We've all heard it a thousand times: “If you want to be happy in life, follow your passion.” But is that true?

Let's take a closer look. The word ‘passion’ comes from the Latin-rooted word pati, which means to suffer. So when someone tells you to follow your passion, they're actually saying you should do something that you're willing to suffer for.

In today's entrepreneurial landscape, the word passion has been hijacked and saddled with a new meaning tied to a financial outcome. But passion has nothing to do with earning a 10x return or building a seven-figure business. 

Here's the question to ask yourself to see if you're passionate about what you're doing: “Am I willing to put in the work and never see the fruit?” If the answer is no, I hate to break it to you, but that's not your passion.

Another reason people feel excited about following their passion is that their potential is not being realized at work. A Gallup study revealed that 85% of employees are not engaged, and it's costing us $7 trillion annually in lost productivity. And an estimated 37% of Americans have a side hustle, which is a chance for them to make extra money but also pursue something they’re more passionate about than their jobs.

Adding to that, about half of new businesses fail to make it past the five-year mark. If passion is tied to achieving a certain financial outcome and your business is one of the ones that fail, your self-worth will take a big hit. 

So, let me suggest that you find your worth before you find your why.

In order to see yourself as worthy, you need to answer the question, who am I? Here are three ways I recommend doing that:

• Do something that challenges you physically and mentally. For me, that was CrossFit because it required my full focus, attention, and awareness. As a result of successfully completing those challenging workouts, I discovered new neural pathways that fired off all kinds of creativity.
• Make time for reflection and visualization, preferably shortly after you've completed the physically demanding activity. 
• Create “I am” statements. The great Lou Holtz once told me that the most important word in the English vocabulary is the word choice. The next two most important words are ‘I’ and ‘am.’

About a decade ago, I was nearly broke. We had to short-sell our first home and I was diagnosed with postpartum depression after the birth of our fourth child. In every way, I saw myself as a failure. As I worked through this process, I discovered new things about myself. I rebuilt my sense of self-worth. I found a new Why, which turned out to be helping people find the truth that dwells within them. Instead of focusing on outcome, I am focused on using my gifts to help as many people as I can, and I'm willing to suffer for that.

Hamilton Chan’s parents told him he could be a doctor or a lawyer. His “tiger mom” even had a mini breakdown when he deferred law school for a year to work for JPMorgan Investment Banking. He promised her he’d go back to law school after the year was up, and that’s what he did. 

Years later, his investment banking friends were making millions of dollars a year while he was slogging away doing due diligence as a corporate transactional attorney... and his mom asked him why he didn’t stick with investment banking. But Hamilton tells us you can’t blame anyone but yourself for your life decisions.

And Hamilton did experience outstanding success as a lawyer — he graduated from Harvard Law School, worked at a prestigious law firm in Los Angeles, represented Kobe Bryant, and worked at MGM Studios. But, ultimately, his legal career hit a dead end. He realized that he had taken what he was good at and polished it to such a point that it became something he no longer enjoyed. At one point, he was skimming hundreds of pages of documentation and writing about 15 pages of memos every day, without any time leftover to even pick up a magazine or read a book on the weekend.

Entrepreneurship was calling.

Hamilton wanted to be able to pursue creative endeavors, practice strategic thinking, and get out of corporate life. He told his family that he was very unhappy as an attorney, and his sister suggested he be a salesman at the family business, Charlie Chan Printing. After his whole family erupted in laughter, his mom and my dad said they could actually use some help. Although he had no experience in sales, he thought he could figure it out. Plus, he’d get to make business decisions and be involved in an enterprise that carried a lot of meaning and history for him.

After working in the family business, Hamilton went on to launch a tech startup. Then Loyola Law School approached him to start an executive education program, now called LLX. Hamilton was responsible for co-creating the vision behind it and coding a brand new interactive platform to host it on. He also teaches a six week class on negotiating, and really considers his role at Loyola Law School to be the culmination of his life experience and a true labor of love.

Hamilton’s tips from his off-the-beaten-path career are: 

• Learn to negotiate. You can leave a tremendous amount on the table if you are not skilled at negotiating. 
• Satisfy your curiosity and try new things.
• Realize that the business world is at least 90% networking. Hamilton used to see the world as super meritocratic and believed that, if you just produced the best work, everything would work out perfectly. Now he says that might be true for K-12, but not for the rest of your life.
• Make conscious choices to do the things that we should. The brain does such a phenomenal job of making sense of the world that it constantly discards contradictory information. And that's what helps us stay in a bad relationship, job, or situation.
• Craft the life that you want. Hamilton loves being able to spend time with his two daughters and his wife plus, have time for recreation, and work on...

Marie Forleo is a wildly successful coach and multi-passionate entrepreneur. Her new book Everything Is Figureoutable is out now, and to celebrate, I’m re-releasing this podcast episode with Marie (originally ep. 72).

Marie’s entrepreneurial journey started in a flurry on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. She’d recently graduated with a degree in finance and picked the mayhem of the Stock Exchange over a job in a cubicle. However she learnt very quickly that she hated the idea of having to go to the same place day in and day out every single day for the majority of the year. Her intuition was screaming at her to get out, so she did, leaving the Stock Exchange for a variety of jobs including bartending. 

