Why Following Your Passion is Terrible Career Advice

We have all heard it before, the advice that many people have given when asked for career advice or when talking to college students entering the workforce--”Follow your passion”. But there are some challenges with that statement.

First of all, telling people to follow their passion assumes that the passion is something that lives outside of them and they have to chase it. The second issue is that we assume it is a static thing, that there is one passion it is in a certain location and that’s where you have to go. The truth is our passions change-- as we get older, as we go through experiences in life and as we expand our horizons.

Thirdly, the problem is that often we are not able to identify a passion before we choose to pursue something. It happens all the time, someone tries something new and that sparks a new passion. So to think that we have to simply follow a passion would take away the possibility of finding a new passion in something we didn’t think of before.

The real question is: how can we bring our passion with us to everything that we do. It is better to bring that passion with you instead of trying to chase it.

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