Chapter 1: What does suffering have to do with pursuing passion?
If you're suffering right now in pursuit of the thing that you find meaningful, there is nothing wrong with you. You are not on the wrong path. And this is how it works. And the people who try to tell you otherwise either don't know better or actively are trying to destroy you. People want to follow their passion but don't even know what it actually means.
The root of the word, passio, is Latin for suffering. So it's not about doing what you love, it's about finding something that you love enough that it's worth suffering for. And so pick something worth suffering for. The first usage of the word passion came from Passion of Christ, which was literally Jesus Christ's crucifixion story. And so it's interesting that this has been bastardized into
Following your passion means doing what you love. I had a young man stop me, say that he quit his job, went all in on entrepreneurship, but then he didn't like what his life looked like. He asked me what he should do. And the reality was that he quit because He thought that he was doing something wrong because he wasn't loving every second of it. And so here's the big problem.
Chapter 2: Why is the concept of passion often misunderstood?
Your passion only exists in the vague, not in the specific. So even if you start a business around what you believe to be your passion, 95% of what you do every day, if you're successful, will not be your passion. You'll just have very brief moments where you'll do that specific thing, if at all. And so what's short-lived is...
This kind of like passion window is very short-lived or it's only possible as an employee where you actually stick to doing the same thing every single day within a larger machine or a solopreneur that chooses not to scale. Not a business owner unless you choose to love business ownership as the thing you're passionate about, which means that you're willing to suffer for it.
If you keep doing the thing that you suffer for for a long period of time, eventually you can get to true ownership where something operates on its own and then you have all your time back. So I run every month, I meet with 10 entrepreneurs. It's the most expensive service that we sell. It's obviously unscalable, but I meet with bigger businesses.
Usually the average business size is around 10-ish million. And we meet in a group of 10. And it's something that I absolutely love doing. I look forward to the days whenever they're coming up.
Chapter 3: How can suffering lead to meaningful achievements?
But I would absolutely hate it if I had to do it every day. And so how can that be true? How can I love something, but if I did a lot of it, I would hate it? There's a certain pizza place that I love going to once or twice a year. And it's amazing. If I was forced to eat it every single meal, I wouldn't like it as much. And so we have this misconception about... following your passion.
And in both scenarios, if you do the same thing all the time that you love, you'll stop loving it because you'll get so much of it. The fact that it's rare is what makes you love it. And if it stays rare, then it means that the vast majority of your time, you're not really doing it. And so it's just a complete myth.
And I understand why people tell younger people or other newer entrepreneurs like, oh, follow your passion. It's just because it's politically correct and it's easy to say, but it's not the truth, right? And so you're not going to have the perfect amount of sunshine for the perfect amount of time And so let me reframe how I think through this is that you want moments.
You want good days, not a never ending work state of this jolly thing that you love, because eventually you'd adapt and you would get bored just like everything else. And so here's the underline. You're using the excuse of a lack of passion to disguise your inability to handle difficulty.
to handle hardship, to handle enduring, to handle being able to repeatedly do things that you don't enjoy, to have something that you do find meaningful have happened, to make it real.
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Chapter 4: What happens when passion becomes a job?
And so this is what actually happens in the real world, right? So unless you get very good at your passion, you will have to do things that you like less to pay your bills, period. That's real, right?
And then number two, as soon as you are good at your passion, your demand will outstrip your supply of time and 95% of what you do will not be the thing you love, but stuff that you do to support the thing you love, which you may indeed not love.
And so the 5% of your passion that's left over will only be there if your passion doesn't change, which it also will, which means the vast majority of your life, you will not be doing things that you are passionate about. And in the tiny instance you do, it's likely short-lived. And so let me frame why I think this is so important.
If I were to say, let's imagine life is a video game for a second. If you were playing a video game and day one I said, enter this cheat code, you have max life, max strength, max money, max good looks. And then you go through the whole game and it's incredibly easy. How boring would that be? Imagine you couldn't even undo the code. What would you do? You just never play the game.
It wouldn't even be fun. And so we on some level know that we have to suffer. It's not about winning the lottery, right? It's not about the outcome. We can't say, oh, I'm really ambitious. I won the lottery.
That's the ambition and the passion go hand in that you are stating to the world and more importantly to yourself that you are willing to suffer for this thing because you have deemed it important enough to suffer for. which is why the striving, the suffering is quintessentially human and not something to be avoided. I want to make this really real for you.
Growing a business is really painful and sucks. Being in a plateaued business is really painful and it sucks. Being in a decaying business is really painful and it sucks. entrepreneurship is hard. Being an employee is hard. Being broke is hard. Being rich is hard. Married people want to be single. Single people want to be married.
I'm not saying all the time, but I'm saying there is suffering in every path of life. The core issue, especially with entrepreneurs, especially new coming entrepreneurs, is that they look at their existing state and think, I am suffering and therefore there's something wrong with this. I need to change this because if I change this, I will no longer suffer. But change will also cause suffering.
It's the fact that you claim there's a problem with suffering that's creating even more suffering and sacrificing the thing that you said you would suffer for because you're not going to achieve it because you never walked down the path. And so one of my favorite sayings around this It's of myself, it's my own saying, so it's a bit self-aggrandizing. But success and failure are on the same path.
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Chapter 5: Why is it important to choose a path worth suffering for?
