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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2015-09-14
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MBaFL7sCb8
I'm the day I got laid off from my job at Martha Stewart I was relieved I love the job I really did but the relationship was over and I didn't I had and it and then I broke up with me eleven that happens at the time I've been also hosting a radio show for the Martha Stewart brand on SiriusXM and then not long after that got
canceled too on the day of my last show I got onto the elevator at the thirty sixth floor and as it started to drop I started to cry every floor took me further and further from what I had been a magazine editor a radio host a person with a cool job to talk about at parties you know and honestly I had no idea what I was
gonna do and quite frankly no one was looking for me so I did but I knew it would do in that situation and I was making some phone calls he would you up to dimension I'm available %HESITATION off I needed to get paid to do something right I mean I live in New York City if you're not paid to do something you're not gonna be there
very long but this idea that I had to know what I was supposed to do now freedoms was to pursue this passion is it just bugged me it always had and that's because of the dangerously limiting idea at the heart of everything we believe about success and life in general and it's that you have won the singular passion and your job is to find it and
to pursue it to the exclusion of all else if you do that everything will fall into place and if you don't you failed the pressure starts really young and it does your whole life but it's perhaps most pronounced when you're graduating from school right Evans is wow the world at your feet what you gonna do now it's so intimidating it's like picking a major for life
you know I have heard of time picking a major for four years and I changed that once if not twice I mean it was like it's intimidating right in this compelling I mean this really in a forceful cultural imperative to choose your passion stressful to me but it's not just me if ever I talked to agrees with me the woman who sold me this dress I
told what I need to dress foreman was talking about and she said oh my gosh I I really need to hear this talk because I just graduate from school my friends and I we don't know what we're passionate about we don't know what we're supposed to do I'm leery of passion for a few reasons but one of them is that passion is not a plan it's
a feeling and feelings change they do you can be passionate about a person one day at a job and then not passionate the next we know this and yet we continue to use passion as the yardstick to judge everything by instead of seeing passion for what it really is the fire that ignites when you start rubbing sticks together anyway I was such a mess when I
was in my twenties such a mass I was anxious and depressed and I had no life to speak of I was temping to keep my options open and I was sitting around at night my other watching Seinfeld reruns actually I still do that that's not the worst thing in the world today it's fine but I called my mother every night crying and I was turning away
perfectly good fulltime jobs why because I was afraid I was sure that I would pick the wrong one and get on the wrong train headed to the wrong future my mother begged me to please take a job any job you're not going to be stuck you're stuck NARAL you don't treat your life first and then live it you created by living it not agonizing about she's
right she's always right and so I took a full time job as is an assistant at a management consulting firm were I knew nothing about nothing okay zero except I knew I had a reason get up in the morning get showered leave the house and people were waiting for me when I got there and I got a paycheck every two weeks and that is as good
a reason to take a job as any yeah I know that if I want to be an office administrator for the rest my life no I have no idea truly but this idea that everything you're supposed to do should fit into this passion vertical is unrealistic and also yet elitist you show me someone washes windows for a living and I will bet you a million dollars
is not because he has a passion for clean glass well my favorite columns is a piece by Dilbert creator Scott Adams he wrote a piece in the Wall Street journal fears ago about how he failed his way to success and one of his jobs was as a commercial loan officer and he was taught specifically do not loan money to someone following their passion no loaded to
someone who wants to start a business the more boring the better Adams says that in his life success fueled passion more than passion field success when I got my first job as a magazine editor in publishing I was thrilled but I had to take a pretty big pay cut because at the time I'd been a catalogue copy writer and a wig company laughs if you well
clearly you are and many many people did but weeks paid and so I think our way to make some money so friend of mine invited me to a jewelry party and I said what is a Julie parties is that how it's like Tupperware but with bracelets I said okay got it got it I went and I had the best time I was there Hagenow trying on
jeweler in the sales persons have a great time and I was like it's a job do that I mean really she seems to be having a great time now I had no background in sales Alyssa come girl scouts I was terrible and I had no passion for jury I mean honestly my earrings cost twenty dollars combines all of that and then I was like I think
I can sling silver jewelry to suburban moms drinking Dockery's yes I could do that and so I didn't I signed up I became a Sabado designs rap and I get listening I was not setting the world on fire right away really I was so like awkward and afraid of selling and I think a better make it better priests are making some money has her getting really
passionate about it not just because of the money but because what I realize is people wanted the stuff they were happy to pay for it sold so much jewelry that year I won a free trip to Saint Thomas it's true I've actually let my jewelry business go because my career path shifted but I was so glad that I did that because it planted entrepreneurial seat I
didn't know was there and that bears fruit to this day now as you know an entire cottage industry has sprung up around helping people find their passions write books coaching webinars whatever and their hearts in the right place it's great I'm all about self discovery okay but when you ask someone or your ass like what's your passion it's it's triggering it's like it suddenly go my
god have to come up with a good answer for this one of my friends is in her mid forties and she's looking at like what's her life going to be now and she's like I don't know what I'm passionate about it she's legitimately concerned about that she's run the higher team of people how do we worry about this you know why because you think something's wrong
with her I thought something was wrong with me when I was in the seventh grade and everyone was really it just like the rock bands in their actors Anne would carve the names of those bands in the tables at the library and I never heard anything because I couldn't think of anything to carve I mean I like Bon Jovi as much as the next girl but
not enough to deface school property you know that's probably why I don't have any other I don't have any tattoos either I'm assuming that's how I don't know if it was really boring I thought something was wrong with me but that's the fear isn't it that when someone asks you at a party on a date at a job interview woody passionate about that you're not gonna
have this while compelling answer and if that means you're not interesting or ambitious or that you don't have a singular obsession or scary talent that you're hiding and that your life is in is worth living and that's not true passion is not a job a sport or hobby it is the full force of your attention and energy that you give to whatever is right in front
of you in if you're so busy looking for this passion you could miss opportunities that change your life you can also miss out on great love because that's what happens when you have tunnel vision trying to find the one we all think we know the kind of person we are in the kind of person we could love sometimes were wrong blissfully wrong and sometimes you know
what you're gonna do next right I mean I don't know what not knowing what I'm gonna be doing five years from now or would all be into and that's okay it's okay for to know you know why because the most fulfilling relationships the most filling careers are those that still have the power to surprise you and as for the things you know you wanna do you
wanna write a book you want to start a business you wanna change careers great but if a cigarette waiting for passionate show up and take their you're gonna be waiting a long time so don't wait instead spend your time and attention solving your favorite problems look for problems that need solving be useful generous people will thank you and hug you and pay you for it and
that's where passion is where your energy and effort meet someone else's need that's when you realize passion lives in realizing you know what you have to contribute what you think when you ask people what their passion about they say helping other people so don't wait listen to my mother just start doing because to live a life full of meaning and value you don't follow your passion
