“Follow Your Passion” Advice May Have Unintended Consequences

We’ve all heard it. “Follow Your Passion” the advice espoused by many is meant to be a guiding light to catapult you into a career you love and keep you from getting caught on the cycle of supposed to’s and I didn’t have a choice. 

It’s meant to be comforting, like it’s giving you permission to take the career path you want, not just the one you think you should have, but…

Does the “Follow Your Passion” advice lead to gender disparities?

This recently published study seems to conclude that the “follow your passions” advice does lead to gender disparities in academics and the workplace.

Basically, this study takes a look at 5 other related studies all of which seem to support the idea that telling people to follow their passions leads to women choosing occupations that are aligned to more traditionally female roles.

Whereas when women are given the advice to choose a career based on income and job security, they view their options differently and are more inclined to choose within the STEM fields.

Obviously and as suggested by the researchers we need further study to understand the cultural impacts and reasons that lead people to use these internalized gendered aspects for decision making.

Now in my opinion that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow our passion. 

The problem with this philosophy to simply follow your passion is that it assumes we already know what our passion is or at the very least have been exposed to it.

And that’s just not the case for most of us. 

Very few people grow up knowing exactly what they want to be when they grow up. Even fewer still love it after they’ve been doing it for a few years. And for the ones that do, that’s truly amazing. 

But what does that mean for the rest of us? 

Well we’re not doomed to never find our passion if that’s what you’re thinking. 

It just means we may need to keep looking…

In my adult life I have wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, an international business person, an architect / civil engineer, and probably a few more I’ve forgotten. All of those things I really thought I would enjoy doing when they first came across my mind, but the more I learned about them the less appealing they became for one reason or another. 

I’ve actually been an internal accountant, a CPA, and a consultant. In each of those I found some good things I really enjoyed but more than anything they taught me my non-negotiables: the things I won’t compromise on in my next career. 

And that is something that’s overlooked with the follow your passion strategy. 

It assumes you should already know your passion. 

If you don’t though, sometimes it’s enough to just be learning what you don’t want. And then to continue to be curious as you explore and learn about other things. 

So if you find yourself overwhelmed by the follow your passion advice or left confused because you don’t know what yours is yet:

Take some time to think about what you’re doing or have done. And then work your way through what you did and didn’t like.

Be curious. Curious is good. Anything you’ve ever had an interest in, really wanted to try or haven’t thought of yet could be something that brings you closer to your passion.

While you’re exploring, start working up your non-negotiables so you can keep getting closer and embrace the good things in each position you have.