“Andrew exhibits incredible passion.”

That was one of the best lines in my first performance review at Amazon. At least that’s what I thought at the time.

Granted, I had more enthusiasm than a clown in a balloon store, and teams responded positively to that.

But looking back, passion was my Achilles heal.

That first role didn’t end well for me.

Reasons passion is overrated

1. Threatens other people: The normies are boring and scared. You’re not. Queue fear and paranoia.

2. Creates a pleasure addiction: You crave more of what makes you feel good, avoiding the stuff that doesn’t. This is a real problem with elite military people. Many of us crave dopamine intensely.

3. Deludes: You convince yourself that passion is the way the world should work. You actually get angry about it.

4. Fades: At some point, work is just… work. Excitement is often tied to novel things. Unless you bounce around a lot, you’ll eventually get bored. (Pro tip: that’s normal :)

5. Prevents habit formation: Passion is about impulse. Feeling. Success is about habits.

6. Makes us arrogant: Maybe it’s just me 😬, but I give myself a defribillator-sized boost of neurochemicals just by thinking of how passionate I am. Ultimately this results in comparison.
   
   Usually we think of comparison as “the thief of joy.” I.e. a depressant (“Oh, Sherri married an NFL quarterback.”).
   
   Here’s it’s narcissistic as in, “Sweet. I am the f—ing quarterback.”

Why we INSIST on passion — (even when we know better)

Our minds like the “grooves” that have already been laid down, as author Robert Cialdini puts it. So we naturally like things we’re already good at. Put differently, we like things that don’t make us change our way of thinking.

Simply: passion is EASY.

Passion demands little. It’s like sailing with the wind at your back.

It gets better (or worse):

Brianna Wiest makes clear that our patterns aren’t intentionally destructive.

Nay, I say, nay! <old-timey British accent for effect>

• (We talked about Brianna and her book The Mountain Is You in last week’s newsletter.)

Rather, our patterns serve to validate our worldview (or somehow cope — even if it’s not helpful long term).

Passion makes us FEEL good.

When we do something we enjoy, our brain becomes a self-licking ice cream cone.

But it can become like a drug.

Don’t get me wrong, passion is not always bad.
↳ We SHOULD enjoy life.
↳ We SHOULD take the path of least resistance sometimes.

But beware: passion is an exceedingly fickle friend.

What to do about it

1. Stay: Practice remaining in place when things get boring or tough.

2. Reckanize: To defeat our enemy, we must respect him. When we respect the downsides of passion, we can start to recognize that feeling in a mindful way. We can take a step back, and (maybe) act rationally.

3. Ikigai: Venn diagrams are like soft porn for nerds. Ikigai boils down to a Venn diagram. The idea is that your best life lies at the intersection of what works and what you like doing (more or less).
   
   It was invented by the Japanese Oprah.
   
   Despite my porn comparison above, you really should do this exercise. It puts passion in its rightful, Goldilocks-ian place.

And #4: Most of life is boring — and that’s okay

Staying in denial only delays your progress.

Even musicians get tired of playing their scales and being on the road.

In the SEAL Teams, we used to say,

“Everyone wants to be a frogman on a sunny day.”

Then again, I wanted to be in that cold surf because of what it meant.

Someone super smart that I don’t know once said:

And mostly, hard doesn’t mean running through a hailstorm of bullets.

↳ Hard is just more boring than the alternative.
↳ Hard is not being stimulated.
↳ Hard is allowing yourself to be calm.

And being calm allows you to be hard.

Be the calm.

Coda

1/

2/ Last week I forgot to mention that The Mountain Is You audiobook is free for Spotify Premium members.

3/ No, there is no Japanese Oprah. (I actually checked lol.)

But we can dream, right?

Outro

“Life doesn’t need a soundtrack. Life is a soundtrack.”
—Sri

Too on the nose?

I saw these guys in concert in Seattle years back with a girl I loved so much it was painful.

She ghosted me.

F— passion.
(at least for now ;)

Cheers

Find me at thewarriorpoet.com and on LinkedIn.

Get unstuck, and crush it. Double period.