Passion vs skills

[emenasche]

Hey guys. I'm about 8 hours into the life purpose course and about halfway through So Good They Can't Ignore You. Cal Newport's whole thing is that following your passion is bad career advice, instead you should leverage your skills to get the sort of lifestyle and work environment you want. This seems in direct conflict with Joseph Campbell's advice to follow your bliss. Also Leo talks about finding a new life purpose and moving on from the video game industry. This made total sense and I supported it while watching the video, but in retrospect I think Cal Newport would have advised him to hustle and become a better game designer so he could attain the autonomy he wanted. Is there an inherent contradiction here, is it just that it's easier to develop skills in something you care about? Would love to hear anyone's thoughts, thanks! 

Edited May 30, 2020 by emenasche

[Yarco]

When you get into the exercises of the course, that's where you'll start to separate out high consciousness vs low consciousness values and I think it will make more sense for you. There are some things that you could do as your life purpose, but you'd be doing them for the wrong reasons like money or fame.

Your life purpose also doesn't have to be static for your entire life. You may do the course and find being a game designer is your life purpose now. But then if you do it in 5 years, you may realize it's time to move on to a new life purpose because you've grown and developed as a person.

Most passions aren't at odds with the lifestyle and work environment you want. Even if your passion is playing with lego, you can create a huge lego Youtube channel and comfortably support doing what you love. You just have to be strategic about it and have at least a little bit of business sense.

[Elton]

@emenasche Leo left the game industry because he found that he was not passionate about it anymore, at least not more than being a life coach, he connected the dots of his love for philosophy, psychology, metaphysics and helping people.

Even This required a lot of skills, recording videos, making speeches, organizing new content, developing the website, etc. 

There is no contradiction but integration of self help material.

Also read the way of the superior man there is an analogy of life purpose to an onion, in which David Deida says that your life purpose is like an onion you keep peeling it until you get to the core.