Do Not Follow Your Passion

If we ask an entrepreneur, what his passion is, the reply mostly would be his business. So people would say their profession is their passion. We take up a job, get good at it over some time, start liking it and call it our passion. Some might choose activities that might not give them much material benefit but still prefer to do them. They are very rare but they lead a fulfilling life. They choose their passion over material benefits.

In this materialistic world, it is hard for many of us to follow our passion. There always will be exceptions, fortunate few would follow their passion and earn too. The only problem here is passion is about one particular activity. What if we do not like the activity that we are doing? We still need to do it to survive in this world. To live a more successful life and to identify the passion that suits us, we need to learn about our Swadharma.

Swadharma – The thing that comes naturally to us is called Swadharma. Swadharma is not about one particular activity but certain behavioural traits. If we identify/learn about our Swadharma, we can excel at most jobs.

Some people could focus for a long time, they are the workhorses of society. Some would love to lead others, the leaders of the world. Some would take roads less travelled, the innovators of the world. Some would love to help others. There are many such traits in all of us in varying degrees.

For a moment let’s assume we are in the teaching profession. People with all the above traits can excel. A workhorse teacher will joyously fulfil all her repetitive jobs. Teaching the same chapter every year or recording every child’s progress.

A teacher, who is a leader will excel in motivating the children, to give them a goal mostly their exams, with clear goal and motivation children will work towards it.

A teacher who tries to innovate will find different methods to teach children. Inventing teaching methods like Montessori or ways to teach ADHD children or just finding different ways to calculate and so on. A teacher with a helping heart will not leave any child behind. They will be there to help these kids in improving their grades.

So it is the same profession, approached differently by different individuals, but all of them will excel at this profession and help society in the process. For this, all that we need to do is find out about Swadharma.

Paradharma – These are things that we are not good at. Most of us end up doing these things because of the material benefits that they give us.

During my college times, I was staring at a choice: To take up my family business or look at a completely new career. I decided to take the safe option of continuing my family business. It was a no-brainer for me.

But I was an introvert, My life was all about gadgets, books and my Sadhanas. One small room was enough or me to survive.

When I took up business I struggled to communicate. I had to deal with people day in and day out. I was very poor in communication, I would talk at a very rapid pace and only people who are close to me could understand me. In the earlier days, I could not even make one phone call to the client and inform the status of the orders.

Luckily for me, I was encouraged by my friends at college to participate in various cultural events, I got mentored at social clubs that I joined and the business networks that I joined, too, trained me in various aspects of communication. Of course, most of my clients were like family and I could converse with them without much trouble.

All these helped me in learning about communication and today, I can address large gatherings too, without much trouble. Today nearly after 2 decades into this journey, I am writing this blog, which is my 50th blog. From an introvert to a blog writer I have come a long way purely because of the wonderful souls around me.

Life is not always about following our passion. Most times we would be doing menial, boring and other jobs that we hate and are afraid of. We all can learn to do such things, provided we give ourselves enough time and do not mind the judgments passed by others. Passion is our Ragas, other acts are our Dveshas. Learning to handle our Dveshas becomes very important for spiritual growth.

People who follow passion will be happy, and people who do things according to their Swadharma will excel in many fields. People who learn to do things that are alien to them will feel the most gratifying sense of accomplishment.

R Rajesh Kumar

Awareness – Bliss – Contemplation