What If I Am Afraid To Have Passion?

So the other night I was reading Gary Vee’s Crushing It (a book about promoting yourself and your business, it’s more than that but I want to stay focused here) and he had a section that highlighted the fact that sometimes people have more passion than they have expertise and that’s ok. When that happens it’s sometimes hard to create enough content needed to provide value to your audience, he recommends the content be a documentation of the journey. Documentation vs. creation.

That makes a lot of sense but it’s hard because that means we have to be vulnerable. That’s where my perfectionism tendencies start creeping in on me. I feel like I don’t want to launch something or post something that isn’t polished (it’s something I am working on everyday and it’s what’s held back the growth of what we are trying to do with Success Stampede).

But more important and what I want to focus on here is the feeling I got when I read passion over expertise. Having passion and enthusiasm are very important to the health of your project. Which brings me to the question…

When I read the line “it’s not a problem if you have more passion than expertise,” for a split second a little movie ran through my head and it had a lot of clips of things that I loved and felt very passionate about, but these were the things that broke my heart because they didn’t work out. From crushes I had when I was an awkward young man (I’m still awkward at times, I’m just older and more experienced now) to career paths, to businesses that didn’t have the success they should have. When these things failed it hurt.

That line made me realize that no matter how far we’ve come in life’s transitions and transformations as we push ourselves to get 5% better than the day before, we still have things from our past that get drawn out when change is happening or about to happen.

For a second it felt a little defeating, but then the realization that I was having that feeling allowed me to slow down that thought and really take a look at where it came from and how it has affected me and my life.

What I discovered is the pain that came from having passion and experiencing a let down trained me to think PASSION = PAIN. WTH? So if I’m not passionate I don’t put myself in the situation that could bring pain. It’s just me protecting me.

So here it is, I’m being my authentic self, I’m so excited about discovering these thoughts and feelings in myself that I want to share it with you. In hopes that if you or someone you care about are having some life transition anxiety this example might help.

The way I processed this insight was realizing that the negative movie clips in my head each had a different set of circumstances, I was at a different place in my life and each contained actions or in some cases inaction that I have worked hard to eliminate from my life. So even though the memory of those things happening in past seemed very real, many of those things have been removed and replaced with new habits that serve me.

When I looked back at what brought this feeling on it was simply a new challenge I wasn’t clear on (and a little afraid of), and after I was able to take a few minutes and get clear, I decided that what was just going to be a journal entry would probably serve people better as a blog post. To use one of my 12 year old daughter’s lines…”You’re welcome!” ; )