500 Words a Week - The Dark Side of Passion
The word passion is something that gets thrown around a lot. We mostly relate it with successful people, those who have achieved renown in a specific field. We might even hear these people reference passion when describing how they got to where they are, or when giving advice to people who want to follow in their footsteps.
However, there is a dark side to passion. In “The Passion Paradox” by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, the authors describe the two ways in which passion can go awry. The first is obsessive passion. This refers to “those that become motivated by achievement, results, and external rewards more so than by internal satisfaction”. Someone who is obsessively passionate “ties their self-worth to things outside their control”. These people who are passionate about, or “perhaps better put, a slave to the achievement of an external result that you cannot control creates a volatile and fragile sense of self-worth”. We unfortunately may have come across these characters before, those who will do anything to get ahead, who leave a trail of ruin and damaged relationships with friends, family and colleagues behind them.
The second kind of awry passion is the fear-driven variety, “in which someone does anything it takes to avoid failure, not wanting to disappoint others or themselves”. Again unfortunately, we may have come across these characters already. Those afraid to admit when they are wrong, afraid to admit when they don’t know. Willing to pass to blame onto anyone, even if it’s someone they were close too as their ego and sense of self-worth is too wrapped up in people’s perception of them rather than defining their own self-worth and values. This fear-driven variety links in with the role of a coach. A major role of a coach, especially within academy/ youth settings is to foster a feeling of passion for the sport in the athletes. Importantly, this passion shouldn’t be fear based.
When we shed fear, we go from a “playing not to lose to playing to win”. This is the difference between a “prevention and promotion mind-set”. In a prevention mindset, we do everything we can to avoid loss, to play it safe, to protect what we have. The authors argue that sometimes this can be beneficial, but ultimately holds us back from self-actualizing. In a promotion mindset, “we stop taking the safe route, or the route someone else wants us to take, or the route we think others want us to take. Instead, we become more willing to take constructive risks because we aren’t afraid of failing.”
In both above cases highlighted by Steve and Brad, passion is fuelled by something other than the joy of the pursuit itself. However, we are only human, everyone feels good from a win/ external validation, everyone feels motivation from fear at times. What’s important is recognizing when these two aspects are the only thing we are thinking about and if they have consumed us.
