You Can't Teach Passion
Takeaway Points:
Passion is a key element of success in any endeavor - in general, passionate people rise to the top, and passionless people struggle to keep up.
How can you identify your passions? How can you focus on the things that are important to you, and learn to avoid or minimize the things that aren’t?
Each person is different, and that’s ok - your passions may not align with somebody else’s, and all you can do is try to find passion where you can and pursue it.
Finding Passion
I’ve thought a lot about fitness, productivity, intelligence, and self-improvement over the years - I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that you can’t really teach passion.
When it comes to working with clients, you often have a sense of who’s immediately going to succeed. These people are immediately apparent - they’re motivated, they’re aggressive, they’re passionate, and mainly all that they need is someone who knows a bit better, someone who’s a bit further along the path to give them a bit of guidance.
There are plenty of people that you can’t tell, in advance, whether they’re going to make it or not. They certainly don’t have passion, but maybe they’ll be able to find some of it along the way - you do your best to support them and give them a variety of training methods so that they have a greater chance of finding something that clicks, but it may or may not work out. In any case, it’s still a mutually beneficial relationship if it doesn’t work out. The client will typically learn a lot about themselves and what they can tolerate and enjoy with fitness, as well as gain more pure experience with understanding training and diet, and this can help them to make better decisions about their health and fitness in the long run.
Why You Can’t Teach Passion
The problem is, passion is something that you can’t teach. You can’t force people to be passionate about something. The reality is that at the end of the day, some people will enjoy fitness (or learning a new language, or learning an instrument, or picking up any new skill), and some people won’t. Some people will just click, and other people will struggle their whole lives.
Some of this has to do with genetic predisposition. Naturally, some people will find fitness easier than others, and this will make it easier for them to find passion for it. Other people will be simply genetically disadvantaged, or have a lot more injuries or disabilities to work around, and this makes progress slower and harder. This will naturally make it easier for some people to find passion than others - though interestingly, in my coaching career, I’ve seen many clients with stereotypically “bad” genetics and slow rates of progress who still had a lot more passion than clients with better genetics and an easier time of it.
Fitness clicked for me, over sixteen years ago, and now it’s such a natural part of my life that it’s as simple as breathing to me. I can’t really imagine a life without regular workouts. I see a lot of clients who are the same, and a lot of clients who aren’t.
The Value of Passion
And the thing is - that the people who have passion are going to succeed, regardless of the obstacles. The people who genuinely enjoy things are the people who put in the most time, find it the most effortless. You can’t really compete with someone who has genuine passion - they’re going to stick with it regardless of the difficulties, seek out solutions even when it’s tough, and develop and grow their understanding over time.
Conversely, if you don’t have the passion, you can succeed via “discipline” or “willpower” (as much as these things exist) for a while, but you probably won’t ever really measure up to the people with true passion. If it’s boring and exhausting for you to train and you never really enjoy it, chances are that you’re not going to be the best at whatever skill it is that you’re practicing.
What Can You Do About It?
I think at the end of the day, the best thing you can do is simply ensure that you’re not wasting your time. Spend some amount of time figuring out the things you like and don’t like - identify your passions and reinvest your energy in them repeatedly over time, and don’t hesitate to drop those habits and practices which don’t align with your passions.
Sometimes, there are non-passion things that you still need to do - fitness is a good example for many people. In these cases, you want to focus, not on putting all your time and effort into these practices, but instead finding a good balance. You want to invest just enough time and energy into your practice to get the 80/20 max/min of result to effort, and just move on with your life.
I’ve wasted so much time in my life chasing after things I wasn’t really passionate about. I’ve also learned over time how to cut those things off, reinvest my time into those things that matter, and get the most out of my real passions (for the most part: lifting, language learning, personal finance, a handful of video games, and my work). It’s not an easy process, but it’s definitely an extremely valuable one.
I think that when I was younger, I used to think that I had a lot more time ahead of me, and I could afford to spend a lot of my time on things that I was, generally, less passionate about. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve generally found that I overestimated my time pretty strongly, and wasted a lot of it - and refocusing my time and energy on the things that I care about has made it a lot easier to be happy and invested in the things that I truly do feel passion for.
Stop fucking around - find your passion, and stick to it!
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
Follow Adam on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our mailing list, if you liked this post and want to say hello!
Enjoy this post? Share the gains!
Ready to be your best self? Check out the Better book series, or download the sample chapters by signing up for our mailing list. Signing up for the mailing list also gets you two free exercise programs: GAINS, a well-rounded program for beginners, and Deadlift Every Day, an elite program for maximizing your strength with high frequency deadlifting.
Interested in coaching to maximize your results? Inquire here.
Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. For more info, check out my affiliate disclosure.
