Pursuing Your Passion Doesn’t Make You a Starving Artist

If you’re pursuing your passion as a career, does that automatically translate to living off instant noodles and struggling to make ends meet? Conventional knowledge and standards certainly tend to portray it that way—that following one’s passion is a rocky path towards a starving artist’s lifestyle.

While it’s true that a career of passion can be far more challenging and financially unpredictable compared to hunkering down in a typical 9-to-5, your success boils down to how you approach the challenge and how determined you are to make it work.

Yes, there are many failed businesses out there, as well as creatives who struggle to make a living. But there are also plenty of successful entrepreneurs and artists who use their talents to provide value and have figured out how to build financially sustainable careers.

The Predisposition to Pick Between a Money or Passion Career

Interestingly, it seems that culture comes into play when one makes priorities, which can mould their beliefs about passion, according to a study led by Yale-NUS Assistant Professor of Social Sciences Paul A. O’Keefe. Such decisions could also have implications for life satisfaction and fulfilment.

According to the study, people across cultures usually subscribe to the idea of pursuing a passion as a career, but Americans may be the leading advocates. Westerners tend to prioritise independence and interests when making important decisions. On the other hand, Asians often make decisions based on practicality.

The research adds that Americans believe passion is a significant source of motivation, inspiration, and reward, making it vital for careers. Singaporeans, meanwhile, may view it as problematic and a poor guide in making critical career decisions.

Americans are also more likely to pursue their passions as a career, with life satisfaction depending on how much they are pursuing their passions. On the contrary, passion is not so much a priority for Singaporeans as far as their careers are concerned. According to the Yale-NUST research, pragmatic-thinking Singaporeans believe that even “passion-driven careers can involve mundanity, difficulty, and frustration. This realistic perspective could help manage their expectations when things do not go as planned with their careers.

With all that said, though, what’s the right approach to embrace?

5 Points of Consideration as You Monetise Your Passion

1. Mindset

Go into this knowing it will be as challenging as it will be rewarding. It will be hard because you’ll be the one calling the shots. Whether you’re looking for a career that offers creative autonomy, a sense of purpose, greater work-life balance, or something else, it’s important to stay grounded and sensible.

If your dream is to be a recording artist, but you’ve never performed in public before, brace yourself for rejections (that’s part of the process!), but explore all avenues to secure paying gigs (digital and conventional). If you don’t try, you won’t know.

That said, it’s possible that what you’re passionate about may not be something you’re good at. If that’s the case, it’s important to accept that it’s not meant to be and walk away.

Six months to a year is a reasonable timeframe to test the viability of making a career out of your passion. Setting a time limit allows you to plan and budget your resources accordingly. Taking risks is how you achieve breakthroughs, but they should be calculated risks to optimise your chances of success.

2. Priorities and Goals

Know your priorities before you leap. What does success look like to you? What can’t you live without? What financial commitments do you have? Having clarity of your priorities and goals will allow you to come up with an action plan focused on achieving those results while helping you manage your expectations during the transitional period.

Knowing what you can and can’t live without will also help you decide whether this is the right time to pursue your passion or whether you should make changes to your lifestyle before embarking on this big career change. It would be counterproductive to follow your dreams only to end up burdened by debts as a result.

Take risks, but be smart about it.

3. Research

Do it right—research, research, research. Identify a few successful individuals doing what you want to do and find out how they did it. If possible, write to them and ask for advice. Get as much information as you possibly can about the best way to approach your dream career and come up with a plan to make it happen.

You can’t have a fool-proof plan, alas, but you can emulate those who’ve succeeded before you and learn from their mistakes.

4. Focus

It’s easy to get disheartened during the first few months (or initial year) of trying to establish yourself in a new professional space. Being out of one’s comfort zone is often scary and daunting, but therein lies the motivation to progress. Focus on the big picture, remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, and keep your eyes on the prize.

The uncertainty and financial instability during the initial phase can be unpleasant. However, that’s the price of challenging the status quo and is an integral part of the journey. It’s why it’s imperative to have clear priorities and goals from the outset. Satisfying your minimum living requirements will ease your transition during those early stages.

5. Gratitude

You need money to live, that’s a fact. But how much money do you need to be happy? Do you need new clothes every other month? The latest iPhone? A snazzy sports car to impress colleagues and neighbours? It’s easy to get carried away by your materialistic desires, but it’s a simple matter of making smart choices.

Practising more gratitude in your life and remembering that millions are deprived of basic needs like clean water and food might change your relationship with money and material possessions.

Wouldn’t you rather be a thriving freelance graphic designer with autonomy over the kind of projects you take on and only buy new clothes when you need them than slave away at a corporate job you hate with a thousand pairs of shoes to fill the void in your life?

You might not be able to control how your audience responds to your work or predict what obstacles would spring up in your way, but you do have control over how you manage your finances and how you define success. Managing your expectations will help you adapt and even give you a newfound appreciation for the simple pleasures in life.

Perhaps it’s not that pursuing your passion doesn’t pay; rather, your expectations of how much it should pay that needs to be adjusted—something to mull over.

Also Read: Personal Financial Planning: 6 Tips on How to Spend Your 13th Month Pay Better

Pursuing Passion Can Mean Different Things

Is it still vital to pursue your passion when choosing a career? According to Asst Prof O’Keefe, yes, but you can also take into account cultural context. “Culture informs how we interpret our social world and how to respond to it. What may bring people the most fulfilment is to pursue a career in a way that fits their notion of passion, which is shaped in part by their culture.”

However, he also said that it is important for the person to acknowledge their values and desires. After all, people within the same culture can still differ in the weight they put into passion or what they use as a yardstick for life satisfaction and success. In the end, cultural or societal standards aside, the decision lies in you. 

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