Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

I must have struck a nerve. Some Passionistas told me I'm full of something icky. Well, Ok then. I think they didn't watch the whole video. They only read the headline. So just in case you're wondering. I love passion. I enjoy it every day. But following your passion still isn't a great idea for career decision-making.  Even the best hitters in baseball miss over two-thirds of their at-bats. Just because you love something once, doesn't mean you're going to love it the same way or at all another time. I love playing guitar and singing, but there are more nights than not that it's a less than passionate experience. Sometimes it's a downright slog.  Does that mean I regret doing it for so long? No way! I'd do it again today, although I would probably do it differently and I would've shot higher so that I didn't have to carry my own gear. But passion wasn't the driving force. The things that drove me then and still drive me today are curiosi

I don't think "follow your passion" is good career advice. At least for me, it hasn't been. We make the common mistake of thinking that our passion is caused by an activity or a circumstance, but passion, like every other emotion, is created by the quality of our thinking from moment to moment.  The feeling of flow, presence, and transcendence is a simple shift in your consciousness to a state of mind in which thinking slows or stops - those moments when our self-consciousness fades into the background and our energy peaks. We mistakenly think that the activity was the reason for the feeling, but we could just as easily slip into a passionate state doing something else. That's why I suggest that passion isn't a reliable guide.  I'll tell you more about your more reliable guide in this Coffee Break. If you are ready to discover and leap into the best expression of who you are, let's schedule a coaching session. Use the contact form on the about page and