Instead of thinking about the passion, explains Komisar, free yourself to think of a portfolio of passions. Marry this portfolio with the opportunities in front of you, he says. Think of it as a quest towards which you are moving in the right direction, he adds.
Transcript
You know there's a couple of questions, persistent questions that come out of that book that I'd like to address. One of them is this notion of how does somebody choose their passion? I know this is particular with students and what I notice is a student will come to me and say, "How do I know what my passion is?" and I was perplexed by that question for a while and then I thought back to my own time as a student and after recently graduated. And I realized I was passionate about everything. I loved everything. Again, life was a fire hydrant. And what I've sort of, how I've addressed that question over time is rather than thinking about the passion, free yourself up to think about a portfolio of passions and the task is to marry that portfolio of passions to the opportunities in front of you. The question that will paralyze you, two questions will paralyze people. One is, what is the passion that will paralyze you? Because now you're going to optimize amongst 10 things that seem like they might be your passion or not. The other thing is, what's the ultimate question? What is the ultimate thing that you're going to do with your life? What is the ultimate mark you're going to make? What is the farthest horizon that you can articulate? Those two questions will drive you crazy and paralyze you. I find it the last, the second question was theorized and needed to be simplified to north, south, east, or west.
What are my values? What do I care about? And to think about the horizon rather than a point on the horizon. Because the horizon by definition is always outside of your grasp. But it can give you a direction. You can know that you're heading north not south. Then comes the issue of how do you make a decision today based upon, you know, the things you need to do or feel you want to do. Well, that's a foreground/background issue. No! Forget the horizon. I'm facing north. What are my opportunities facing north? What's in front of me or what's proximate? What opportunity can I create facing that direction? Forget ultimately where I go. Look right in the foreground, what's there? How do they sync up with my passion? How do they sync up with the passions that I have today? And now if it comes an issue of just choosing between right answers.
A discussion with a good friend of mine who's an analyst with UBS and we're talking yesterday and we said, you know the biggest issue is not choosing between a right answer and a wrong answer. That's easy. The hardest thing to do in life is choosing amongst right answers. It's the issue of optimization. Optimization will drive you crazy. And so the issue in my mind is to make a decision based upon a set of right answers as they marry up against what you really feel here about them. And then do them. And so you got this notion of, you know, you got 10 doors in front of you, you're going to walk through one. You have that immediate sense of loss. Nine doors closed.
Guess what? Ten doors just opened. And if you begin to see life that way, it becomes easier to make decisions and move forward. My career makes no sense at all in the windshield. It only makes sense in the rearview mirror. And that I think applies to lots and lots and lots of people in their lives and careers. So if I was going to write an epilogue, I think I would address those two issues and try to clarify them a little bit.
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