And so the secret to getting what you want is doing lots of things that you don't want. And so no matter what you do, it will suck. And so pick the things that pay better. The goal is to reframe reality so that bad things are good, not to try and only experience good things. I'm going to say that again.
The goal is to reframe your living experience so that bad things are good, not to try and only experience good things. It would be like looking outside and saying every day that it rains, I will be upset. rather than there are benefits to rain and there are benefits to sunshine. You have to change your frame, not your condition, your perceptions, not reality. Let me give you a hypothetical.
What if I told you you had two options and both rides cost 10 bucks? One ride is one that you want and the other one is one that you hate. Which one would you pick? They both cost 10 bucks. The thing you hate and the thing you love.
Chapter 6: How does one find joy amidst hardship?
You'd pick the thing that you love. Now, let me give you another option. The thing that you love unbelievably, like huge love. It's so unbelievable that you're not even sure you want to try to ride the ride because you're not even sure if it's going to finish the way you want, but it still costs 10 bucks. Which one would you do now?
The thing you hate, the thing you like, or the thing you really love? All three are 10 bucks. Which one would you do? You'd probably pick the one that you really love, right? So then what if I told you that you're going to suffer the same amount in all three paths that you pick in life?
The thing that you hate, the thing that you think is a moderate or reasonable goal, or the thing that you really want to swing for the fences for? All three have the same amount of suffering. Think about it. You will suffer the same. You'll suffer regret more here. You'll suffer difficulty more here. You'll suffer the same. It's a fixed cost. And so...
This is why aiming big is so real for me, is that what's the alternative? Aiming small and also still suffering? The fears that we have on the downside are not true. They're just suffering. And so I say all this to say, delaying your pursuit, your big swing, because you're waiting to find your passion is a fool's errand. Find something that people value. Do that thing even though it sucks.
realize there is no greener grass on the other side. It all sucks on both sides. One of my favorite CEOs that I've ever had, Suzanne, used to say, it's greener on the other side of the fence because it's fertilized with shit. And so there's shit on both sides of the fence. You just haven't gotten over and stepped in it yet.
But I will say this, it does all suck, but it sucks less when you're good. And the best way to get good is to get started. One of my favorite Chinese proverbs is, everything must be hard before it can be easy. Do not try to be passionate about what you do, but try to be passionate about why and how you do it. The reason for that is because your why and your how will persist, they are internal.
The thing you like doing, You like carving little miniature ships. You like playing video games. You like painting, whatever it is. It's external and you have little control over that. Those are treats. Those are moments. They can't be requirements.
And so this is from a personal level, me having gone through a little bit of this myself, like questioning the reason for working when you no longer need any money, right? I do not need to work. What I had to realize for myself was I am not the goal. I am the goal in terms of who I want to become. This cannot be the goal.
Because you will satisfy your own needs relatively quickly, especially if you get good at anything. Everyone's bar is different, but you will satisfy it. It doesn't matter who you are. And so that why has to be bigger than you, or you'll only be able to overcome obstacles that are smaller than you. And this is why I believe it has to be eternal.
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Chapter 7: What is the relationship between ambition and suffering?
But whenever you hear someone say that, first off, I don't think they have bad intent. I think they just don't think about it as much. But when you hear that, just remember, It will get you through the inevitable hard times that come is the definition of passion. It is the requisite for it being your passion. If passion, the literal translation in Latin is suffering and endurance.
To endure suffering. The passion of Christ. The crucifixion story. The first usage of suffering in this context. Don't you think that the thing that you're going for, maybe it's to set yourself up financially, to set your family up financially, to move into a better neighborhood, to set your kids up to have something that you didn't have. Don't you think that's worth suffering for?
Whatever that is for you. And so I want to make duty cool again. I want to make it cool for a man to go in a field and work a rice paddy and know that they did a job well. because of who they did it for. For me, my passion, what I'm willing to suffer for, is helping men provide. It's something that I feel deeply about.
And that's, to be fair, it's not like I don't want women to provide, I want them to provide too, but I'm saying, what is the closest to my core? Obviously, business tactics work no matter who's using them, right? But I see the core components of me, and men specifically, as provide, protect, procreate. And I can't help do all of them, to be clear, right? So that's on you.
But what I believe I can help with is at least one of those three. And there are many days where I do not enjoy some of the downstream effects of what I do. But I do enjoy what happens as a result. I spend so much time on my books and this content because I think on my deathbed it will matter more than any wealth.
And the ironic part about my role is that in order to influence more people, I need to continue to gain access to increased credibility. our outcomes are inextricably linked. I have to succeed. I have to learn the next step so that I can teach it. And that carries me through the pain of uncertainty and the failures of my many misjudgments.
You can become passionate about your work because you become passionate about what your work gets you. I think for some reason, talk about it's the journey that the destination, but like in some ways it's about the destination so that you can tolerate the journey. I don't think Frodo, on his quest to destroy the ring was like, I'm not sure if I'm passionate about this.
He absolutely was passionate about it. He was willing to die for it. He was willing to give up his home for it, his friends for it, his family for it. And so I think we all on some level strive to have that. Something I've been saying to Layla a lot is that something I believe to my bones is that a man must have a quest to drive towards something.
The problem is that we believe when we see monsters and dragons on the trail, society is telling us this is not the right path for you because it's not all sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. No, that path, not only does it not exist, even if it did, it would be short-lived and you'd adapt because you're human. Hedonistic adaptation is a real thing.
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