the whole world” (ibn Majah).
“The power of contentment is that it makes you enjoy the blessings of life with all its trials and tribulations. Lack of contentment makes life hard to tolerate, especially when a calamity hits you and throws you off-guard.” -Mohammed Faris
A key component of contentment is learning the proper role of our passions in our lives. I may be passionate about sneakers or basketball or backyard barbecuing. This doesn’t mean I have to be dedicated to any of them full-time. Sometimes a passion is better served as a hobby that is enjoyed rather than a pursuit that should turn into a vocation.
In fact, it is far more freeing to look at it that way.
