Last week, I talked with Jon Jachimowicz, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School, about what passion is, how people become passionate, and why feeling passion in the moment is different from looking back on how a passion developed. Today, we want to discuss the challenges that can arise in fostering a passion and what steps you can take to cope with them.
This is part 2 of my interview with Jon. You can read Part 1 here.
ANNETTE: Let’s start with some data. In a country like the US, how much passion do people experience, and are they pleased with the amount of passion in their lives?
JON: In a 2019 Deloitte survey across job levels and industries, only 20 percent of workers in the US said they are truly passionate about their work. And what I can say from my own research is that most people, particularly in the United States, where a lot of my research focuses on, are not satisfied with the amount of passion they experience, be it for work-related or non-work-related activities. This leads to a more complex question: Is the life of people suited to realize their passions? It’s a question about external constraints and freedoms, for example in the work and family environment, but also about people's attitudes, expectations, and priorities.
ANNETTE: What are the inner challenges people face when they try to build a life that encompasses passion?
JON: An essential part of developing passion is understanding yourself and your values. Trying to find out what it is that you care about is not easy. You must take a long and hard look at yourself and continue doing so over your lifetime. One thing that makes it difficult is that people like to hold onto values that they've once cherished, even if they are not relevant anymore, because they like having a sense of continuity. Another part of developing passion is understanding activities that enable you to live out your values. This is not easy either. Values are abstract – helping people or connecting with people – and you have to come up with specific ways to advance these values, which are also accessible to you. And a third challenge: When you find activities, it might be challenging to connect them back to your values on a day-to-day basis.
ANNETTE: Can you give an example?
JON: Take nurses who expect that through their work, they can improve patients' lives. But there are always patients who do not get better, and there are patients who are belligerent or upset. Under these circumstances, it can be quite challenging to make the connection between action and value because you might not see that you have a positive impact every single day. And challenges like these exist in the non-work domain, too. If I'm passionate about something, it doesn't necessarily mean that every time I do it, I feel that I'm making an impact in a way that advances the values that I hold.
ANNETTE: When I look at myself, I sometimes have considerable doubts about the things I think I am passionate about. For example, when an international flight is endlessly delayed, the Airbnb I have booked is dingy, or I can’t find a connection with the locals in a strange city, I wonder, am I really so passionate about exploring other cultures.
JON: And that's fine. We need to move toward an understanding that the pursuit of passion does not mean that every single day is going to be amazing but that some days will be tough. That's why I love the German word Leidenschaft, which literally means "the ability to endure hardship.” The word says a lot about Germans. But it also tells us something important about passion: it is often really challenging. Developing such an understanding would allow us to be more realistic and cut ourselves slack. We could think more about why we are not feeling passion today. Maybe we are exhausted. Perhaps we are not working on things that we care about. Maybe things are happening in another area of our lives that need our full attention.
ANNETTE: If somebody says, ‘I would like to find an activity or topic I'm passionate about, but it’s hard for me to come up with something meaningful,’ what should they do? What are some steps they could take?
JON: I like to look at it in four fundamental steps. So step one is finding out what you care about. And one important thing you can do to help you is to seek out experiences that don't fit into what you usually do. This could be meeting people with a background that is very different from your own and that of your peer group, living in a foreign country for a while, or serving an internship in an unfamiliar area. Seeking out unusual and strange experiences will help you gain new insights about yourself and your values. Once you have a good sense of who you are, you should take step two, challenging these narratives. An excellent way to do this is to come up with alternative stories about yourself by asking, ‘What would the world look like if I wore a different hat?’ and then try out these stories for a while. We call this narrative flexibility.
ANNETTE: How exactly could this look like?
JON: Take me as an example. I could ask myself, ‘If I were not a professor now but an entrepreneur, what story would I tell about the world? And what would that say about me?’ So maybe I would find out that I like having crazy ideas and trying to get buy-in from other people on these crazy ideas. That's not necessarily something academics do, but it's something that entrepreneurs do. Or what if I thought of myself as a pilot? A zookeeper? An artist? What would my life look like? There are many alternative stories you can tell about yourself, and they will reveal different parts of yourself. And this is a lifelong process, and you are never done with it. The moment when you think you are a finished product, you stop being self-aware.
ANNETTE: When you have a good handle on who you are and what else you could be, what should you do then?
JON: Step three is asking how you can live a life that allows you to express these essential parts of yourself. And here, it’s important to understand that no single activity will fulfill all your values. One way to go for it is through a portfolio approach. As when you are investing money, and you spread your funds across many investments to reduce risk, you should also spread your time across different activities. This allows you to live out many if not all of your values and also to derive self-worth, even when an individual activity doesn't go so well. And then finally, the fourth step is actually doing the activities you came up with and continuously reconnecting them to the values you care about.
Annette: You are a passionate salsa dancer. How did this interest come up and develop?
JON: Why I am passionate about Salsa is something I've thought about a lot. It started when I moved to New York for my Ph.D., and I left a lot of my friends and family behind. In this phase of my life, Salsa accomplished several different goals for me. One of my values is community; I care about creating and being a part of a community. And in New York, the salsa community is quite strong. When you go to Salsa events, you tend to see the same group of people again and again. The second thing I care about is a connection with people. And Salsa is all about creating a connection without words. Being a good Salsa dancer means being good at connecting with your dancing partner. And the third thing I care about is not being in my head all the time. And in Salsa, you get immediate feedback about this. If you are not in your head and succeed in letting go, then dancing works well, and your partner is happy. And if you are in your head and not paying attention, the dance becomes less enjoyable - and you can even hurt your partner. So there were good reasons that I was so drawn to it.
ANNETTE: And this is no longer the case?
JON: It’s a little bit less for me now. Because of Covid, I haven’t danced much in the last couple of years. And when you are not doing an activity, you're less passionate about it. That's part of it. The other part is that I can fulfill some of my needs differently now. I've been living here in Boston for a couple of years and have built a community that does not rely on Salsa but on other things. I also found different ways to connect with people. So my values have not changed, but how I live them out has. And this is not uncommon in the pursuit of passion.
ANNETTE: Thank you, Jon!
So much for passion - for now. I am sure we will revisit the topic later.
A quick heads-up: As I will wrap up my annual visit to Germany and travel back to San Francisco next week, I’ll take a break from writing the newsletter. So no post next week. I’ll be back with fresh input on August 19. Don’t miss it!
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