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11/15/2018

When The Passion Fades...

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tFor this week’s Real Value Blog we’re going to dive into the Value Syndicate mailbag and have a chat about one of the great questions that come in from you, the listeners and Value Syndicate members.

This question and topic has been asked in a variety of ways from more than a few of you but this one comes from an appraiser named Ann. Ann’s been appraising real estate for almost 15 years and she emailed and gave the show a very nice compliment. She said that she really enjoyed the show because of the fact that she feels the show has an overall positive tone and isn’t technical. I wasn’t sure how to take her email at first, but after corresponding back and forth a bit she clarified that by technical she meant that we don’t talk about economics, we don’t talk about specific appraisal techniques or principles, we don’t talk about how to make adjustments or be in compliance with USPAP, and we don’t delve into the minutiae of doing an actual appraisal or the appraisal business. She asked me if I had any plans of getting into that kind of stuff on the show and my answer was, and is, a big fat no!

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When I teach con-ed classes for realtors we touch on economic principles and specific appraisal practice and how it looks within the actual appraisal but I think the goal of a good teacher is to make things relatable to the audience they’re speaking to and one of my great fears when speaking or teaching is being boring! I know that, for most people, public speaking in and of itself is the great fear but for me its that the information I’m trying to get across will be boring and not entertaining. I’ve been in front of enough crowds and different groups of people that there is no real fear of speaking any more for me, it’s the fear that the information will not be delivered in a way that makes sense and enters enough peoples ears, eyes, brains, and hearts.

That’s not to say that I think the other shows and topics discussed aren’t made relatable to the audience. Much to the contrary, I think they’re extremely relatable and done very well. I think they’re most definitely elevating the industry and very much needed. What’s not needed is me trying to do the same thing and, to be frank with you, I’m just not that passionate about the principles, practices, and techniques of appraising as I am about the actual business of an appraiser. And actually, I’m not all that passionate about the business of an appraiser as I am about the human beings doing the business and that means I’m much more passionate about topics that effect all human beings, all businesses, and how those human beings can be better at whatever it is they may be doing. It just happens that I’m also an appraiser running an appraisal business so I know the struggles and challenges of this business specifically so this is the group I’m speaking to now.
 
This, of course, opened the door for Ann to follow up a bit in our conversation. It turns out that by using the word ‘passionate’, I triggered what Ann was really trying to get to in the conversation. She commented that when she first started she felt she was fairly passionate about real estate and the valuation business but that she has lost that passion over the years. She then asked me about my passion for the appraisal business and how I keep some kind of passion for it with so much negativity and fear in the air. She asked me why I continue to do it and what about the appraisal business do I have a passion for? I thought it was an awesome question and an even better opportunity! Again, I’ve had this question from others over the years regarding the different industries I’ve run businesses in, maybe worded slightly differently, but essentially the same idea about passion, and so lets talk about some of my thoughts on Ann’s question on passion.
 
I’m sure there are people out there who can honestly say they are passionate about the appraisal business, or passionate about the economy, or passionate about the principles and practices that go into developing an opinion of value, or passionate about economics, or numbers or accounting and on, and on that list can go. I’m not one of them. There it is! I have no specific passion for and I’m not passionate about the appraisal business. I taught Aikido and meditation for 30 years and I’m not passionate about that either. I built one of the largest martial arts and full time leadership academies in the state, maybe the country, and I can honestly say I’m not passionate about martial arts. This is not some kind of on air confession though as I often had conversations with my martial arts business peers, as well as my live-in leadership training students, about this topic because there was always an unspoken sense that to be really good at something you had to have a serious passion for that thing. This topic, by the way, was also a specific topic on the leadership training syllabus for the live-in students and leadership team at the dojo because every student, especially the super committed ones, inevitably face a period of time where passion and excitement dips or disappears completely and they have to figure out how to carry on at optimal levels when that happens.
 
My answer to that dilemma is that, of course, its always easy to have a passion for something when you can show up whenever you want, put out the energy whenever you want, leave at the end of the class and go home to your comfortable couch and tv. Its always easy to be passionate about something when it’s optional and you can come and go as you please. Of course, for the owner of any business, what was possibly birthed from some kind of passion will almost always require something else to keep it going once the passion for it changes or dies. So what does that mean for all of the things in life that you’re not passionate about? Do you just not do them or do you do them with disdain simply because you have to? Does your lack of passion for a particular topic, task, or activity mean that you’ll never try those things?
 
