Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The dogma of Doing what you Love

'Doing what you love' has almost become an ideology. That there are so many articles and books published on this subject alone shows that people think about this more than actually practicing it.
Why is that? Why is it so difficult for people to realize on their own that what they're doing right now might not be the activity which they're best suited to do? Why do so many of us need an external force to make us realize the truth which is there at the forefront of our mind all the time? The reason might be the way of phrasing the thought itself.
"DOING" what you "LOVE"
When you force a verb to interact with an abstract noun it would more often than not lead to the irresistible force paradox.
Let us break down this simple phrase into parts to understand its meaning and finally attempt to solve it.

Understanding what you Love
How do you define Love? Is it a feeling, an emotion, a state of mind, perception or thought process?
It might be a process of filling the blanks. It might be also coveting what you don't have.
Human beings are perpetually unsatisfied. For every quality that one has, there are more than one which he would like to have. And they vary greatly among people. Human beings are complex, calculating creatures who instinctively know what they want. But the culture of suppression is such that they don't allow themselves to bring their wants to the surface. All of us are on an eternal quest to complete ourselves. We understand instinctively that this quest is not a solo ride and can be successful only if we are somehow able to find the element that is missing from within. It might be that we are all binary creatures and what doesn't exist within us can never be developed. We need that other person who has the missing element to join us for the ride.
When two people fall in Love, what happens exactly?
We meet so many people everyday and while we are going through our daily motions, internally an insane algorithm runs in the background plotting checks and crosses. When the number of checks is higher than the crosses, something clicks. The greasy old machine shakes itself and comes alive;  the clogs crash clumsily against each other trying to understand each others' rhythm and once they're all in sync, the magic unfolds. People who say Love happens at first sight are ignorant. You're forever searching for Love but understand you've got it only when you see the result. But if there were no process, there wont be any result to speak of. The process is what ensures that you fall in Love. The forever searching for Love is what culminates in the bliss you experience. Simple mathematics suggests that the more arrows you shoot, the probability of hitting the target increases. But the focus should be on shooting the arrows itself rather than hitting the target. The result will take care of itself.
People spend so much of their time in trying to decide what they want to do in their life. It would be fair to say that a big factor in their coming to a conclusion is satisfying their Ego. People decide they want to be an Actor as they love putting on a show. Putting on a show is the result, do they actually enjoy the preparation that goes into each role? The understanding the role, doing the necessary research, the attempt to know so much about the character that when they're on stage, they're not "acting" instead they're doing what comes to them naturally when they think of the character. If they do this activity well, being an actor would be a cake walk. The result would be they put on a good show each time and this brings in more opportunities. Not only doing it once but having the inclination to do the preparation again and again and again irrespective of how good you are defines if you actually Love what you do. You should Love the process of becoming an Actor to be a successful Actor. If you dont Love the process, its fair to say the probability of success will be very low. Success is a great motivation as it targets the most basic of a human being's instincts.
If you think you want to be a Writer, you need to enjoy the almost chronic aspect of researching, reading and learning.
Same goes for jobs. If you think you Love sales, you need to enjoy the process of selling. Meeting new people, travelling to new places, understanding their cultures, understand the one thing that motivates the decision maker, adapting your communication each and every time. If you enjoy the process, you find ways of constantly doing it better and the result would be great sales each time and great success each time. Great Success ensures that you love what you're doing and motivates you to do even better.


Finding what you Love
Once you understand what you Love, finding what you Love is a bit easier. In a day you go through maybe a 100 activities. The first step is to maintain a log book. Jot down the time you spend in doing each activity. Ensure that these activities are self originated. Don't note down the things which you are being asked to do. Maintain the log book for a week. At the end of the week, you will have a rough idea of where you spent the maximum time. The next week, spend more time on doing the top three activities identified. A new log will help you to shortlist the activity which you enjoy doing the most. People are rarely honest with themselves. To eliminate any false bias, ask a person who knows you closely to maintain such a log about you and share their thoughts. You'll be surprised at how accurate this might be.

The key is to keep trying. Some people spend their entire lives trying to find the person that they love. But they never stop trying. The more you try, the more the chances of success. Trying out different things helps you to narrow down your area of interest better. Once you find the thing that really keeps you on your feet, don't be disappointed if you wont be able to take that up as a career. Many of us would realize that we Love Cricket and anything associated with it. Many more would agree that it is not possible to take up a career in Cricket now. But it is not necessary to be a player to be involved. There are many more avenues open which keeps you close to sport. And getting involved in most of them will be better than hitting the keyboards at an IT Sweatshop for 9 hours a day/ 5 days a week,

Introspect and Never lose hope. Dont get lost in the dogma of hopelessness and compromise for being a clog in the wheel. At the same time, being unorthodox just for the sake of it might not be the wisest thing to do.
Society would like you to lose all originality but you're an individual.
What you Love can only be identified by you.
Its not easy but its worth it.