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A friend of mine recently went back to work after retiring, because he found retirement boring, lonely, and lacking purpose. He’s not the biggest fan of his job, but according to him “it still beats sitting around all day with your thoughts.”
Another FI blogger/author, Anita, a lawyer who retired in her 30s, also recently wrote about her bouts of depression and the difficult time she’s having in retirement. Having gone through anxiety and depression myself back when I was working, my heart goes out to her. This year has been retirement/travelling/life on hard mode, but for some it’s been harder than others.
After hearing about and reading these stories, it did make me wonder: is FIRE for everyone?
Sure, in our situation, FIRE was life changing and I don’t regret quitting my job for a second. But are we the norm or the exception? Is it because you need a spouse in retirement to avoid loneliness? Or are some personalities simply not suited to early retirement?
Recently, I read a book called “Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness” and it talks about the 3 things you need to be happy (after your basic needs are met):
1) Security
2) Satisfaction
3) Social
In this case 1) is fulfilled nicely by FI. By having enough to never work again, you don’t have to worry about getting laid off, or running out of money for food and shelter.
#2 and #3 is a bit more complicated and goes beyond the math. When you have a job, #2 and #3 are naturally built in. In my case, since I became an engineer solely for the money, I didn’t get #2 from my work. I had to go build my dreams by becoming a published author and public speaker after retirement. I had a circle of friends at work, but they were mostly work friends and we rarely hang out after work hours. My work friends also had vastly differently values from me, so I never really felt like I fit in. It wasn’t until I found the FIRE and digital nomad community through travelling and writing that I finally felt like someone understood me and accepted me for who I am. That’s a big part of the social bit. Even if you’re surrounded by people, if you don’t “get” each other and they’re not “your people”, you can still feel incredibly lonely.
But that’s just my story. For those of you who are wondering whether early retirement is right for you, if you don’t already get satisfaction and a social circle from work, how do you build #2 and #3?
Let’s tackle them one at a time.
Satisfaction:
A Chautauquan once asked me “What if I don’t have a passion?” He was okay with his job selling insurance, but it wasn’t his passion. But when asked what he would want to build as his passion project in retirement, he was lost.
“You’ve had this love for writing ever since you were a kid,” he said. “I just don’t feel that way about anything.”
Here’s the thing. Trying to “find” your passion—the singular thing that makes life satisfying—is like waiting for the perfect partner to show up at your door. Do you expect to meet your spouse with no rejection or effort? Without going out there, meeting people, putting in the hard work of getting to know someone, and for them to just fall into your lap? If that’s not the case, why would you expect the same with your passion?
You don’t FIND your passion. You BUILD it.
Do you have a hobby? An interest? There. You have the beginnings of a passion project. Work on that and build it until you are good enough to use that skill to help others. The better you get at the skill, the more impact you’ll get from it, and the more you want to do it. Don’t give up if it’s hard in the beginning. Anything that is worth doing has obstacles.
There is no perfect passion. Everything you work on will involve failing. That’s how you grow. We failed for 7 years and got 200 rejections before we published our first children’s novel. I don’t regret it for a second because we learned a ton along the way.
If you’re stuck trying to decide what to do, because you want to maximize and find the one that will succeed without trying, stop. Just pick one and go.
Here’s an exercise to help you out:
What do you do when you don’t know if you’ll like a drink? You take a sip first right? You don’t gulp the whole thing down.
So, what happens if you don’t know which interest to pick first? Use the “SIP” method:
Take out a piece of paper and write these 3 columns:
- Skills
- Interests
- Problems to solve/People you want to Help
In the “Skills” column, write down all the skills you have.
In the “Interests” column, write down things you’re interested in, like hobbies, passions,
In the “Problems to solve” column, write down problems you want to solve or people you want to help.
Once you’re done, step back and look to see how you can use your skills to solve a problem in an area of your interest.
For example, if you wrote “public speaking”, “Personal Finance”, “Lack of financial education in schools”, you may want to work towards becoming a public speaker and speaking at high schools to teach teens about investing and budgeting. Or if you wrote “cooking”, “food”, “lack of easy-to-follow recipes for authentic Chinese food”, you could try creating a cookbook or YouTube channel to teach people how to make authentic Sichuan food in a simple way. This is what the “Chinese Food Demystified” Channel did and to this day and I love them so much I’m a happy Patreon subscriber.
Don’t get too attached to the “type of solution” at this point. You are brainstorming at this point to get all your ideas out on paper first. You can get more detailed about the solution later.
