Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life (9 page)

Passion Fuels More Passion

There are, however, two distinct differences that distinguish passionate people from uninspired people.

First, passionate people know what they are passionate about. Boiled down to that last sentence, this statement might sound obvious and trite, but truth be told, no one is passionate about just one thing. Joshua isn’t passionate about only writing; he’s passionate about contributing to other people, and he’s passionate about living a healthy life, among other things. Similarly, Ryan isn’t passionate about only mentoring people; he’s passionate about growing as an individual and constantly improving his life and various other pursuits. Passionate people know what they are most passionate about, they know what else they are passionate about, they know what gets them excited, what gets them energized, what gets them into a peak state.

Second, passion fuels more passion. Passionate people turn to their passions when they aren’t feeling inspired. On those days when they don’t want to get out of bed or start that new project, passionate people focus on the things that get them excited. For example, there were times during the creation of this book—particularly while editing the first three drafts—that seemed especially dull and monotonous. Instead of waiting to be inspired by a sudden burst of passionate activity, we chose to continue our trek through the murky waters of monotony, all the while keeping an eye on what we knew we were passionate about. In fact, it was our passions that acted as a beacon in the night—by dredging through the tedium, we were able to stay focused on what was important. Without our passions guiding us, it would have been easy to veer off course and never return. By the end of the fourth draft of this book, we were both excited about our creation and what it would mean to the people we shared it with.

Using what you’re passionate about to keep you focused and fuel more passion is a critical part in discovering your mission. But first you must discover what you’re passionate about.

Removing Anchors to Find Your Passion

It is often difficult to discover your passions because you’re stuck in the vapid muck of your daily routine. It’s easy to embrace the uninspiring, lifeless cycle of your everyday work. Lather, rinse, repeat. It seems too easy. That’s because it
is
too easy. It’s easy to get anchored down by our daily lives, and it’s much harder to free yourself of those anchors.

As it turns out, we discovered four main anchors in our own lives that were keeping us from pursuing our passions: identity, status, certainty, and money.

Removing the Anchor of Identity

Who are you?
Have you ever sat down and thought about this question? On the surface, it sounds fairly simple, but in reality it’s an expansive question, and it’s not an easy one to answer. Because of the complexity of this question, we often turn to our vocation for an answer: I’m a teacher, I’m an accountant, I’m a sales manager, I’m a stay-at-home mom. While all these answers are acceptable answers to a different question (i.e.,
What do you do to earn a paycheck?
or
How do you spend the majority of your time?
), they become problematic when we give these labels enough meaning to say
That’s who I am as a person.

Once you acknowledge that your vocation is who you are, it’s extraordinarily difficult to do something else. This is one of the reasons people stay in the same industry when they change jobs (
I wasn’t happy as a sales manger at ABC Paper Company, but I bet I’ll be happy as a sales manager at XYZ Paper Company!
). People get so wrapped up in their vocation as their identity that it’s hard for them to realize they are so much more—they are beautiful in so many ways.

When you’re trapped in this kind of identity, it’s hard to realize that you are not your job, you are not your stuff, you are not your debt, you are not your paycheck—you are so much more. You are a brother, a father, a mother, a sister, a lover, a partner, a friend. You are a growing person, a contributing person, a healthy person, a person who is capable of so much more.

For the two of us, this meant actively identifying ourselves with more meaningful labels than our corporate-given titles like
director
or
manager
. It meant we had to publicly identify ourselves with meaningful labels such as
mentor
,
leader
,
contributor
, and
minimalist
. 

What other meaningful labels can you use to identify yourself? Once you shed the tyranny of identity, you will clear a path that will allow you to remove your other anchors.

Removing the Anchor of Status

As time goes on, as people climb their corporate ladders, as they get more tenure and familiarity and comfort in their jobs and careers, they tend to experience a strange phenomenon: they associate status with their vocation above anything else. They feel their job is what makes them important and significant. This is why so many people feel ashamed or embarrassed or insignificant or even depressed when they lose their job. Sure, they worry about money and how they’re going to make a living, but after the initial panic over money subsides, they feel empty and insignificant without their job. That’s because people often give significance to something that is relatively unimportant.

If you’re caught in the clutches of status, it’s hard for you to see that there are other aspects of your life that are far more important than your vocation (e.g., the five dimensions we cover in this book—health, relationships, passions, growth, and contribution—are all markedly more important than your job or career). People often associate an appreciable amount of status (or social
gravitas
) to their vocations, because it’s the easiest thing to control in the moment. That is, if you work really hard (even if it’s for a job you hate), then you’re rewarded with instant gratifications (awards, rewards, praise from the boss, public recognition, private recognition, co-worker envy, co-worker sucking-up, perceived power, additional responsibilities, and the like), as well as long-term gratifications (raises, bonuses, commissions, promotions, incentives, fringe benefits, etc.). 

Unfortunately, many of the most important things in life are A) much more difficult to control than short-term hard work at your job, and B) don’t provide the same instant gratifications as the status of a career. Societally, you’ve been programmed to want (or even expect) instant gratification. Furthermore, these same social imperatives place far more emphasis on vocational/monetary status than status of any other sort. Take, for example, a stay-at-home dad. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Chances are it’s something like,
That sure must be nice!
or
He sure is lucky!
or
He isn’t even a man!
or
He is lazy!
But anyone who knows a competent stay-at-home dad knows these things are far from the truth. Conversely, when you think of a CEO you probably think
He is rich!
or
He has a lot of power!
or
He worked very hard to get there!
Et cetera. While none of these things are necessarily true, it’s a cultural stereotype that is hard to escape.

