Freedom Friday: Your Purpose does NOT Always Require Passion!

Transcript

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Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Unlearned Podcast.

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I am your host, ruth Abigail, aka RA, and this is Freedom Friday, where we come and share something we've unlearned recently and how it's made us just a little bit more free.

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So if you are a podcast listener or subscriber or follower, then you know that we have a new segment that we are, at least for the time being, titling Talks with Middle Adults, and it is an opportunity for us to share things that myself and one of my best friends, chiquita Ross things that we unlearned in our 20s, that helped us to have the life we have now in our 30s.

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That's something we can be proud of right, I mean, everything's not perfect, but it's something we can be proud of, and so we just want to share that with any age group.

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Really, and whether you're in your 20s or you are where we are, or maybe you're even older, just things that kind of we unlearn through those like 10, 15 year period where you're kind of figuring out a lot of things about your life, and so we just did a.

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We just dropped an episode earlier this week and this episode was really talking about this idea of purpose.

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So I think we grew up in the era where, you know, millennials are kind of known for wanting to be passionate about their work.

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I think we were the first generation where that really became a big talking point.

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It's like don't just find a job, find your passion right.

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And that is something that we I grew up with, that it was always something that was like the aspiration.

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It's like don't just work a job for a job, you want to find something that's fulfilling, you want to find something that's going to excite you and that you can really like, love right and put your whole self into.

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And I think that's a beautiful, beautiful notion.

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I think that it's a great thing to aspire to.

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I love the idea of being passionate about your work.

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I think that's a good thing.

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I will say this I think that's a good thing.

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I will say this I think that it was a very it's a.

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It's a it's a message that sounds really good but has a lot of holes in it.

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And so one of the things that I know I have had to unlearn that really has made me more free in the way that I approach work is unlearning that your purpose always has to be something you're passionate about.

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That purpose and passion always have to go together, and that's, I think, a misconception that a lot of us grew up with is that we need to pursue our passion because that will help us to find our purpose.

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You must, if you're, if you're passionate about something, it must be your purpose, or your purpose you must be passionate about, and that is just not true all the time.

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Passion is something that is very explosive.

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It's very uh, it's a, it's a excitement, it is really attached to things that are, I would say.

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Now let me put a caveat here, because on on the episode, myself and Jaquita we talked a little bit about passion, and she kind of got onto me because she said that I was kind of giving passion a bad rap because she is considered a very passionate person and she is.

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I would say I am too in some ways, but I think we kind of approach it.

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She said it better than I can, so go listen to the episode so you can see what she says about it.

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But I do think passion, one thing that I think we can agree on is that passion is fleeting, it's not something that's always going to be there, and so if we're constantly trying to pursue passion, we're pursuing something that slips through your fingers very easily.

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Passion also a lot of times requires the right kind of mix of things that are happening at the same time.

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You, you know, um, the right people or the right environment, uh, the right mission, the right.

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There's a lot of rights that that go into that, and when something doesn't completely fit, sometimes that can reduce the passion, and so the thing that I think is important to unlearn is that your your purpose.

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You're not always going to feel passion or be passionate about your purpose.

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I shared this book that I have read a few times.

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I've taught in a few classes.

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It's called so Good, they Can't Ignore you.

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It is a great book.

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I recommend people getting it.

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The subtitle is why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work you Love, and so what I love about this is that it really debunks this idea that your passion is what you should be going for.

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So this is one thing.

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One of the quotes in the book that I really like is so I'm going to read this small little paragraph right, it says my professional situation now couldn't be more perfect.

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Scott reports.

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I chose to pursue the career I knew.

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In my heart, I was passionate about politics.

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I love my office, my friends, even my boss.

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I love my office, my friends, even my boss.

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The glamorous promise of the passion hypothesis, however, led Scott to question whether his perfect job was perfect enough.

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Quote it's not fulfilling.

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He worries when he reflects on the fact that his job, like all jobs, includes difficult responsibilities.

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This other idea about passion is that we're always going to like it because we're good at it.

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So if I'm passionate about it, I must be good at it.

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Right, if I have passion, it automatically equals proficiency, and that's not always true.

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And so there's, like any job, I love the work I get to do.

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I love the work I get to do, and there are days that are really hard and that I struggle to really want to do.

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There are some days I just don't want to do, and so I think sometimes we just have to begin to be realistic and appreciate the moments that we are passionate and then accept the moments that we aren't, because we understand that passion is what we're going for.