How Intuition Drives Marie’s Business

Marie says that intuition is a core part of everything she does in her business, especially important things like marketing, hiring, pricing and product development. Growing up, her mom always taught her that if someone tried to talk to her and she felt uncomfortable, to trust that small little voice inside that says run or don't talk to this person or whatever it is. 

Intuition led Marie in many directions, and that’s why she became a multi-passionate entrepreneur. When she started her coaching business she also had a passion for dance, fitness and for hip hop. She knew that if she split her focus, everything would grow slower and she wouldn't make as much money, but creatively she’d probably be fulfilled. That turned out to be true. Despite starting a dance career in her 20s (when some dancers are actually winding down their careers), Marie ended up choreographing hip hop for MTV and being one of the world’s first Nike Elite Dance Athletes.

Another core value that drives Marie is curiosity. 

Curiosity is Essential

Marie believes that curiosity is integral to succeeding in business and life, especially in today’s environment where everything is changing so fast. She says, “If you believe that you already know everything, you're going to fail. Whether you fail right now or you fail in six months, or you fail in three years, you are going to fall on your face.”

The Future of Entrepreneurship

Marie predicts that soon more and more people will have to behave in an entrepreneurial manner, even if they’re not necessarily founding a company. There are more freelancers than there have ever been, more people working with flexible schedules, and intrapreneurs are becoming increasingly valuable within organizations.

She also believes that we’ll continue to see an emphasis on social entrepreneurship, and that, “Business owners who are wise enough to bake social good into their business model from a very sincere and genuine place are going to thrive in the future.”

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Dr. Paul White grew up in a family business - his parents and grandfather designed and created point of purchase display stands. Sometimes at dinnertime his dad would lead a discussion and ask questions like, what needs do you see out there? How might those needs be met? 

Dr. White started working full-time on the factory floor the summer he was 12. He learnt a lot but declined to work at the company when he grew up, partly because he and his father didn’t always agree. 

Instead he started counseling people at his church then became a psychologist who worked with kids and families. In the ‘90s he forged a career in the corporate realm. 85% of the companies in the U.S. are family-owned so business consultant friends started asking him to help out because of his background. That led him into business succession planning and employee engagement.

One day Dr. White was working with a father and son in their business, and realized they were just not connecting. Just prior to that he and his wife and had read the book, The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. He thought it might be of value in the workplace so pursued Dr. Chapman for a year and finally got through to his assistant and set up a meeting.

Dr. Chapman had already had 20-25 people pitch him with spin-off ideas about his book but was interested in Dr. White’s proposal about an online assessment tool for workplaces. Together they developed a set of tools to translate The Five Love Languages into a workplace context including a book called The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace. The materials have been translated into 20 languages and the book is selling more than a thousand copies every week.

Dr. White is passionate about showing appreciation for employees, not just the high-achievers, partly because research shows that companies that treat their employees well and pay attention to employee engagement function better than those that don't. 

He also loves helping organizations find the right way to show appreciation, depending on individual and cultural preferences. For instance, a side hug might be the way to go in the south but in the north-east a nod across the room is more common.

But it’s not all business. Dr. White is a huge proponent of empathy and treating employees well, not just because it’s good for the bottom line but because, “Employees are people. They're not just production units.”

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Luke Frazier defines himself as a servant leader who is inspired by the two great men in his life. 

Firstly, his grandfather. Luke says he’s the type of person who wakes up in the morning and asks, ‘How can I help the world?’ The second person was a teacher and pastor from Luke’s high school. He went to breakfast with Luke and his friends every Friday for two years and would always tell them to be good, which Luke interpreted as doing good in the world. Luke and one of his friends even got ‘be good’ tattooed on themselves about a year after their teacher and mentor passed away.

And Luke sure has gone on to do good in the world. 

He is co-founder and executive director of depression2extinction (d2e), a nonprofit on a mission to create space for mental health awareness. While Luke doesn’t think depression can ever be completely eradicated, d2e aims to end the stigma around depression and teaches people how to prevent going to really deep, dark places where they feel there’s no one to talk to.

To understand just how important this work is, you have to understand some of the facts around depression:

• 3.1 million adolescents aged 12-17 had at least one depressive episode last year
• The total economic burden of depression is estimated to be $210.5 billion per year
• ⅔ people with depression do not seek or receive proper treatment
• 80% of those who receive treatment for depression show an improvement within 4-6 weeks

To address this problem of people not seeking the treatment that will most likely benefit them, d2e have developed a check-in tool (available on their website) so that people can easily communicate their feelings. They offer services for teens and young adults, and their program is currently in about 50 schools across the country. They are also implementing their first workplace health program with an aviation company in Austin.

Most importantly, Luke advocates a mindful approach to avoiding conflict and anger. He says that when someone does something like cutting us off in traffic, “we can take some time to consider what they might be going through, ignore the lies that tell us to react with our emotions, and step into the good possibilities of our day.”

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Resources:

• depression2extinction.org
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