SDS 290: The Passion Paradox

Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast. I’ve got Hadelin here with me.

Hadelin: Hi Guys. How’s it going?

Kirill: And for those of you who haven’t heard the previous, I think six episodes, and don’t know me or Hadelin, please Hadelin, quick intro.

Hadelin: Yes. Well, I’m Kirill’s business partner on two businesses, the online course business and also Bluelife AI, which is a company that empowers other businesses to make massive profits by leveraging AI at no upfront cost.

Kirill: Exactly. At no upfront cost, we’re so confident in AI, that will take your business to the next level and you don’t have to pay a cent until you see the massive value add.

Hadelin: Exactly.

Kirill: And today we’ve got an interesting topic. Passion paradox. This is really cool. We are listening to a podcast by Tom…

Hadelin: Bilyeu.

Kirill: Tom Bilyeu with Cal Newport on…

Hadelin: Impact theory.

Kirill: The podcast called Impact Theory.
And a very interesting thing Cal mentioned and then we talked about it more and developed into this idea or it’s kind of like paradox that a lot of the time people recommend to follow your passion. And I’ve done that myself. I’ve told many people, follow your passion, follow your passion, and that’s where you’ll be successful. The problem is, however, is that you don’t really know what your passion is when you’re starting out. Right? And so the paradox is how do you find out what your passion is when in order to find that out, you need to try things, but in order to try things, you’re being recommended to follow your passion and you don’t know what your passion is and there if you need to try things… And so it’s like this vicious cycle. 

Hadelin: Yes. Not only it is hard to find what your passion is, but also your passion changes all the time, doesn’t it? For example, I have had many passions in my life. My first passion was peregrine falcon. No, actually my first, passion was a Lego, technical Lego. Yeah. I was so passionate about this, I was doing them all day. And you know, these are the technical ones. When you build a car or when you build some technical device. Well, that was amazing, I was so passionate about this. Then, you know, two years later, this passion was gone and I had a new passion for peregrine falcons. So I went to the top mountains of France to observe them and observe how they catch their prey. By the way, you have to know guys that peregrine falcons are the fastest animals in the world. They can reach speed at around 400 kilometers per hour. And then I had another question, which was mathematics. Then another one, which is AI and, well, I think the AI passion is here to stay, but, even though, even that you need to, I think follow something stronger than just a passion.

Hadelin: Yes. And I call it the inner drive or inner voice. You know how you have this subconscious mind by the way, there is great book called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, which is what contains theoretically of course, the inner voice or the inner drive. Which is something much stronger than passion because it will just lead you to the right direction. Have you heard about this?

Kirill: No. What’s the difference between inner drive and passion?

Hadelin: Well, passion is something you feel, like very exciting about you want to work on it. But this is temporary. As I said, the passion is something that lasts for a couple of years or even a couple of months maybe. Whereas the inner drive is something that is in your nature. It doesn’t depend on what’s outside your world. And, the inner drive is something that guides you subconsciously, and that you listen to. It’s like you have this little voice in your head that guides you well. And I’ve learned to be more aware of that inner drive and inner voice. And this is something I rather follow than passion.

Kirill: Mhm. Wow. Very interesting. Have they ever contradicted each other? Passion says one thing, inner voice says something else?

Hadelin: Not really. But it’s just that sometimes my inner voice and my inner drive will guide me to work on my passion, but sometimes it will tell me to do other things.

Kirill: Mhm. Okay. Wow. And how would you recommend to be more in touch with your inner voice?

Hadelin: Well, very good question actually. We can now answer this question based on the other episodes we did before. Solitude deprivation. Remember we talked about this, the fact that because we are so connected to social media, we have a lack of solitude where we get to develop our thoughts. Well, I think the way to listen more to your inner voice or inner drive or being more aware of it and connect with it is exactly through solitude. You know how I have all this alone time where I think, where I develop my thoughts, well during these alone times I get connected to my inner voice.

Kirill: Mhm, very true. Very true. So you want to be with your thoughts, not somebody else’s.

