Read This If You Think You Should Follow Your Heart

Photo by Graeme Worsfold on Unsplash

At some point, you were probably told "follow your heart and the money will follow."

Please take a second to file this under "well-intentioned, bad advice."

Just because you love making scrabble jewelry doesn't mean it's something that can earn you a living making.

It's not your fault. It's not the scrabble jewelry's fault.

What we're talking about is a Venn Diagram (yes, another one).

You're looking for the overlap in "stuff that makes money" with "stuff that makes an impact in the world" with "stuff I enjoy."

You might not get all of them right away, and that's okay.

You just have to get them in the right order.

Here are some definitions of different overlapping zones of this imaginary Venn Diagram that may help you in your exploration of this:

A Hobby.

A hobby is something that costs money. It's generally something you love to do and something you want to get better at. It may not have any market value, but it probably has some intrinsic value to you because it feels good when you do it. This is something that might only be in the "stuff that you enjoy" category.

A Job.

A job is something you do to make money. It could be something you know, something you do, or some combination of those two. Either way, the idea is that by trading your time doing a job, you get a predictable income, which is generally regarded as a pretty sweet gig. This might only be in the "stuff that makes money" category. If you look hard, you might find one that overlaps in all 3 categories.

An Enterprise.

An enterprise is a totally separate entity. It's bigger than a person or a job. It contributes profit in excess of the work/job transaction. It's one of those "more than just the sum of the parts" kind of things. It's usually a bunch of relationships and work all pooled together for a common vision. By doing this, the enterprise creates more profit than any individual or job could have on its own. This is really hard and you need a lot of things to go right for this to spin up and become sustainable. Some of those things are in your control and some of them aren't. Either way, this might not be in any category, and it might be in all 3.

So, what did we learn today?

There's a chronological order to this:

1. Start with something that makes money.

2. Then find something that makes money and also makes an impact.

3. Then find something that makes money, makes an impact, and is something you enjoy.

We also learned that these things don't even align neatly with hobbies, jobs, or enterprises!

The point I'm making here is that while "follow your heart" is a strategy for gaining fulfillment, it might not be an adequate strategy for creating a life.

So, perhaps, better advice might be:

Follow your heart, but follow your brain, too.

2 Minute Action:

Do you have a hobby, job, or enterprise?

Then realize that no job, hobby, or enterprise in the world is going to make you happy.

That's on you.

So, now what does "follow your heart" mean to you?

Let that sink in for 2 minutes and let me know what you come up with.

Taking 2 minutes to define this is going to increase your chance of making it happen.