Do What You Love Without Regret

Recently I watched a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, best selling author of Eat Pray Love. You’ve likely heard her story, or are familiar with her book. What you may not know about her are the ideas she holds around creativity. Her passion for writing began early on, high school in fact, when she made herself a promise. Simply put, she said, “Do not rely on your creativity to pay the bills.”

Another thought guru, author, and entrepreneur, Marie Forleo, subscribes to a similar mindset. Forleo discusses, both in her YouTube series Marie TV and her recent book Everything Is Figureoutable, that we ought to do whatever it takes to do that thing we were meant to do. In her own life, she tended bars and picked up odd jobs while getting her passion project off the ground.

Instead of demanding her passion to pay out, she worked to pay for her passion.

Film maker, Matt D’Avella, asks himself a list of questions when deciding whether to pick up a new project, or not. Of his handful of questions, one that rises to the top is: Would I do this if I didn’t get paid?

Unlike the idea of hustling, made popular by media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk, these creatives took the idea of hustling and put it on it’s head. Instead of working to build a personal fortune, these individuals worked to actualize a dream.

Don’t miss understand me. I get the urge to push ourselves to go all in, and I realize some dreams are to make butt loads of money. But there’s a difference between pushing for an ego driven dream and following a passion. Ego driven dreams ask, “what’s in it for me?” Passion says, “Set me free.”

Here’s what I’ve gathered after consuming content from Gary V, Marie Foreleo, Matt D’Avella, and Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s not about making money doing what you love, it’s about making a difference doing what you love. If money comes as a byproduct, then so be it.

Jobs and money come and go. Naysayers would argue that privilege and geographic location have a huge impact on the quality or availability of jobs and money. I would agree, but at it’s crux, jobs and money are replaceable. Time is not.

When we come to our dying day and look back on what we’re proud of, it won’t be money, prestige, or fame. It will be things like:

• following our passion even if it didn’t pan out,
• finding someone to love and be loved by,
• raising children who went out into the world and did good,
• taking opportunities to experience joy and play.

According to Bronnie Ware, when death comes, we don’t regret making less money. We regret prioritizing the wrong things in life. Things like money and fame.

We’ve become obsessed with making a living off our creativity. Tantalizing in theory, there’s a darker side to doing this.

In truth, we’re forcing Peter Pan to work for Captain Hook. Enjoying what we’re passionate about is no longer enough. We must now make money off our creativity to make it worth our time.

I’ll be honest. I’d love to write all day, ignoring the laundry and the dishes. You may be able to relate. But the act of relying on my creativity to keep a roof over my head feels like the antithesis of what creativity is.

Individuals like Seth Godin would disagree, taking a position of creativity as habit. But I would say that these are two extremes on the mindset continuum.

First, to create only when the muse inspires us is to live at the whim of our external world and our emotional urges. On the flip side, creating in spite of our motivation or inspiration is to turn an art into a function. One allows creativity to call the shots, the other allows the dollar to call the shots.

Somewhere in the middle lies the truth. Think of it as a creative “sweet spot” where the conditions for productivity don’t consume the muse.

It’s easy to point out extremes. It’s even easy to subscribe to them. But as happy well-rounded individual already know, happiness isn’t found at the extremes.

The middle path may not resembled the fantasy we’ve concocted in our minds. There may not be raving fans banging down our door. Our work may never “go viral.”

Instead, our happy life may have more humble origins. Working at a school, and writing on the weekends. Having a family, and eking out a few paragraphs during nap time. Comforting the lost and forgotten pets at an animal shelter, and picking up the pen after dinner.

Elizabeth Gilbert promised her creativity that she’d never rely on it to pay her bills. Instead she supported her passion, nurturing it and allowing it the freedom to be what it was going to be.

Taking her lead, we have the option to offer our creativity the freedom to develop on it’s own. Instead of demanding output from our creativity, we can revel in it’s joyful freedom. Unshackled by the constraints of being useful, our creativity can take care of us, as much as we take care of it.

Building a six-figure career out of our creativity shouldn’t be the mark of success. Instead, let’s measure success by our happiness and positive contributions to the world. That way, when our time is up, we leave this life with fewer regrets.

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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.

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