If you don’t know what to do, you are doing it right
By: Alessandro Montalto Phd
Tags: Coaching, Acceptance, Self, Passion

Houston, we have a problem! That’s the sentence that popped up in my mind after the thrill I felt whenever people asked me “Ale, what do you want to do with your life?”. Looking at the hope in their eyes and at the growing excitement they showed, made me feel almost sick. I met quite some people who asked me this one-million-dollar question having some answers already in mind, i.e. a lot of expectations.

I tried to meet those expectations, improving my answer by means of a trial and error strategy.

Me: I want to be a wildlife photographer…

Reactions: naaahhh, that’s not for you. It is a dangerous job; You can’t be serious, right? You can do better things with your life…

Me: I love reading, I want to be a reader…

Reactions: what?!? A reader? What does it mean?; Do you really want to waste your life like that? Do you know how much effort it takes us to give you the opportunity to study? You better find a way to do something with what we are giving you, boy.

Me: I want to be an astronaut…

Reactions: that’s my boy! Now you are talking; Excellent, work as hard as you can in this direction and you will make me so proud of you.

What faculty do you think I ended up choosing at the University? Choices are quite limited I guess. I chose physics. I was so happy that I finally gave the right answer.

The right answer for who? I want to emphasise that my point is not to blame someone for what I have gone through. I don’t regret anything I did because my past contributed to my evolution. I am grateful for all I experienced. I can now hear you asking yourself what the whole point is about if I am grateful for what I did and I am not even blaming anyone.

The point is that at that time, I felt I was doing the right thing for myself and I truly believed that the path I chose would bring me happiness and long lasting fulfillment. I went along with myself and my ambition to one day win a nobel prize or to work at the MIT. But if someone asked me why I was devoting so much energy to studying, my honest answer would be “I have no clue why I am doing what I am doing”. I wasn’t interested in the nobel prize itself or in working at the MIT. I had no experience of what working at the MIT meant. Based on which evidence could I dream of working at the MIT?

It took me years to allow myself to admit that I didn’t know what I wanted to do and that I chose to do what I felt was my passion, the drive that would push me beyond my limits. It took me years to fully appreciate the great potential of not knowing what I wanted to do. For some of you, my previous life style might sound very attractive: I had a passion and I was pursuing it. And I was lying to myself. I had the perfect answer to give, “I am following my passion”, while deep inside I knew that I didn’t have any clue of what I wanted to do. I kept going on, encouraged by the example of other people and by the amount of posts on the internet that claimed that “you follow your passion and you will be happy”. Since not so long ago their nemesis began to appear like “wait! following your passion can be tricky!” like this article by Melissa De Witte that explains how Stanford scholars show the advantage in thinking about a passion like something to build.

While I agree about the fact that it is very needed to have a drive, I don’t agree about considering a passion the right drive. There are few things to take into account and they are all intertwined. I think that we have to tackle the follow-your-passion topic from a holistic point of view by considering four factors:

First — What does passion mean to you? If we want to follow a passion and we want to commit to it, we should at least know what it is that we are following. Imagine for a moment to be teleported in a dark room where you have never been before. Are you there? How do you feel if you can keep your eyes wide open but you can’t see anything at all? You don’t know what’s on the floor or hanging from the ceiling. Silence and obscurity hug you tightly. Then, you see a suffused light with the corner of your eye. You turn to better locate the light source and you can’t see it anymore. Would you trust the light? Would you move in a certain direction? If so, in which direction will you move and how?

I would personally glide my foot toward the direction that seems to be more comfortable. Moving slowly, I would eventually be very alert in case of obstacles and very afraid to hit something sharp or to activate a deadly trap. I am still in an unknown dark room and I don’t feel safe at all. What would seem a nice option is to wait for the light to become brighter to the point that I can at least see the path from where I am to the light. In this case, the light would be my only hope and the path it lights up would be my only option. I would do everything to be in the light beam. And that’s the representation of what passion is for me.