Alternatively, to make this more fun, you could do it with a group of friends using post-it notes. Since most people tend to be pretty humble about their skills, your friends and family might be able to help you identify your skills better.
We did this recently with a group of Chautauquan friends, and it worked out great:
Shout-out to my friend, Alan Donegan from Popup Business School for the brilliant idea of using post-its to figure this out.
Social Circle:
Just like the passion project, your “people” won’t just show up at your door. You have to work on finding and building your relationships too. And not just one time of reaching out on the internet, you need to do this consistently, and be giving and helpful. Become the kind of person people want to be friends with.
Just attending a conference isn’t enough. You need to continue building those friendships long afterwards through frequent Skype chats, Zoom calls, or meetups in your local area. Consistency is key.
Since I was introverted growing up and my parents taught me that ambition is more important than relationships, I was pretty inept in this area, until recently. I learned that making friends is hard work but worth it.
And just like everything else in life, creating long-lasting friendships comes with a healthy dose of rejection. You need to push through rejection to find your BFFs. I’ve read that it takes 50 hours to go from acquaintance to “casual friend”. 90 Hours to deepen that to “good friend” and over 200 hours to graduate to “best friend” status.
I know I’m guilty of wasting that much time binging Game of Thrones, so I could’ve easily used that time to build a lifelong friendship instead.
That said, I’m grateful that I’ve invested the time to deepen my friendships from Chautauqua. Because if it weren’t for this group of friends, I never would’ve found the strength to forgive my mother, and the “50 hour” statistic explains why spending a week “with cool people in cool places” creates much deeper, longer-lasting friendships than 2-day conferences.
In order to find “your people” in retirement, come to Chautauqua, join a local ChooseFI meetup, or go to a Digital Nomad Summit conference. Meet like-minded people and then deepen those relationships by having experiences together. Don’t give up if you don’t find your people right away. It takes time to find and grow your social circle, but the effort will be worth it in the long run.
You can also join interest groups like photography clubs, book clubs, swimming teams, etc. And don’t forget about volunteering. We volunteered for WeNeedDiverseBooks when we first retired, and that’s where we found a wonderful group of diverse authors who shared the same mission as us.
So, there you have it. In order to be happy in retirement, you need security, satisfaction, and a social circle. You need to put in the work and push through obstacles and rejection to build your purpose and grow your social circle, but it’s worth it.
If you don’t want to do the work of building satisfaction and a social circle, that’s OK, but you’re probably better off continuing to work.
What do you think? Do you think certain personalities are more suited to early retirement? What would you do to build satisfaction and relationships into your retirement?
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It’s unfortunate that many people define themselves by what they do (their jobs) rather than who they are.
I agree. We are human beings, not human doings.
Amen to that!
I wasn’t able to dis-associate myself from my job until I started travelling. I think it’s because in North America, you always get asked “what do you do?” as an introduction. Travellers don’t ask that. Travellers ask “where are you going? Where are you from?”
Totally Agree!
Building a social circle for me is the worst. It’s like to feel obligated to meet people and make friends. I have only one friend and I don’t feel the need to have anyone else.
After all people are only after me to ask for help on things, never to offer something like friends do.
No way, I prefer to have my bank account in perfect shape than having fake friends ! No hobbies also, there’s only one thing in this world that I would do for free but unfortunately SpaceX doesn’t hire foreigners even for free, I’ve checked !
Haha, I spent most of my spare time watching falcon9s land or SN# hop 🙂
Where do you live?
I’m considering working for rocket lab in New Zealand, Ive got Aussie citizenship though so makes it easier…
Ironically, South Africa, where Elon Musk was born ! Wer don’t have a rocket’s program or anything even close to that. Good luck to you my dear Kiwi.
Hey, you gotta do you! When it comes to friends, quality is worth more than quantity.
There are minority of hardcore adherents who approach FIRE with the inflexible zeal of a 16th Century Jesuit priest; if you don’t do it their way it’s not FIRE. I believe that the key is finding a version of FIRE that works for you. For me that means setting up a training consultancy knowing that it doesn’t matter if it make any money in year 1 (or 2, 3, 4 etc).
To my brother it means moving from house/dog-sits to Airbnbs in Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe and, occasionally, SE Asia.
Nick, this is a great idea!
“with the inflexible zeal of a 16th Century Jesuit priest”
LOL. You’re right, it’s more about lifestyle design.
