Passion can be replaced with discipline.

Follow your passion is common advice. Some gurus preach it, and some gurus say it’s garbage.

Is someone that starts a million dollar sewage treatment plant passionate about sewage?

Of course not. But most people are passionate about a very limited amount of things, and most of them don’t make any money.

The reason why follow your passion is such good advice is this:

People have no discipline, no work ethic, and are exceedingly difficult to motivate.

When you introduce passion for those typical people, they actually will roll out of bed to do that one thing they enjoy. The hope is they get good enough to make money at it, and following your passion is great advice for the masses.

There’s TONS of better strategies besides following your passion.

But it’s the best strategy for the masses, because the masses simply won’t DO any other strategy.

Discipline can save you.

Discipline doesn’t care whether you like something or not. Discipline can see where success is, and go in that direction, pushing past all the laziness of the typical person.

Passion IS a choice, but it’s largely an unconscious choice. Discipline is a conscious choice.

Discipline – you control it.
Passion – it controls you.

Money doesn’t care whether you want to do the work that generates that money. If it did, everyone that hates their job would never make any money. Money only cares about you creating value – not your passion. Discipline allows you to get whatever you consciously want done, if you’re passionate about it too, doing that thing just becomes easier.

Don’t fall into the trap of figuring what your passion is for a career. Passion can be a conscious choice. Also, having discipline allows you to dominate in areas that aren’t stuffed full of competitors that are all wildly passionate about it.

Following your passion about playing video games and making a living from it is possible, but it’s hard as hell.

Paradoxically, if you follow paths that don’t have a ton of passionate people in it, things become MUCH easier.

Create discipline. Chose your passion. And find the ways of producing value that aren’t necessarily sexy (eg. a drywall manufacturing facility, parking lot paving facility, etc).

It’s easy to do what you’re passionate about, but it’s hard to make a living with it sometimes. It’s sometimes easier to just create discipline to do the things no one else wants to do.

Where are you in terms of your passion? Or in terms of your discipline?