The most popular wrong advice nowadays is: ‘Follow Your Passion’
‘Follow Your Passion’ is the most popular advice floating around. You would find many successful people speaking in favour of it. There are also many movies made on this subject nowadays all over the world.
The fact is that most people who follow their passion end up being a failure and lead a miserable life.
- For every successful writer, there are thousands of unsuccessful and unknown writers
- For every successful cricketer, there are several thousands who never make it to a national team
- For every successful entrepreneur, there are hundreds of failed business ventures
- For every successful film star, there are thousands who don’t progress beyond extras
- However, no one talks about their failures but only talk about one in a million success stories.
Recently, a movie was released(in India) with the title ‘Secret Superstar’. This is a wonderful movie which is about following your passion. In this movie, the girl follows her passion of singing against the wishes to her father and ultimately succeeds. Millions of people around the world would be motivated to follow their passion after watching the movie, irrespective of their abilities and talents. They would not take into account the fact that the girl had immense talent in singing and she became a superstar by just one song uploaded on YouTube. Such successes are one in a million and yet these efforts bear fruits only if you have inborn talent.
I would also like to refer to another movie made by Aamir Khan with the title ‘Dangal’. This movie became a blockbuster all over the world. It is based on a real life story of a former wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, who forcefully trained his young daughters Geeta and Babita in wrestling against their wishes. The girls had no passion for wrestling, but they had immense talent in it. Hence, even though they were actually forced into this profession against their wishes, they succeeded and later became national and international champions.
You must, therefore, follow your passion only in the area where you have some special talents.
If you follow the passion in the area just because others are doing it, or that profession is highly valued or because you love doing it; without having any special talents in that area, you are most likely to fail.
You must first discover yourself before you dedicate your life for following your passion.