The best way to escape the perniciousness of status and the cultural stereotypes that come along with it is to turn down the volume. For the two of us, this meant placing less value on what people thought about our jobs, and showing them why they should give more credence to our new identities, which were transferable to virtually anything we did, not just our careers.

Once you embrace this more positive notion of status, you will more easily be able to embrace a little more variety in your life; you will be able to embrace a little uncertainty and sacrifice some of the certainty that is anchoring you down.

Removing the Anchor of Certainty

Certainty is a strange thing. Everyone needs some level of certainty to survive. You have to be certain your ceiling isn’t going to collapse on you while you’re sleeping, you have to be certain your drinking water isn’t poisonous, you have to be certain that the car approaching you won’t veer over the yellow line into your lane.

But beyond these basic needs for safety, the level of certainty people need varies drastically by individual. Most people require vast amounts of certainty—far too much certainty—to feel safe, while other people (like, for example, professional skydivers, and race car drivers) require very little certainty in their daily lives. The latter group will be able to remove the anchor of uncertainly fairly easily, but the former group will need to step outside their comfort zone to remove this debilitating anchor from their lives.

Certainty feels nice—it makes you feel comfortable, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy—but it’s often the biggest underlying reason you don’t make the changes you want to make in your life. That is, you’re not happy with your current situation, but you’re comfortable enough that you don’t want to sacrifice your comfort today for something that could potentially be less comfortable tomorrow, thus you don’t change. In other words, you associate more pain with changing than you associate pleasure with the change. Fortunately, there are two ways to change this thought process—there are two ways to cut loose from the anchor of certainty so you can change your life.

First, you can find a way to associate more pain with
not
changing. You can do so by looking at the potential loss of meaning in your life—the loss of not accomplishing what you truly want to accomplish, the loss of not pursuing your passion, the loss of not living your mission. The reality is that the long-term pain of regret weighs far more than the short-term pleasure of certainty.

Second, you can associate more pleasure with the long-term fulfillment of pursuing your passions and living your mission. Either way will give you the leverage you need.

For the two of us, this meant two different things. Joshua leaped without having much of a plan. He decided that the pain of not pursuing his passions was no longer worth the certainty that his corporate career provided. Conversely, Ryan slowly eased out of his corporate restraints, slowly associating more and more pleasure with the pursuit of his passions.

Removing the Anchor of Money

When you boil it down, money is simply another layer of certainty. But it’s worth identifying as its own anchor—because of the stronghold it places on so many people, because of the importance our culture places on money, because it’s typically the number one reason for someone doing something they hate.
I gotta pay the bills!
is a lame excuse. Of course you need to make a living, but you will be able to do so while pursuing your passion.

The best way to remove the anchor of money is to give money less importance in your life. We were able to accomplish this using the principles of minimalism. Over the course of two years we made a lot of that allowed us to let go of an attachment to money. 

We recommend any of the following changes:

• Get out of debt
  
• Sell your house
  
• Get rid of cable at home
  
• Cancel your bills (other than utilities)
  
• Get rid of the internet at home
  
• Get rid of your TV
  
• Sell or donate anything you don’t use
  
• Stop buying material possessions
  
• Pay off, sell, or get rid of your car
  
• Walk instead of drive when possible
  

Bear with us for a moment. We understand that many of these ideas seem far-fetched. But they aren’t. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. Sometimes it’s easy to give meaning to things that pacify us in the moment (things like TV and Internet) but don’t necessarily add to our long-term happiness, things that prevent us from pursuing our passions and living a more intentionally.

On our website we go into great detail about how to shed the unnecessary things in your life to focus on what’s important. For more information and specific details visit TheMinimalists.com and read through our essay archives.

The Price of Your Dreams

When it comes to removing money’s anchor, consider the price of your dreams. It turns out that the American Dream—the picket fence and the oversized house and the debt and stress that accompanies it—might not be your dream. It certainly wasn’t ours. Rather, it was competing with our real dreams, clouding over our revelatory passions. 

The big houses, the fancy cars, the impressive job titles, the superfluous stuff. We had all of it. But none of it made us feel happy or fulfilled. And none of it allowed us to pursue our dreams.

Instead, there was a void. And for the longest time we didn’t know what that void was, and working 70–80 hours a week didn’t give us much time to explore its cavernous interior.

And so before we left our corporate jobs, we had to pay the price for our self-indulgent twenties. We could no longer afford the lifestyle we’d been living, a cog in a wheel of greed and lust and happenstance. Instead, it was far more important for us to pursue our dreams—to pursue our passions of writing and contributing—than it was for us to keep living that empty, opulent lifestyle, a lifestyle which, by the way, was
not
bringing us happiness. 

Thus, pursuing our dreams didn’t come without a cost. Before we left our careers to become full-time writers, speakers, and entrepreneurs, we each spent two years paying off the vast majority of our debts—credit card debt, student loans, medical bills, and the like—all the while keep our eye on the prize. Then we paid off our cars (Ryan sold his car and acquired a much cheaper vehicle), and then we sold our large houses (unable to sell his condo, Ryan rented it to a family), and we moved into a small, $400–$500 per month apartments. We weren’t downsizing, we were uprising.