SDS 024: “What are you passionate about?”

I was listening to a show with Joshua Fields Millburn in it just recently, and if you don’t know Joshua, he’s got a website called theminimalists.com. And this is a person who tries to live minimalistically. So he throws away as many things as he possibly can, keeps as little things as possible in his home, and just owns as many things as he needs. And he’s got this website, theminimalists.com, and he was talking on one of these shows about his life and about what he practices, this whole minimalistic lifestyle, very interesting. So I highly recommend checking out his website.

But the thing that struck me in this show was his approach to meeting new people. So when you meet somebody new, or when you interact with somebody and you want to find out more about them, what do you normally say? You normally say after you exchange names and just say hello, you normally say “What do you do?” You want to find out what the person does for a living, what they do for work, what their career is about, and so on. And the same thing for other people. You’ve probably been asked his question millions of times, what do you do? And you already have a certain response that you usually respond with.

And Joshua came up with this idea of replacing “What do you do?” with “What are you passionate about?” And I found that very interesting. And his comment to that when we ask “What do you do?”, we are kind of inherently comparing ourselves to others. We’re trying to assess where this person we are speaking with is placed on the social-economic scale. So as cynical as it might sound, depending on the answer of the person, whether you like it or not, your brain already processes, tries to guess how much that person earns, what their aspirations are, maybe even how old they are, how long they’ve been doing what they have been doing, how influential they are, what kind of — again, this might sound cynical, but whether you like it or not, you start thinking about how this person can help you in your life and whether this is a useful connection or not.

But when you ask the question, “What are you passionate about?”, the conversation has a completely different perspective. So the person might be doing one thing, but they’re passionate completely about something else. And they might still be doing what they’re passionate about, it just might be a hobby, or it might be philanthropy that they’re doing, or it might be something that they’re doing in their free time, or it actually might even be what they’re doing at work.

But when you talk about people’s passion, rather than what they’re tied up in doing, people tend to be much more excited in talking about it, and as Joshua put it, the conversation becomes much richer. And you get to connect on a much deeper level, and that way you’re more likely to find people that not just do the same thing as you do, but who are passionate about similar things to you. And that is a much more inspiring thing to talk about and to connect upon.

So there you go, next time you are talking to somebody, try instead of asking “What do you do?”, try asking them “What are you passionate about?” and see what the response will be and see how much better or not you’ll be able to connect with that person. And hope you enjoyed today’s quick inspirational note. Go ahead and practice that on the weekend. Hope you have a fantastic time. Connect with people around you. Connect with your family, friends, and I can’t wait to see you and hear you back here next time. And until then, happy analyzing.