FBC – 375 – How important is passion in our lives?

How important is passion in our lives?

Are you happy to be woken up in the morning by the sound of the annoying alarm clock?

Do you take any pleasure in going to work every day?

Or on the contrary, you go to work walking backwards with a grim on your face?

How important is passion in your every day life? does passion have anything to do with your activity?

Today, I am going to tell you a story, that happened to me very recently, that allowed me to find the answer to all these questions.

Do you want to build a life of choice and never have to put up with people's BS or things you simply don't want to do?

If yes, here is the blueprint that allows me to earn $500 a day, without putting any work.

This same blueprint has been used by my students to make $100 per day as a complete beginner

Click below to find out how

How to start a brand

— Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/freedom-by-choice/support

I wanted to talk to you about something that you may have heard in the past, but didn't necessarily ring a bell or maybe you don't necessarily understand it at the time until something happens in your life and then you do.

When you watch videos of self-development, people tell you like, oh, you will be able to do something you're passionate about every day and all that kind of stuff, and they kind of like insist on it.

So for example, if I'm writing a sales copy or something, for me personally, this is not an item I would have spent time on, because for me, the most important thing is to be able to have time and choice. So I'm all about choice. I have the choice to do what I want and I will insist on this.

OK, so that was back in the days when I didn't know anything about the Internet or something. But still I've been living this life for the last seven years now, I'll say and I have to admit that up until now it wasn't something that was like really high in the rankings of what I've been able to accomplish.

When people were asking me how can you spend hours and hours on something? I just love the stuff, you know? So for me, was just a way of explaining that once you are passionate about it and it doesn't feel like work.

But things that happened recently in my life where I actually realized the importance of it, you know. So it's funny how seven years into something, you can still learn one of the most basic elements and one of the most important elements that I had totally disregarded because it wasn't something I was looking at. It seemed too much like B.S. and wishful thinking.

But here it's what happens. So me, I've been able to build a life today where I have a choice, I have a choice to do what I want. You know, when I wake up in the morning, I have a choice to do to do stuff, and I don't have to take what's there, you know.

So there was this expression, something like, well, you do what you have to do so that later you have the choice instead of being able to take what's there. Maybe it's not the right word, but you understand what I mean, right? Some people are in a situation where it’s not like you have a choice. You have to take it. It sucks. You don't like it. You still have to do it.

But if people are like, oh man, you're lucky now, it’s the result of all the preparation and all the hard work that I have put in year after year after year, which put me in the situation. OK, so it is a good situation where I can do what I want.

So it's been my life for quite a while now. And you know, when you are in this kind of bubble and stuff where you do something for such a long time, you kind of take it for granted and you forget how it was when your life was different. So I've forgotten because I made a lot of effort so that I'm able to do exactly what I want.

But recently what happened was that I got into a situation where I ended up having to do stuff. I was in this project where in the beginning, I was very happy to be there and I was actually doing stuff that I usually don't do.

I don't want to see clients and have meetings and stuff like that, stuff that I hate, that I don't want in my life that I choose to erase from my life. But I basically was in this situation where I was doing it was interesting. I liked what I was doing, the whole scope of the project. And everything was going until, well, it came to a phase where I really didn't like it anymore.

And I realized what these people were saying before, when they say you you'll be able to do something you're passionate about every day. That’s the important stuff. And I realized that having to go to meetings or doing client stuff, it was a massive, massive drag. Like you cannot even imagine. A freaking drag. I hated it.

This is when I realized that, oh, you know what? Now that I have seen the other side of things, again, it reminded me of how actually fulfilling and how good it is to be passionate about what you're doing so that you go there with a smile. I don't know how I actually forgot about this.

This is why I actually feel bad for people who have to do this, you know, something that you really don't like doing. And you’re not in a position today where you have a choice. You just have to take it right.

OK, so, you know, it all comes down to how much you want to be able to change that, how much you want to be able to avoid that kind of situation where you have to take what's there. It takes preparation, it takes some work, and it takes a good strategy for you to put yourself in a situation where you can have, you know, in my case, like a business that actually brings me revenue and that gives me the choice to do what I want to do.

How important is passion in our lives?

What I want to do for you guys here, is to understand the importance of this, and it's actually something that rings a bell for you. What I've done is I have laid out the plan that I have used personally to be able to create my freedom and to create my choice. So that I have this life today that I've been living for the last seven years. Where I do what I want.

OK, so if you want to be able to be in that same situation where you can focus on what you like doing. So it never feels like work. It is bringing you money and it's basically fuelling that lifestyle that you want. I've put a link in this podcast and it will basically give you the plan that I have used to be able to create my freedom, my choice, and never having to live those kinds of days again.

And it was it was a good reminder and a good eye opener for me to having to go back to the situation.

The Truth About Passion Nobody Tells You

You have been sold a lie about passion, and it is quietly making you miserable. The lie is that you must find your one true passion first, and then the work will feel easy. I believed it for years, waking to an alarm I hated, dragging myself to work I felt nothing for, convinced my passion was hiding somewhere I had not looked. It was not hiding. I had the whole thing backwards.

Passion is not the spark you wait for. It is the fire that grows once you get good at something and start to see results. I only fell in love with building businesses after I had built a few badly, learned, and improved. Mastery came first, and the passion followed it. The workplace research at Harvard Business Review has made this same case, that engagement grows from progress and competence far more reliably than from a lucky match.

So if you feel flat, do not quit to go hunt for a feeling. Get dangerously good at something useful and watch how you feel then. Studies on motivation from McKinsey keep pointing the same way, that meaning follows contribution. I tell the personal story behind this on my story page, and I go deeper on building a life around it inside my Diary of a Virtual CEO newsletter. Do not chase the fire. Build it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How important is passion in our lives and our businesses really?

Passion matters in business as fuel for the boring years before the breakthrough, but it is not the strategy itself. Plenty of passionate operators fail because they never built a system, and plenty of skilled operators win on a topic they barely liked at first. Use passion as the engine that survives the dip. Build the business around demand.

Is following your passion the best career advice for young entrepreneurs?

Following your passion is incomplete advice because passion alone rarely meets market demand. Better framing is to find the intersection of three things. Skills you can develop in under three years. Problems people pay to solve. Topics you can think about daily for a decade. Operators at that intersection build durable businesses, while passion chasers burn out quickly.

How do you stay passionate about your business during slow periods of growth?

Reconnect with the customer outcomes that originally made the work meaningful. Read three pieces of customer feedback weekly. Track one metric that proves your work matters, like lives changed or hours saved. Cut your social comparison time to zero. Passion fades when you compare yourself to competitors. It returns the moment you focus on actual customer impact.

What if you cannot find your passion at all when starting a business?

If you cannot find your passion, start with curiosity and competence. Pick a problem you find genuinely interesting and a skill you can sell within ninety days, then build a small business around the intersection. Passion usually develops after you start winning customers and seeing impact. Waiting to feel passionate before acting is the same as waiting forever.

About the Author

Martin Ebongue is the founder of martinebongue.com, an online business and lifestyle design blog focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs build location-independent businesses. Since 2014, he has been creating and scaling online ventures across multiple niches, from digital products and affiliate marketing to SaaS and content platforms, while traveling the world. He shares the real-world strategies, tools, and systems that work, with a particular focus on AI-powered automation for solopreneurs. Follow him on YouTube, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

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