I recently stumbled on a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert – the author of Eat Pray Love – on a curiosity-driven life. In this talk entitled “The Flight of the Hummingbird: The Curiosity-Driven Life”, Gilbert speaks out against passion. That’s right – it’s not a typo – she was advocating for steering clear of passion. And I got excited, because this incessant search for passion, and the frustration that some of us have with not finding it, is one of the reasons why we created The LEAP Journey.
So, here’s the back story. Gilbert discloses at the start of her talk that she has always believed in passion. She knew from a young age – ever since she figured out that books didn’t just appear out of the ether but were actually created by people – that she wanted to be a writer. This self-insight drove her with an unstoppable passion to pursue writing above everything else. When she wrote her memoir about her own life, she had no idea that it would become such a hit and that they would even end up making a movie about it.
A spin-off of her “overnight” fame, was that she was consequently invited to give motivational talks everywhere and when people asked her how she did it – i.e. how she wrote her books and got famous – she would, without missing a beat, tell them about the pursuit of passion. Her message was: find your passion, follow it and everything will fall into place, because that’s how it happened for her.
Until one night when she gave a talk in Australia, and upon arriving back at her hotel, noticed that someone had posted a message to her on her Facebook page. The message was from a woman who had attended her talk in Australia and left feeling even more despondent than ever. This woman then described her life-long struggle in trying to find her passion. She explained that she was not lazy and was eager to find that one thing in life that could become the focus of all her energy and joy, but she had become disillusioned. See the problem is, that this woman had various interests and many things she would like to explore, and she was struggling to settle on just one thing. It got to a point where she started believing that there was something wrong with her. Why was she unable to find her passion? Based on how others were describing what it felt like to have a passion, surely, she would have noticed if she found it? If it causes a fire in your belly and gets you out of bed in the morning, it can’t be something that is easily overlooked.
This letter from a stranger, shocked Gilbert to the core and made her re-evaluate her whole idea of what it takes to become successful in life. She spent a lot of time reflecting on the people in her own life whom she loved or admired. She contemplated whether any of them had a clear passion and a clear path for their life. She reluctantly had to conclude that none of them did. The people in her life whom she admired or respected the most, all had messy and complicated lives. None of them had one clear direction that was set for them at an early age and none of them had walked an easy path. Their lives’ paths resembled a maze more than a straight road; where they had to take various turns and discover many things along the way before reaching their destination.
Yet, it was the very fact that they had tried a variety of things and had so many different life experiences – and often had endured so much hardship – that made them the wisest, kindest and most compassionate people she knew. Their life experiences enriched their characters and made them the kind of people you turn to in a crisis, because they have knowledge and insight that others don’t have, and they are sure of who they are.
Gilbert mentions some of these people in her talk – more specifically her husband and her best friend. She describes the challenging lives they had lived and the obstacles they had overcome to become who they are. And she concluded that there are two kinds of people in the world: (1) Jackhammers and (2) Hummingbirds.
Jackhammers thrive on passion. They have one focus and they drill down deep without even looking up to see what the rest of the world is busy with. They cannot be deterred from their path. In fact, they tend to be a bit obsessive in the pursuit of their passion. They speak and live with passion and they are often loud about it. They share their insights on how they discovered their passion and how that made all the difference and their advice to others is: “Follow your passion and you simply can’t go wrong”.
Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are more curious than passionate. They travel from tree to tree, from flower to flower, and from field to field; paying attention to what’s happening around them and embarking on many different experiences in pursuit of satisfying their curiosity. They don’t focus on just one thing with all their time and energy and often their path is not straight or easy for that matter. Two things happen along the way: (1) they create incredibly complex and rich lives for themselves and (2) they end up cross-pollinating the world. They bring new fresh ideas by combining their insights and experiences in unique ways. They gain depth and insight that serve others and they discover their own joy along the way.
Gilbert advises people who realise that they are Hummingbirds, and not Jackhammers, to decide to take the word “passion” off the table and to replace it with “curiosity”. Curiosity is a gentler, kinder and more welcoming instinct than passion. She argues that passion is intimidating and all-consuming and can deplete all your resources, because passion is greedy and demanding. In contrast to passion, Gilbert reasons curiosity will never strip your life bare. “Curiosity doesn’t take, it gives. It gives you clues on the incredible scavenger hunt that is your life.” Curiosity doesn’t take so much energy, because even on the most tiresome of days, you can still find something you are curious about. Curiosity is easy to dip into and out of whilst maintaining balance. “The only thing curiosity will ask of you is to turn your head a quarter of an inch and just look a little closer at one of those clues in your life”.