This is similar to the conversation we had last week about motivation and discipline where I said that motivation is made up of two words, Motive and action, meaning your own motives put into action. The motives come from within you and hopefully you take action on them which requires discipline. The cycle of. Motivation and discipline is an important one to understand because most people get it completely wrong. They think that they’ll get motivated on an issue and then find some discipline to do something about it. Sometimes this happens in that order. For example with weight loss or getting in shape. You see yourself in the family Christmas photo and say, “I really need to lose some weight”, so you get motivated, you buy some new workout gear, join a gym, go for three and half weeks, and then the motivation dies, there’s no more passion for the idea, life takes over and the discipline that got you to the gym when you were motivated, inspired and passionate is completely gone. Likely justified by saying that you’re just too busy earning a living doing something you’re likely also not passionate about. No, the proper order for discipline and motivation in anything is to identify certain principles and ideals and then develop a disciplined practice to make those principles and ideals a reality in one’s life. With discipline comes ‘tempered motivation’, which is the motivation to stay disciplined on your goals. With discipline, you don’t specifically require motivation to be your partner because you’ve told yourself that you’re going to do it anyway. But, if you are disciplined about something, you’re much more likely to get motivated to do that thing than you are if you always require motivation before the discipline. It’s like asking a campfire to give you fire before putting a log on it. The campfire laughs at you and says, ‘piss off!”. There is no heat from the campfire without the log. The log is the discipline and the campfire is the motivation. You feed the fire with wood and the fire in turn gives you heat, light, ambiance, and life. It doesn’t work any other way.

Of course, as it turns out, it really helps when you’re super passionate about a topic, task or activity. When you’re passionate about it the motives are clear and the action is easy and pleasurable. But how many people can actually say they’re really passionate about something? I can tell you very few! We tend to lose passion as time passes. Passion in relationships wains with time, proximity, and availability. Passion for a job wains over time as we get used to the lifestyle that the income affords us and then we require more. Passion for certain activities ebbs and flows over time depending on our interests. I used to be passionate about golf but that passion slowly dissipated as I became interested in other sports and activities like hockey, working out, and being part of a team sport. I still enjoy golf but I’m not passionate about it. I’ve gone several seasons without ever dusting off the clubs. On the contrary, I have no specific passion for working out, in fact, I hate it most days, but I have goals and aspirations of being a bad ass mofo when I’m 90 or 100 and that will require good joints, a healthy heart, good muscle tone, and healthy living so I put on my workout gear, lace up my shoes, and head out to the compound, which is the name we’ve given to my garage gym, to do the work. On most days, I can tell you that there is little motivation and even less passion for what goes on in the compound. It’s hurts, it’s literally freezing in the winter time and 110 in the summer time, and it represents some kind of pain most days. If I required motivation and passion to go do it, I wouldn’t do it. In fact, its one of the reasons my gym is in my garage! It’s not in my garage because I have a passion for working out. Much to the contrary my friends! It’s in my garage so that I have no excuse. I don’t like to waste time driving, getting dressed at the gym, and all of the distractions or having to wait for a bench to open up at a gym so I invested in all the necessary equipment to hold myself accountable and built it out 10 steps away from my living room. No excuses, no motivation, and no passion required.
 
My friends, the definition of passion is something akin to a very strong and almost uncontrollable emotion. A strong feeling of enthusiasm and excitement about doing something. We can all think back to a relationship, most likely when things were new and exciting, when we can identify passion. This strong desire to be with the person, overlook their faults and foibles, not eat or even care about eating, and everything in life just seems to be right! Smells smell better, food tastes better, experiences are more exciting and you’re having a lot of firsts. Our bodies are filled with a chemical cocktail of pleasure hormones that enhance every experience during that time. Of course, over time, we start to float back down to the real world. We have to start eating normal again, sleeping on a normal schedule, focusing back on work or school again, and get back to normal living. It doesn’t necessarily mean the passion is dead, its just a sign that we’re figuring out how to integrate some of that passion into a normal functioning existence. As more time passes however, passion tends to slowly disappear. This is where many people start to go off the rails because they don’t know how to make things work over an extended period of time once the passion dies. What many people miss in this normal life process is figuring out how to replace passion for something with being passionate about something. It doesn’t matter if it’s a relationship, a hobby, or a career. Passion will almost always become less and less over time. However, if one can replace the euphoric and exciting passion feeling with a principle or ideal that they can instead become passionate about, this is the bridge that carries us from the sprint that is passion to the marathon that is life and something we can become passionate about. If you’re looking for your passion for something, either before you do or to keep doing it, stop looking. At least stop looking for it in your work.
 