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Passion is not what we're trying to reach.

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We're not trying to have this euphoric feeling at work all the time.

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We want to get to a place where purpose is where we live most of the time and, quite frankly, purpose doesn't have anything to do with your job, and it doesn't have anything to do with the role that you have.

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It has to do with why you are the way you are and how you, as a human, show up in the world and how you, as a human, contribute to the world.

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And so this idea of passion, the book argues, should be replaced with a not a pursuit of passion, but a pursuit of skills.

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And so why do we want to pursue skills?

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Because, when the job gets hard, passion won't get you through that, but proficiency will.

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Proficiency will get you through difficult times.

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I have to write a lot of grants for my work.

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I'm going to tell you right now I am passionate about the work.

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I'm not passionate about writing grants.

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I don't love doing it, but it's part of my job.

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If I was in this mindset of I need to be passionate about grants and I need to be passionate, and I'm going to be passionate all the time about my work, whenever I sit down to write a grant, I'm going to be frustrated because I'm looking to be passionate.

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But instead of looking to be passionate, what I need to be looking to do is to be good to be good at it, to get better at it, to learn the skill and become proficient and excellent in the craft.

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And so where I lack passion, I have proficiency, and if I have proficiency, I can work through the hard things without being frustrated.

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And so ask yourself, what parts of the job do I really love and what parts of the job that do I not really love, and what parts of the job that I do I not really love?

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And the parts that you don't love, I think is the opportunity to see it as I can get better at something, and the better I get at this, I may not be excited about it, but it won't drain me because I'm not looking to be passionate.

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I've built up a proficiency to be able to be good enough to get through it even if it's hard, as opposed to hitting the wall every time and being upset and frustrated because you don't like it Right.

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And so I think that when we are, when we are thinking through this idea of purpose and passion, both are a part of the human experience and both should be celebrated, and I think that both are healthy to have.

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I think we have to be sure that we don't get them confused and that we make sure to put the energy behind the right one.

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I'm arguing that the right thing to put energy behind is purpose.

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Passion is icing on the cake, and the one of the best ways to put energy behind purpose is to build up your skills and proficiencies so that, when things get hard, we don't clock out because we don't like what we have to do, but the building up of our craft, of our skill.

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We put energy into getting better at what we do because, at the end of the day, getting better and having that level of proficiency is what's going to fuel your purpose more than being passionate.

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I hope that makes sense.

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That's something I've had to unlearn and I've appreciated it, because you're not going to get away with having hard times at in whatever career you're in, whatever, whatever job you're in, whatever stage of life you're in, where you have to do work, right?

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Uh, that's you're going to.

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You're going to come up and get some difficult stuff and you're not always going to feel passionate about it.

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Not just difficult stuff, but there's just some things that you're not going to enjoy, right.

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You just won't enjoy it.

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And so don't look to enjoy everything.

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Appreciate when you do enjoy stuff and then, for the things you might not enjoy, at least appreciate that you can get better at it and better and better and better, and eventually get so good at it that you almost forget that you don't like it.

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It's something what you can appreciate is that you did it, that you accomplished it.

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Every time I write a grant, I'm excited because I did it.

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I didn't love the process all the time, but I hit send and I felt good about it, and so that balances out.

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It helps to balance out the totality of everything that comes with the role.

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Okay, all right, I think that's it, so I hope that was helpful.

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Unlearn that we pursue passion instead pursue purpose, and one of the ways to do that is to be become proficient at the skills that will get you through moments that are harder, because maybe you don't enjoy them as much.

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Check out the episode that Jaquita and I did and um, and we got a new series coming out soon.

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I'll let you know what it is soon, but just be prepared for that.

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We're excited about what's going on at the Unlearned Podcast, so like, share, comment, subscribe.

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Share this with somebody who might need a little encouragement because maybe they are not feeling that passionate about what they're doing right now.

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So and get the book, get the book, get the book.

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It's a good book, so good they can't ignore you.

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Excellent book, excellent read, really good to give people who are just now kind of getting into the workplace, I think.

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I think it's a really good read for that.

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All right, let's keep unlearning together so that we can experience more freedom, and we will see you next week.

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Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast.

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We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode.

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Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think.

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We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom.

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See you then.

Freedom Friday: Your Purpose does NOT Always Require Passion!

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