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To passion or not to passion

Scott Galloways point that "Follow your passion" is bad advice somewhat resonated with me and I set thinking about it. I agree with him broadly. It took me a long time to realise what is my passion. And I realised that my passion is a stack - and has a couple of things at the core. 

For one, I had to do something that was difficult for me - speaking in public in front of people and training them. It was through a fairly complex route that I reached here. This was neither natural not did I have a flair for it - it was pure effort and practice of getting better at it. It was also a derivative of something else - since I am not a natural speaker nor an extrovert.  The starting point was the design element of the training which I enjoy the most. 

I remember from school times - I would read Brand Equity - the Economic Times supplement on advertising. And the creative side of advertising attracted me. But marketing was not something I was sure I enjoyed, so that fell by the wayside. 

Much later as I moved full time into training - I realised that what I liked was the creativity and not advertising per se. And Learning and Development enabled me to be creative in the design stage and the delivery stage. It was this creativity in design that enabled me to be a better speaker. 

On the face of it, it appears that training people is my passion, but that would be a surface level understanding. I definitely like the like the design and creativity aspect far more than the delivery - but leaving it there would again be just a level lower and I thus like to deliver what I design.

Along the way, the aspect of creativity - innovation - again about how to enable creativity became an area of interest. And I am a board games and other games aficionado - me and the kids often try new games on the app store apart from trying out new board games. A chance opportunity of creating a Learning game (not a training activity which involves people throwing balls into baskets) enabled me to explore another side here - that of games.

One thing led to another and post creation of Playback and 108% Indian - after all these years, I have come to the conclusion my passion is "creation"  (corollary: "originality") and problem solving.

If this question was asked to me say 20 years ago, I would have had a faint idea (but zero confidence). 10 years ago, I might have had a slightly closer insight. But in this intervening period - I have continuously worked on it and hence today I can say, somewhat confidently, that yes, this is what I am good at. I still have miles to go before I can say that yes, this is my passion, but for now, this is it. 

So, as Scott says - passion is something one discovers along the way - it is not so apparent right away (atleast was not for me). And it is something you build on - your habits, experience, exposure all sharpen it - you begin to enjoy it and it becomes a passion. 

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