Furthermore, if you are able to continue on this path of paying attention to the things you are curious about, and trying new things, you might look up one day and realise you are exactly where you want to be, with the people you want to surround yourself with, doing the work you want to be doing. Gilbert urges that “If you can let go of your passion and just follow your curiosity, your curiosity just might lead you to your passion”.
Gilbert ends her talk by offering an apology on behalf of all Jackhammers to all Hummingbirds for often “bullying” them into believing that finding their passion is the only way to have a fulfilling life. She leaves us with the message that we should have the courage, humility and faith to look for the next clue, and to trust that the breadcrumbs strewn across our life path will bring us to the place in the universe where we are intended to be.
At the LEAP Academy, we support the view of rather following your interest or curiosity instead of trying to find your passion. We reason that passion is not an effective strategy, because it relies on a feeling and feelings change. As our lives evolve, our values and the things we care about also shift. For this reason, it makes more sense to pursue our curiosity, because as we evolve, we will always find more things to be curious about. Furthermore, curiosity helps us maintain our juvenescence. In other words, it keeps us young and ties us to the choice to remain active and interested in life, even as we age.
What we discovered on our own LEAP Journeys, is that it’s more important to understand who you are and to know what drives you at the core. A clear “Why” or reason for being, coupled with authentic interests and a willingness to experiment, goes a lot further than just being filled with passion for something. We are not saying passion is a bad thing. We are saying it’s not the only thing and it’s not essential to a meaningful and fulfilling life that you start by having a passion. What we’ve realised, is that often passion is discovered gradually a long the way on the journey of self-discovery. It’s not always a eureka moment. Part of living a fulfilling or engaged life, includes also finding a balance and learning to love what is good about your life right now. Your life is not some future destination or end goal; your life is unfolding in the present with every step that you take and the most joy is to be found right here in the place you are right now. As we discover who we are and actively cultivate our strengths, we gradually realise our future selves, whilst taking a moment to stop and smell the roses along the way.
At the LEAP Academy we support the idea of a 100-year life, and we advocate for self-innovation as part of the process of surviving and thriving in the future world of work. One of the best ways to thrive in the future world of work, is the learn to be agile and flexible, to remain curious and to be willing to operate outside of your comfort zone. This is something that Hummingbirds do best. Hummingbirds are interested in many things and they do have a passion. They have a passion for life. In an uncertain, unpredictable and possibly daunting future world of work, having a passion for life, and for learning and discovering new things, will take you a lot farther than simply having a passion for one thing. What if that one thing becomes outdated or is replaced by something new and different?
If you are unprepared for it, the future world of work of hyper-specialisation and continuous renewal and reinvention, could be a daunting place. However, through the deep self-work and preparation you will do on The LEAP Journey, you can turn the future world of work into an opportunity for living a life characterised by purpose and meaning. On The LEAP Journey, we take a step back to understand ourselves better and we begin with the end in mind – in other words, my idealised future self. We ask what do you need to value today to become the person you envisage you want to be in future? What habits do you have to cultivate today to ensure an optimised future self? Along the way, we encourage self-cultivation and curiosity, because through this process of moving from one interest to the next, we start to realise our future self without it actually feeling like hard work.
When I hear Gilbert urging those who are struggling to find their passion, to take up their place in the world, I’m reminded of Caroline McHugh’s statement that most people don’t take up nearly enough of the space the universe intended for them. That’s our message and our invitation to all the Hummingbirds out there: there is a you-shaped space in the universe that only you can fill, and it is when you discover that, that you are free to sing the note you are supposed to sing. So, stop fretting over finding your passion and embrace the remarkable, messy, complex and intriguing person that you are. Embrace the uncertainty of not knowing and find the only thing you need to know, which is your “Why”, and trust that by living in alignment with your authentic “Why”, your passion might just find you instead.
References:
- Breytenbach, C. (2018). Why you shouldn’t try to find your passion but rather aim to develop your interests. The LEAP Journey. Available online at: https://leapjourney.org/2018/06/15/why-you-shouldnt-try-to-find-your-passion/
- Gilbert, E. (2007). Eat, Pray, Love: One woman’s wearch for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia. New York: Riverhead Books.
- Gilbert, E. (2015). The Flight of the Hummingbird: The Curiosity-Driven Life. Super Soul Sessions. Aired on 17 October 2015. Available online at: http://www.oprah.com/own-supersoulsessions/elizabeth-gilbert-the-curiosity-driven-life-video?fbclid=IwAR13XK9VA8N-UBQcJnCXBtiQBmDVvC-Zdt_BcczPAXU2__WXuAi0lk6lVd0
- McHugh, C. (2013). The art of being yourself. TEDxMiltonKeynesWomen. Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veEQQ-N9xWU
