The Internet is flooded with debates on whether you should follow your passion. Is it really viable? Can everyone actually make a living doing what they love?
Here are just a few popular videos on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT1i26RbrhM
Mike Rowe’s whole point in the video was that the winners who won big, say all the billionaires profiled in the other video, were one in a million people who had passions that happened to be profitable. One of his points was there is a graveyard and survivorship effect going on here where the person who makes it may be screaming about it’s about following your passion while those who failed are not acknowledged.
A great example is the entertainment industry. How many rappers competed to get to the level of success of Jay-Z? How many failed? How many failed actors and actresses are out there? I am not disagreeing or agreeing with any points made here. I am just stating that Mike Rowe’s point was not disproved here by just showing these excerpts from successful people. If anything, it in some ways supports it. If anything, I would love to here his point disproved but I don’t think it does it here. I also think Mike Rowe’s point was kind of lost through editting in the original video and easily misinterpretted. I think his main point was that there were many people he had seen make a lot of money who seized that job/industry because it was an opportunity when there weren’t any and/or because their passion wasn’t something they were anything competent at. And they learned to enjoy what they did. I think you can only do this to a certain extent and can’t learn to enjoy any industry or skillset fully as you please, but I do think there is some leniance.
A relevant example is Donald Trump who wanted to be an actor but decided to keep going with real estate because he had years of experience and everyone told him it would be a waste of talent and skill. I think there is so many more factors to consider here and it can be a bit of an oversimplification. One of those factors, as an example, would be the American Idol syndrome. You don’t want to be that person who is horrible at singing and thinks that perseverance will get you through it. Some of those people will never be good singers with 1,000 years of practice. This illustrates just another thing to consider which is having a realistic non-delusional perspective.
I don’t think following your passion is a necessity for happiness. There are many times in our past history where just HAVING a job was what people were fighting for. Just look at the picture below of the horrible lines people had to wait in during the Great Depression just to apply for a job.
Nowadays, however, I do think in this day and age, we have more flexibility and choice to do things that are more fun and make a lot of money from it too.