Great post! I recently started my FIRE journey and it’s ironic how many people think I am crazy when I tell them about what I am trying to achieve. It definitely made me realize that FIRE is not for everybody. Some people are very much attached to their jobs and need their fancy job titles to define themselves. I think with FIRE, you have to be comfortable with yourself first which is the essence of this post.
Definitely. We don’t spend a lot of time with ourselves, thinking about the big picture of what we want to do with our lives when we are working. It’s much easier just to go with the status quo and not change direction. That’s why in order to take the FIRE path, you need to be brave. Kudos and rooting for you on your FIRE journey.
I find that the FI part of FIRE is what really excites me. I work really hard during the week and find myself absolutely exhausted. I don’t want to RE per se, but I do want to be barista-fi as a lot of the people in the comminuty put it.
I want to downshift considerably. I want to take a lower stress and eventually a part-time job where I don’t have to travel a quarter time away from my family. I want to spend some time doing different types of work like bartending (I like tiki cocktails) or volunteering (I loved community theater when I was younger).
It’s so hard with a full time job to find the time or energy to be social or find lasting satisfaction. My best friend lives 10 miles away and I see her every couple of months (outside of the pandemic). I love hosting board game nights, but those rarely happen. I don’t go hiking anymore. When I get home from my weeks of work I need to clean up my apartment and do chores and by then I’m exhausted and need to veg out and relax for a few hours. I want to have the time to be me again.
I can relate. That was my life before becoming FI. FI buys you a lot of your time back. Even if you don’t decide to retire and downshift instead, it’s still life-changing. Rooting for you on your way to FI.
Another great resource is the book, Designing your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans. They state that you will not be happy unless what you do, think, and believe are aligned. Easily said, until you realize that it needs to be ‘you’ and not what society or your friends, co-workers, or family want you to do, think, or believe. It is challenging work to find ‘you’ again. It’s taken me 6 months of reflection without working to regain the alignment.
I might be FI but I will never be FIRE. FI gives me the freedom to experiment with different types of meaningful work and to take breaks to realign.
“it needs to be ‘you’ and not what society or your friends, co-workers, or family want you to do”
This is spot on. It’s so easy to just go with the herd, very difficult to do the hard work of self examination. Also doesn’t help if you work so much that you don’t have the space or time to think about it. FI gives you time and space to figure it out.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I’ll put it on my TBR list.
Cheers to power of FU money!! (& your awesome book & blog!) 😀
I have been retired for several years now, spending most of my time on the road. I feel completely happy and fulfilled. I checked on myself several times if I would rather be back at work, and the answers have always been ‘no’, never a single ‘yes/maybe’, no matter how tiring/difficult the situation was.
Being FI is like a secular monk, with all the benefits of a peaceful life without the restrictions: plenty of time to contemplate and learn, freedom to ignore other’s comments and pursue our passions, live wherever we choose, no financial worries, and yes, my friend, we can totally ignore and forget the phone while we’re in the middle of our hot private moment and we can prolong it as long as we like as we have nothing to rush back to. What can be better?
Awesome! So glad you are enjoying post retirement life and thanks for sharing your story, Chuck.
For me, there’s a huge difference mentally between working because you have to (to pay bills, etc.) and working because you can. Now that we are financially stable and could FIRE if we wanted to, we like our jobs more because there’s no pressure to keep it, people please, etc. That is so freeing!
That’s a great point, Julie! Being FI and continuing to work (if you enjoy your job) can enhance your job you because you don’t have to make decisions out of fear. You also don’t have to worry about lay offs.
Thanks great article
Thanks, Sharil! ❤️
One of the first questions you posed after “Is FIRE for everyone?” asked whether a spouse helps to dispel loneliness. My guess is yes. I didn’t seriously consider FIRE until after I met my partner, and I wouldn’t consider a nomadic lifestyle of slow travel solo. I’d also venture that it’s helpful to be introverted. Squash and I have transitioned to working 100% from home much more smoothly than some of our friends. We also have lots of practice maintaining relationships with family and friends at a distance through instant messaging. As for the satisfaction piece, an easier way to start might be to consider, what do you talk about the most with your friends? If you don’t know, ask them! For me, for years, it’s been love and wealth. When I decided to launch a blog about the intersections of healthy relationships and financial capability, they were so excited for me! For the most part, they’re still my only subscribers, but now my social and satisfaction (at least partially) overlap. Generally, I accept FIRE isn’t for everyone, but financial capability — the ability and opportunity to pursue happiness however it morphs over time — is universally precious.
Very insightful! Thanks for sharing your 2 cents.