In other words, to me passion is an interest that channels my focus towards a specific direction and, in a way, blinds me. I get so absorbed by safely walk in the light beam, that I completely forget about other paths that might also be enriching to walk. I let one interest dictate my values and behaviour. Therefore, I make that interest my God. Consequently, I forget about what I have always wanted to do. Reaching the light switch seems like a very uninteresting goal when my future is at stake in the dark room. I have a possible way out, let me follow it before it can get too late. Unfortunately, the light beam can lead me to a dead-end wall. And if I impact a dead-end wall, I have to start everything from scratch. Will I start over by following another light beam or will I stick to a more healthy plan looking for the light switch?

Second — Do we really have the power to shape our future? This question can shift our perception about our belief that by pursuing a passion we will get where we want. Life is unpredictable in every aspect and if we want to step in the light beam, we run the risk to cling to an interest and get in love with the idea of safety that the beam is giving us. We can definitely shape our life and get where we want, but at which cost? How much do we have to leave behind to step in the light beam? What if we reach the light and the only thing we find is a wall? Do we know someone who is already in front of that wall, scratching and kicking it, repeating “there must be an exit!!”? How does it feel to look at that person’s behaviour?

Third — Having a vision. This is the crucial turning point in my opinion. If we focus on our vision, instead of on what is interesting for us, we push ourselves to become the people who can actualize the vision. If, for instance, our vision is to get out of the dark room, we will become experts in finding a strategy to detect the exit. We would eventually get uninterested in the light beams because they will only offer a very limited glimpse of the room. With a vision in mind, we will be willing to build ourselves from scratch, if necessary, to live according to our most important values. Because that’s what a vision is all about, having in mind a scenario where certain values are constantly taken into account and where actions are in line with the values. What’s your vision then? Mine is pretty straightforward and it took me all this years to be able to think at a such abstract level so that I wouldn’t get trapped by distracting details.

A nice way to be able to grasp your vision is described in one of the lessons by Kain Ramsay, in line with Simon Sinek’s model. Basically, we start by asking ourselves what we would truly do if we had enough money to live comfortably, we had a house and all our basic needs were satisfied. After the first answer, we go on asking ourselves “for which purpose” until we can’t get any more abstract. Then, we have an idea of what our WHY is. This is just a rough guidline and to fully benefit from this exercise I would recommend to do it under the supervision of a skilled helper.

Fourth — It’s ok if we don’t know what we want to do. It’s really ok. Not knowing what we want to do means that we allow ourselves to be open to the exploration of who we really are and what our vision is. I am not incouraging people to passively say that they don’t know what they want to do. I am instead strongly encouraging all of us to pursue an inner journey to connect to our beliefs without any fear of what we can find.

From my point of view, the four factors can create an organic framework that can serve you to look at the I-don’t-know-what-to-do answer from a different perspective. You can start by investigating what passion means to you. Whatever your definition of passion is, you will probably agree with me about how amazing it is to have a vision as your final goal. A vision can help you in staying focused on who you want to become instead of on what you want to do. Then, if your passion spontaneously helps you in achieving your vision then go for it. If your passion is an obstacle to improving your connection with yourself and your beloved ones, then you might want to reconsider the idea of going along with a passion. In any case, the future is not written and if you agree with me that life is highly unpredictable, then the more open to embracing the unknown, the closer to your vision. Finally, being open to life means to admit that you don’t know what you want to do and that you accept it with a smile on your lips and a kind attitude to look deep inside yourself in search for the person you want to be.

My bet is that we will all find a profound and meaningful vision that will serve us and other people. I am not talking about a world without problems. I am talking about a world where people can honestly deal with the responsibility they hold in creating and solving those problems. I am not talking about an ideal society where everyone is happy all day long, 365 days per year. I am talking about a society where people are aware of how ephemeral happiness is and how unreal life is if we want to feel only one emotion.

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