Follow your passion!

It sounds so exciting. Who wouldn’t want to do this? When I first believed that it was possible to follow my own passions, I imagined a life where I was always engaged, excited, in a state of flow. Everything would feel good, easy and fun.

At first, everything was new and exciting and I was living in a state of regular flow. I was able to wake up at 5 AM to write, or stay up late doing research after a full day at my day job. I was excited to make the sacrifices to come up with money to take courses and invest in myself. For a time it was good, easy and fun in spite of the challenges.

After a few years now, the idea that I should always be engaged feels like snake oil mixed with fairy dust. I have days where I am exhausted, where I don’t know if what I envisioned is possible. I feel like those apples on the tree, covered in snow. I’m in the dip.

When trying to do something big in our lives we often get stuck at some point. It happens after we’ve struggled for a long time, and the excitement is over. This is when it gets boring – we are putting in effort, and aren’t feeling that energetic motivation any more. Just like the job we want out of, the pursuit of our passion inevitably hits a point where it doesn’t seem so fun any more.

So, is it still your passion if you get bored?

I found an interesting answer to this recently: Susan Piver has been teaching meditation for 20 years. I watched one of her introduction to meditation videos, and that helped me understand what is going on with the “boredom” I am feeling. In her video, she says that to really do meditation right, you will hit a point of boredom and that is a good thing. It happens at that point when you know what to do, there’s no more new experiences, your mind is rehashing the same ideas, you wrestle with the same challenges that distract you from focusing on your breathing, and you don’t feel like you’re growing any more. I instantly understood–it’s true in meditation, and it’s true for following your passion: after a while all of the infatuation will burn away, but those that are successful are people who accept the boredom and use it as a sign that they are on the edge of a cliff opening into a deepening of their practice/craft/business. It takes perseverance to stick through beyond this point.

We need to use this boredom as a sign.

If you feel bored, it can still be your passion if it is leading to the desired impact you want on the world. Our passion isn’t about what we are infatuated with today. Our passion is about envisioning the world we want to create, and how we are uniquely gifted to make that happen. It takes a long time to uncover what that is, and how to do it, but there’s no way around it – part of the journey leads you through boredom.