There’s one piece of advice that is actively harming the lives of creatives, every, single, day!
“Follow your Passion“
When creative people ask and receive advice from anybody a common piece of advice given is that all the aspiring creative needs to do is follow their passion and success will come to them.
Now I recognize the kindness behind those words, which is better described as “Do What You Enjoy Doing”, all they’re trying to say is have fun, and do what is fun for you. However, this way of operating allows for interesting insights into what advice will actually help creatives.
What I want you to reflect on by the end of this post is that, whilst passion is crucial in a writer’s journey, blindly following it can be quite harmful in the realm of creative pursuits.
Passion is Limited
Passion can be described as a deep feeling of motivation or urge to engage in a task. Interestingly, passion is better seen as an emotion than a state of being.
You can’t be in a passionate mind frame. To be passionate about something is the feeling of motivation you get from engaging in the task, which leads to a deep feeling of contentment and drive.
Passion is an emotion.
Emotions are fleeting.
By no means am I saying you should not engage with your emotions because they are short-lasting, I am describing that passion is not a predetermined state of mind you feel about a specific creative endeavor, it’s an emotion you feel when you do the things you love.
Emotions are unreliable.
Feeling an emotion is completely dependent on the situation, so many factors come into play about how you feel at any given time. You could be in a comfortable position in life, surrounded by love from others but still feel lonely.
Therefore, emotions are NOT a representation of your human thought but rather a response to your environment.
Here’s where the pernicious roots of this well-intended advice rears its grisly head.
Long-term decisions made on the basis of temporary feelings are a recipe for disaster. Artists should not define their artistic journey by their current love of drawing cute animals, ultimately the creative become limited in what they can achieve as they have created their own prison because drawing cute animals MUST be their life purpose, when in actuality they should be engaging with all of what they can create rather than a specific corner of their potential, governed by the short-lived effects of passion.
Passion is Unrealistic
Romantisisation is a real problem in the content creatives consume. For example, sketchbook tours of extremely hardworking artists create an unrealistic representation of what an artist’s sketchbook should look like.
This is where the disheartened creative takes to romanticizing their art, they make their art aesthetic. They create content about how much art they’re doing when they haven’t touched their art supplies in months because the time is never right.
The problem with the romanticization of art and the creative process is that it creates the idea that things that people consider themselves passionate about have constant inspiration about completing.
This is just not true.
I’m passionate about writing, but that doesn’t mean I sit down and have endless inspiration and motivation to write stuff.
No!
More times than I would care to admit, writing for me can feel like pulling my own teeth out with pliers. Every word I type is a visceral wrench to my soul.
This is fine. This is how it should be.
Being passionate about something means you do it whether you want to or not. It’s getting those words out because you know that more often than not you will fall in love with it over and over again.
What the advice “Follow Your Passion” misses is that you can be passionate about something but not be motivated to do it every day. And that’s okay.
What is important is that rather than rely on motivation for things you are passionate about, focus on discipline.
I’ve actually written about this in a previous post if you would like to check it out;
Being passionate means being disciplined not being constantly inspired.
Passion is a Balance with Learning
No matter what creative field you are in being passionate about your work will only get you so far. You have to have the practical skills to demonstrate your creativity, otherwise theirs a ceiling to how good your work is.
There is one thing that EVERY successful creative in their field has spent their time learning;
Fundamentals.
Being a creative person is like building Lego. This great final piece is made and it is greater than the sum of its parts. However, the parts are important. If someone has made a life-size Lego sculpture of Shrek but doesn’t have enough bricks to fill in the entire sculpture, it’s gonna look amateur, you can still tell what it’s supposed to be but it just feels empty.
Fundamentals are the Lego bricks in that analogy and obviously, the lifesize Shrek sculpture is that novel you’re writing or that song you’re composing.
If you don’t understand the basics theirs no chance of getting to the difficult intricacies.
This is the third problem with “Follow Your Passion” It’s describing a blind race into the wilderness rendering you completely unaware of the pitfalls and traps of creating without understanding the basics.
In every creative endeavor, skill acquisition should be an absolute priority for any creative.
The interesting consequence of learning the fundamentals of your field is that ultimately these skills become second nature, and you don’t have to worry about them, this leaves room for people to be creative and come up with ideas in a consistent and confident manner as you have the confidence that you can create anything.
So you do.
Rather than “Follow Your Passion”, balance what you’re passionate about doing with learning the fundamental skills for your field.
Relentlessness Leads to Burnout
The trap that “Follow Your Passion” sets is that your engagement with your passion is a relentless unbridled approach to creating. This sort of unbridled passion ultimately leads to burnout.
Relentlessly pursuing anything ultimately leads to exhaustion. When you become exhausted with the thing you should be “passionate” about your whole integrity as a creative is brought into question.
It’s one of the worst side effects of this advice.
I can definitely relate to this personally. Having graduated from secondary school recently, I was extremely passionate about learning and getting good scores in my academic life. I was so passionate about this that I went all in with my grades, I was studying non-stop. Flashcards, active recall, practice tests, I was so involved that I burnt out, before my exams. Thus, through my exam period, I had no motivation to study and my self-image took a massive hit.
This is because of engaging in unbridled passion, and I paid the price for it.
Luckily, there are strategies and techniques you can use to avoid burnout in your creative journey.
I have written a post about how to avoid burnout but I can summarise the three main points below;
- Have breaks.
- Be mindful
- Consume unfamiliar content
It is essential that you are not completely relentless in your approach to creativity but be sure to take breaks regularly to avoid getting burnt out.
Parting Words
To wrap this lengthy post up, passion is an important part of your creative pursuit but you need to have measures in place to;
- Understand that Passion is a limited emotion
- Passion can be unrealistic
- Balance with learning the fundamentals
- Take regular breaks to avoid burnout
I encourage you if you’ve made it this far to share your experience with pursuing passion and whether you have any other pieces of advice that your fellow creatives should be wary about.
Thanks for reading. Happy creating 🙂
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