I have no loss of pride, no fear, and no hesitation whatsoever to say that I have no distinct passion for or am passionate about appraising homes and the appraisal business. I have no specific passion for the economy or economic principles. I have no passion for politics, politicians, rules, walls, boundaries, or bullshit. What I have a passion for is understanding and constantly testing what It means to be human. I don’t need an elected official telling me what I can and can’t do, should or shouldn’t do, what is right and wrong, or whether I can be excited about the world today or if I should fear for my life. My day and my life doesn’t need to be legislated by en elected official and my daily decisions rarely have to do with what is going on in the economy because I try to make decisions based on principles. This may anger a few folks out there but I don’t give two shits who is in any political office anywhere in the country, from my local township board all the way up to the President. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about issues, it’s simply means I spend no time worrying about those things because A. There are enough others out there worrying about them for all of us, and B. I’m going to do what I’ve always done based on my principles, my goals, my aspirations, my inspiration, and the disciplines I’ve built up like scaffolding to support those ideals. Numbers, spreadsheets, and appraisal forms don’t get me excited just as teaching the same aikido or self defense technique to a new group of beginners for the 10,000 time doesn’t get me excited. What gets me excited and I have a passion for is what numbers, the appraisal business, and what we’ve chosen to do as a business allows me to do with the rest of my life. Do I love the appraisal business? I love it the same way I love my motorcycle. I’ve put some time into making it really nice, I can always be working on it and making it better if I want to, and when I want to enjoy it I jump on and it gives me some freedom. Do I have a passion for motorcycles? No! I’m passionate about what the motorcycle represents, which for me is freedom. I know people who have a passion for motorcycles. And I know people who have a passion for guns, for hockey, for collecting certain things, and for real estate.
 
I’m not sure if I’ve ever met somebody who is passionate about appraising homes, extracting adjustments from market data, doing regression analysis, writing extensive narrative, what the Fed is doing with interest rates, or staring at a computer screen for hours and hours every day. I’ve met lots of folks who are really good at it but nobody that would say they have a passion for it. What every one of them was though was fairly clear on why they do it. As it turns out, I like to think I’m pretty good at developing opinions of value on real estate and articulating that process to my clients and to the public. As it also turns out, being good at something goes a long way to making it easier to do each day! Passion for it would certainly help but unless or until you find some bigger idea behind what you do, I can assure you that waiting for passion or worse, watching it slip away because of the way you’ve framed your situation, is a recipe for a slow painful death by a thousand cuts. One of my mentors was famous for saying that a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out. There are lots of people in ruts just waiting for the ends of the grave to be filled in. Hoping that you’ll have some passion for what it is you do to make a living is a myth that is propagated by motivational speakers and life coaches, most of them likely struggling to pay their own bills.
 
You’ve probably heard the saying from Mark Twain that the secret to success is making your vocation your vacation. In essence, what Mark Twain was saying was to do what you love and love what you do or follow your passion and you’ll never work another day in your life. Others have said to just do what you love and the money will follow. These little quips and platitudes have been expressed a million times by as many speakers, teachers, and coaches since then and what they’re saying is that you’re supposed to find what it is you just absolutely love doing (in essence, have a passion for) and figure out a way to make that your living. So the man or woman who loves to go whitewater rafting starts a whitewater rafting business. The person who loves to style hair opens a salon or spa, and the the person who loves to give their opinion becomes an appraiser?(voice goes up, asking a funny question) I don't think so. I think the person who becomes a real estate agent, a lender, or an appraiser does so because a family member got them into it, they fell into it somehow, or they were attracted to it because of a certain set of qualities about it that they were hungry for like income, freedom, getting out of the cubicle, control of their own destiny, etc. I don’t honestly think any of the aforementioned people or careers are filled with anybody who would say, “I have a passion for loans!”, or “I have a passion for stick built structures that house humans”, or worse, “I have a passion for staring at a computer screen most of the day researching comparable sales and typing in tons of little computer cells”. No, what all of those people would most likely say is that they are passionate about some ideal that doing that kind of work affords them. They are passionate about a particular lifestyle and real estate sales or appraising homes affords them that opportunity.
 
