Bob Vallerand of the University of Montréal has begun to look at passion—well, he began
25 years ago.
And his findings, for me, are among the most exciting in psychology right now.
He's found that there are two very distinctive routes.
One is harmonious passion, and the other one, which no one brought up, is obsessive passion.
So, we can be passionate about something, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's
a healthy thing.
When we look at harmonious passion, we see these characteristics: It's when we're intrinsically
motivated to do something.
It's freely chosen.
It's autonomous.
The ideas that no one else encouraged us to do it.
I look at my students and say, "It's not because your parents want you to do it."
And in our cases, it's not because of outside influences; it's because it's something that
we have chosen of our own volition.
We're flexible and adjustable with harmonious passion.
So I see a lot of students, and they're fascinating people, because these are people who are going
to become excellent at what they do, in music, and they're practicing 12, 14 hours a day.
It's crazy, these pianists.
In the middle of the day, if someone knocks on their door, and says, "Hey, let's go get a slice."
It's New York, so, you know.
"Let's go get a slice."
People with harmonious passion: "You know what?
I've been at it for five hours.
Yes, let's go get a slice."
They take a walk.
They get out with their friends.
They take an hour, and they forget about the piano for an hour.
They engage with others.
They have these positive relationships.
They're experiencing positive emotions.
And then they go back to the piano.
It's very, very different than obsessively passionate people:
"No, I can't," and they keep pounding away.
Or, "OK, fine, I'll go," but they feel guilty, and all they think about is the fact that
they should be back practicing.
So they don't nurture those friendships.
They don't talk to their family as frequently as they might.
They have no other hobbies, because if they're doing anything else, they're not digging away
at what they must do.
They don't pursue other interests.
With obsessively passionate people, it's about the money, or the fame, or the fact that someone
else wants them to do it; for the rush of the applause.
They do it not to enjoy it, but they do it not to lose.
I always think about passion when it comes to six-year-olds, because every six-year-old
in the world, since the creation of this world, has done the same thing, which is, every six-year-old,
everyone in this room, has raced to the fence.
That is to say that at some point, either you, or someone challenged you to race to
that fence over there.
And you have two ways of racing to the fence when you race to the fence.
You either run as fast as your little six-year-old legs will take you, with your hair flying
behind you, and your eyes on the fence, and a big smile on your face, just trying to get
to that fence, or you're obsessive about it, and you race and constantly look over your
shoulder, and you do not want to lose.
And at some point, if you are, you stick your hand out to stop them, which means you're
not training yourself as deeply, as richly as you can, but you're too focused on others.
It ends up becoming all-controlling and unmanageable.
That is to say, when we're obsessively passionate, we cannot remove ourselves from situations.
Your mentees who insist on keeping their heads down and never picking them up, never spending
any time, never having anything else around them, will not have—as my client said—should
they stumble and fall, they will not have that support when they go home.
As far as I'm concerned, the kiss of death for you, and certainly for your mentees, is burnout.
And there are tremendous rates of burnout when we pursue our passions in an obsessive way.
What could be worse than having this beautiful flame that you are here to help build, and
watching it be extinguished?
And I also think about our industry in particular.
It's not like we're millennials and we're going to go job-hopping every couple of years.
We're in this for the long run.
So, if someone burns out early, the next 20 or 30 years for them are going to be incredibly
hard and unhappy.
So how do we nurture passion?
Well, one of the ways we nurture passion is by encouraging people to simply do those things
that we know have to do with harmonious passions.
Make sure that every single day, you take time with a friend.
Every single day, you make time for something else.
Go out and exercise, if that's your hobby.
Go out and do something that makes you happy.
Make sure there's something else there.
And it might be really challenging to make the transition from obsession to harmonious,
but if you do one at a time—make sure you meet a friend every day for an hour—it becomes habitual.