This post really resonates with me! I’d always been much more focused on the FI part of FIRE because I love my job and didn’t have much desire to retire early. Now that I am at FI and have been thinking more about it, I realized I have developed a passion that could be pursued as a part-time gig – I’m planning to do a meditation teacher training program and if I enjoy it, that would be the perfect post-FIRE path for me because it is flexible and meaningful and the world needs more meditation and mindfulness! I don’t think I would have considered making this leap without the security of FI. For me, losing the social connections from work still gives me pause, but given how much I’ve enjoyed the solitude of the pandemic, I am starting to think this plan may work 🙂
Sounds like a good plan to me, CH! Like you, I wouldn’t have pursued writing (considering how little we made publishing a novel) if it weren’t for the financial security of FI. Wish you the best on your meditation teaching endeavours!
I think that your version of Fire definitely isn’t for everyone. The digital nomad lifestyle is very challenging if desire children. I have a young daughter and despite being close to FIRE I can’t imagine hitting the road and traveling hacking with her. I think putting roots down is important for children and brings Some stability to there life. The most stability though comes from the parents and their dynamic. Is it loving, accepting, growing, forgiving etc. Even Gocurrycracker put roots down after his little one got older. So a big no to the fire digital nomad life if you have a little one for me. It seems most of the ones you see online are single, dating or married couples. Raising a child is hard work and doing it on the road is even more then I would want to deal with despite having my financial picture strong.
I do agree with you Matt. The digital nomad lifestyle is not for everyone specially if you have children. Me and my wife had our fair share of travel, but we do get home sick after couple of weeks.
But I guess everybody is different, maybe some couples like the digital nomad lifestyle even with their children.
Travel is definitely not for everyone. However, I have seen the nomadic life style work for people with kids (they’re not even FI) for those from the World Schooling or Digital nomad community. It’s not easy but not impossible either. Just depends on your values. You have to be super motivated to do it since it’s not easy (ditto with becoming FI). But hey, that’s the beauty of FI, you can choose the life you want. Our nomadic life is just one version of FIRE. Lots of other people retire to spend more time with their kids and travel only in the summer when school lets out. Nothing wrong with that.
The satisfaction part is what I am struggling to imagine post retirement for me. I don’t have a single passion which I would do anything in my life for. But I enjoy programming(my job), soccer, video gaming. I do get to do those in my pre-retirement life right now. Which I am really grateful for.
My motivation for being FI is definitely Security, but I guess everybody has different motivations. I can totally understand somebody who wants FI for satisfaction in his/her life.
Neo, if you enjoy programming you should look to transitioning into freelancing as you near your FI goal. (Or even now, depending on how self confident you are)
If you no longer need the $, you really can pick and choose very carefully what you will work on, or do stuff for yourself and not worry about if it makes $ or not.
I’m a developer, and honestly, pre FI I would say I didn’t really like my job.
Since Covid, my travel plans kinda died (currently limited to 5km max!!!) so I’ve been doing a few days a week freelancing, and enjoying it a lot. (I recently took on too much work though, and it stopped being fun, so I wont do that again!)
Hey Sean, I have already looked in to freelancing. I am actually starting to do that. Are you using up work for it ? Yeah I can imagine it’s not too much fun to do lot of programming.
You just listed 3 things (programming, soccer, and video games” that you can turn into passion projects. Or if you enjoy your job, you can also choose to do those things as hobbies in your spare time. FI lets you choose.
I have money saved and invested within my company. I considered just living off of it and tried it for awhile but did find myself getting bored, especially during rainy season. I eventually was lucky enough to setup some contract work that is so far keeping me busy from about 1-2 weeks per month. I think this works well for me. I can work mornings if I like and take the afternoons off, or maybe cram for a few weeks and travel (it will open up again) for a few weeks, or even try to cram most of the work during the rainy/winter season and relax more during the sunny season. Because of the complexity of the Canadian tax system there is plenty of time spent trying to optimize how much to keep in the business, paid out in salary, or paid in dividends, and of course TFSA vs RRSP.
Contract work sounds like a great option. You can take mini-retirements in between.
I think volunteering is something EVERYONE should do once retired. A way to give back to the community comes with wins all across the board. Build relationships and connections, have something to do, other people benefit. There’s no losing situation. It would such a shame to work towards something like FIRE for years to end up not liking it. What Vicki Robbins says that I think rings true is; your problems don’t go away when you hit FI, you’re meant to be building a lifestyle along the way that helps get rid of your problems. Thanks for a good read!