Hadelin: Exactly.

Kirill: That’s very cool. And I’ll give an example for this. So, we’re almost finishing up our time in Slovenia here now and we’re going to go to Trieste. As you may know from our previous episodes, meet up with some colleagues there. Then we’ll do some work for a day and then we’re parting ways for some time with Hadelin. And Hadelin had the option to drive with a colleague to Paris or drop off the colleague at the airport so they take a flight, and just drive by himself. And he chose to drive by himself because you said you need that time alone. You said we spent a week together. We’ve actually spent three weeks together.

Hadelin: Yes, that’s right.

Kirill: We went to Tony Robbins. This was 22nd June, I think. Right? Then we went…

Hadelin: To London.

Kirill: London, yeah, for some work. And then we went to Paris to see your mom and you know, have a great cheese and experience the superheat. And then we drove here. So it’s been three weeks together.

Hadelin: That’s right. It’s been three weeks. And, it’s also, with respect to the fact that we’re both introverts. By the way, you guys, you have to understand the difference between introverts and extroverts. Introverts recharge their energy by themselves and extroverts recharge their energy with others, in social situations. So we are both introverts and even though we are having great time, spending time together, brainstorming on the business or even have fun and doing things well, we also need our alone time to connect with ourselves, to connect with our inner voice. And this is really, really powerful. This is so helpful. This is what keeps us, going to the right direction.

Hadelin: And I have another example now that I think more about this, where I didn’t follow my passion, but I followed my inner voice. Well, you remember how at some, like for two years I was so passionate about the courses, I wanted to do one course per month on a new subject. I wanted to learn new things and share the knowledge to the world. Well, I’m still kind of passionate about this. I am passionate about making courses, but, six months ago I decided to make less courses, not doing once per month, but doing once every three months. And so that’s exactly the moment, an example of when I followed my inner voice rather than my passion. If I felt my passion, I would just have continued to do one course per month. But no, I followed my inner voice, which told me to focus more on life and Bluelife as well our other business and yes, this guides me in the right direction.

Kirill: Yeah. This is so true. And now we’re actually working on a very like a next level type of course.

Hadelin: Yes.

Kirill: So our listeners, you’ll hear more about this in the coming months, but we decided to… Our passion is to actually, we’ve created, I think we’ve created like 30 plus courses already.

Hadelin: Oh wow, yes, created so many.

Kirill: On AI, machine learning, data science and so on. And now we want to take things to the next level and have people go even further beyond that level that these courses can take you to. And that’s why we’re creating a next level course which will be released, will be announced in September and it will come out in January, 2020.

Hadelin: Right. This will be announced on Kickstarter. And this will be released in January, 2020.

Kirill: Yeah. But that’s just another example of that, our inner drive is… Like, we are still passionate about courses, we’re still passionate about sharing knowledge. And we could just do that. I think I understand this better now. Thanks man. So passion… Like we could, we had a break through. High five! So, with passion, we could just keep doing these courses until we burn out until, until like forever. Just keep doing them, churning out these courses all the time because that’s how we share knowledge. That’s how we’ve learned to share knowledge. That’s what we’re passionate about. But the inner drive told us that, hey, actually, maybe it’s time to take things to the next level, put in a bit of extra effort, take a step back and not release a course a month or not releasing even a course a quarter anymore, but like work on this really one course that’s actually going to add 10X value to people, right? Spend three months working on it. Create something extraordinary and that way realize your path.

Hadelin: Exactly. That’s a great example of the inner drive. That’s exactly how it works. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?

Kirill: Yeah. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Yeah, and so I guess, listen to your inner voice.

Hadelin: Exactly. That’s the advice we want to give you for this episode. Listen to your inner voice and remember that the way to do this is by finding some alone time, getting disconnected to social media and all these things that cause solitude deprivation. And yeah, you will find it, you will become aware of it, I’m sure.

Kirill: Yeah. So there we go. I hope that was useful and we’ll see you next time.

Hadelin: See you next time guys.