Thanks, Mr. FDU. We enjoyed our time volunteering for WNDB and the friendship we made out of that. Highly recommend it.
Humans generally hate their jobs mainly because they are bound to obey whatever they are told to do, in return for getting paid. But how many actually realize that in order to be FIRE, you need a job first? That is, unless you choose to depend on your parents working for you or from big inheritance. People do not appreciate having a job without realizing the things they can learn from having one. A person becomes rich sustainably and independently only from two things in life – education and job. Both gives you the skills and knowledge required to do the right thing for the right result. Nobody in this world would teach you some secret sauce for mega success and wealth for free. You can only gain this from education and working for others to learn the trick of the trade. Most shun education and job even though these two things contributes the most in their lives. I don’t think I have met a FIRE that appreciates having a job in the first place. Most FIRE seem to criticize having a job and that it’s their savings, investment and loads of discipline that made them rich, without realizing its their JOB that gave them the money for saving and investing in the first place. So if someone that is already a FIRE and wants to return back to work, I don’t see any problem with that. I only see a problem when a person hates his/her job.
I did appreciate having a job–for almost a decade. But at a certain point, when you have enough, working just for the sake of working no longer makes sense. I don’t think people are not appreciative of having a job, it’s more like they’re trying to figure out what they want to do with their life after they have enough. And hey, for the people who quit, they are freeing up a position and giving other people an opportunity to have that job–that’s a good thing right?
I retired relatively early (57) and have enjoyed ‘our’ retirement for the last 13+ years touring all of North America in our 40′ motorhome. We have enjoyed every moment of it. 8^)
Sounds like an amazing life! Good for you 🙂
This is something I’ve been worried about lately. I always thought that a monk in a cave had a great life, but lockdown has taught me that that’s an awful way to live! That’s not how I was planning to live after retirement, but if that assumption is wrong, what other assumptions are? The great thing about FI (and even about being part way to FI) though, is that it brings the freedom to try something, and if it doesn’t work out try something else, without worrying about how the bills will get paid. I’ve been flirting with the idea of a sabbatical, to try new things, for a while, I think I’ll really do it once travel returns to normal
Being under lockdown isn’t the same as retiring. I was getting a bit stir-crazy under lockdown too (even though I can be very introverted). Once things opened back up, I was able to go back and do the things I love in retirement–like hiking, swimming, hanging out with friends. So don’t worry, being retired doesn’t mean you will feel like you are under lockdown.
A sabbatical is a great idea though. Gives you a taste of retirement to see if you like it. If you don’t, you can go back.
That’s a great article and I like the quantification of the 3 things we need to be happy: security + satisfactino + social. How intraverts deal with the social element as they are usually not big fan of it? Mrs. NN is a great example for that since she is not seeking as much “social” interections as I am. She actually seems pretty happy with less. Is there a minimum of “social” interaction you need to reach that level of happiness? What happened if you don’t seek any “social” interaction at all? Curious to know if the author of the book dig into this specific questions.
Great points, Mr. NN! I agree there’s no magic number of friends you need to have to be happy. It depends on the person. Though, I do think humans are generally social animals. That’s why solitary confinement is so unbearable–even for the most introverted person. I think as long as the person has one other person they can socialize with, that’s good enough.
Love your articles Kristy. I can’t believe the people that return to work because they don’t have anything to do. The world is full of amazing things and people. There is literally an endless list of incredible things you could spend your time doing that give you social and satisfaction. I can’t believe people give that up
My Mum used to say to me “Only boring people get bored”.
I totally agree with the go out and try things, make friends, have fun, enjoy the time you have bought back with FIRE.
FIRE won’t give people the tools to work on their mental health. It will give them the time to reveal it and then they have a choice to work on it or go back to work and avoid it!
Thank you for writing. This one is such an important subject!
I was going to write my own post here to indicate “Only boring people get bored” and then I saw you beat me to the punch. 👍
I completely agree with you. I have never stopped learning. I love to explore everything. I just can’t help myself.
I think the big problem is that most people believe that once they finish going to school and get a job, they don’t need to learn anything new. They develop a wake up, eat, poop, go to work, eat, maybe poop again, go home, eat, veg, go to sleep routine. Too many people think life after FIRE will occur by instant osmosis and that’s just not how it works. No one asks themselves, what did I do last week? The week before? Most can’t remember because it’s just a mindless routine day in, day out. That’s not healthy.
Totally agree about the mental health piece too. FIRE isn’t just about the money piece. It’s the mental gymnastics piece that will give you the ability to take new experiences along with establishing meaningful relationships that will further enrich your life as well as theirs.
Alan, on a side note, I enjoyed the virtual chautauqua you guys did a few weeks back. Job well done! Hope you have another one in the future again.
Yay! Thanks for joining our Chautauqua FB live, Dave! Hope to see you at a future Chautauqua once things open back up.
“Only boring people get bored”. Hilarious and true.
Thank you for your infectious energy and optimism, Alan. Being your friend makes life a million times better. Thank you for being you!
Wow I could think of a million things to do if I was truly FIRE, even part time work I do now gets in the way of wanting to do other things. I would never get bored especially with 2 young kids around most of the time.
Even when the kids eventually grow up and leave, I’ll still be looking forward to tasting the food and smelling the ocean breeze in southeast Asia without the kids.
Love your outlook on life, ezdividends! I agree, life is an adventure and there’s no shortage of exciting things to try.
I think that FI is probably “for everyone”, at least in so far as a goal. I understand that being able to save and invest money, more generally, is a luxury/sign of privilege.
The RE part is certainly up for debate.
I think that your #2/3 (social/fulfillment) points probably belie a key point we’ve been trying to emphasize throughout our own writing:
Build the life you want, then save for it.
Definitely agree on building the life you want. Emphasize on “build” not “wait for it to magically appear”.
I think this is hard to generalize because people vary (i.e. introvert or not, always had a passion or never did) and their life circumstances vary (i.e. Are they in a job they like or not, how old & healthy are they when they fire) and to me, both of these things impact their experience of FIRE. I do totally believe that being FI is tremendously powerful even if you don’t RE (financial stress all gone, and much less fear at work) and in that sense, I think everyone should work towards that. Especially in America whose security net is getting more shredded by the minute. But whether or not someone then RE’s is much more personal, and not necessarily clear cut. My 2 cents 😊
Yup, it’s definitely personal. We are all different and that’s a good thing.
FIRE is 100% is certain not for everyone. We would not have civilization if this feat is realizable by everyone in the society.
Only 10% of the population or less has the skill and the mindset to scale the FIRE Himalayas.
In this elites group of the population, more 90% will quit before the summit.
Once the remaining 10% have stood on top of the FIRE peak, only 1% will be enlightened.
The other 9% saw the next FIRE peak and blindly walk into the circle again…it is just another big circle!
Good luck everyone…
“has the skill and the mindset to scale the FIRE Himalayas.”
Ha ha ha. Great choice of words!
As a career coach by day, I see unhappy people on the job and in retirement — brings it home that happiness is an inside job and not about external conditions.
Yup, gotta fix what’s inside, not just what’s on the outside. Though, some jobs are so stressful you never have time to do the internal work. So even if people don’t become FI, a break from work via sabbatical and contract work would help.
Thank you for another thought-provoking post. FIRE is indeed more suitable for some people than others. Sadly, FIRE do well with me, but not my husband. We can definitely start with 3 columns of sticky notes: skill, interest, problem/help people.
Thank you for another great post Kristy! The idea of ‘Following your Passion’ seems to have a few shortcomings. People often confuse passion with interests, and these change as you progress through different stages of life. And suppose you built a career/life around your passion, and you no longer are interested in that activity. What do you do then? You can’t keep reinventing yourself again and again, especially in the later half of your life if you have young kids and taking care of old parents (common in Asian cultures).
Instead, do you feel it’s better quest to explore ‘What do you really care about’? It’s a deeper question and does not change much after you hit a certain maturity level. For example, say your passion is travelling the world. What is about travelling the world, that you care about so much? Is it meeting new people? Finding new food? Finding content to blog about? What is about traveling that makes it worth for you? Suppose it’s meeting new people, what is about meeting people? Maybe it’s forming deep humans connections with people of various different backgrounds. Great, so that’s what you personally care about!
Now during lockdown, you can try to seek ways to keep doing that through different means (using internet). It won’t be the same, and still it would be in the same direction though. So the activity itself can keep changing, and as long as the underlying motivation doesn’t change, you should feel similar joy. Because you are achieving what you care about, just in a different way.
Does that make sense to you? Do you feel that ‘finding and pursuing what you care about’ is a better quest than ‘finding and pursuing your passion’?
Hi,
My view is that this is about exploring and knowing one’s preference. Try it. Like it and continue with the activity. Dislike it. Forget and try the next activity. There is no hard and fast rule and it is about enjoying the moment of life.
WTK
Another great read thanks for sharing!