For me, the appraisal business was an opportunity to exercise my coaching, mentoring, and business building muscles. As I’ve talked about in other episodes, I was recruited, so to speak, by a friend who had a growing appraisal business and since he was one of my students already, he had some sense of what I might be able to bring to the business. I wasn’t looking to be an appraiser specifically but I am most definitely always on the lookout for opportunities to be able to exercise what I am passionate about and that’s the development of other human beings. You see, I don’t have a specific passion for real estate appraisal and I didn’t have a specific passion for aikido or martial arts, per se. What I have is a passion for personal development and the growth of others so Aikido, Zen, and every other business I have ever been in, started, or helped develop, have been hobbies, businesses, or opportunities where I could have an impact on other human beings through that thing. I taught Aikido and opened a leadership development and martial arts academy, not because I was passionate about martial arts, I did it because I was passionate about growth, leadership, and personal development and my skills in aikido, zen, public speaking, teaching, and personal development were the vehicle to help others. It just so happens that what I was passionate about was something I could turn into a business and get paid to do it. But what I can also tell you is that there is most definitely a danger in doing this. When you turn your passion into a business you potentially head down a road where you are going to confront the loss of passion yet still have to get up every day and go run that business! It’s simply a natural process when it comes to passion.
 
Very few people can say that what they were passionate about 5 years ago is still a burning passion for them today. We change, we grow, we evolve and so do our passions and the things we’re passionate about. The real value in understanding all of this is that, when it comes to passion, quite often we are not in control of it. That’s its nature: a strong and uncontrollable emotion. Passion is, by its very nature and definition, uncontrollable, which means it may be strong and present one day and missing the next. What do you do when its not there? You do what you always do, you get up and just do it. When the passion is missing from your relationship, what do you do? I know what you CAN do, you can do something to try to inject some energy and excitement. What do you do when the passion is missing from your work? I know what you can do, you can find some aspect of it to become passionate about and stop looking for the passion. On any given day, most of us have very little passion for much of anything because we have an understanding that passion is some mysterious force that blows in like the wind and can disappear just as quickly. It’s something we have no control over so we wait for it to overtake us and guide us to what we should be doing. Unfortunately, this is simply lazy thinking. Yes, passion can be an uncontrollable emotion but becoming passionate about something is absolutely within our control. Your work and effort should not be in trying to figure out so much what you have a passion for and then moving in that direction because quite often our passions change and, as we’ve already agreed, passion eventually wains and disappears. No, passion is not the thing. My friends. But becoming passionate about something bigger and finding or expressing that aspect through your work is the thing!
 
For me personally, as I’ve stated, I am passionate about personal growth for myself and others. I’m passionate about leadership principles and how they can be applied in real life. I’m passionate about coaching, teaching, and mentoring others so that they can grow, build up, and lead others. I’m passionate about legacy and what we’re building as individuals and leaving to future generations. Do I have a passion for the appraisal business? Not really. But I wake up every day and look for ways to inject what I am passionate about into my work. As it turns out, I am also very passionate about freedom. The freedom to be, do, and have whatever I want and to be in control of my fate to some degree. I’m also passionate about honesty and that begins with me first. If I’m willing to fool myself, what will I do to others? I’m passionate about having my success or failure be the result of me and my efforts, or lack of. This means I try never to blame anyone of anything for what is going on in my business or my life. I look at me first and ask, “what is it about me, what am I doing, or what am I not doing that has created or allowed this particular situation to manifest?” Being passionate about personal growth and leadership means taking radical responsibility for what goes on your life and never blaming anyone or anything else. When you succeed at something, you give credit where credit is due and when you fail at something you look within for the answers.
 
You want to figure out how to have passion for what you do? Figure out first what you’re passionate about and then look for ways to implement and inject your daily work with those principles. When you start with what you’re passionate about, passion for the work tends to follow. When you first look for passion, or worse, wait for it to show up, you’ll almost always be disappointed and broke. No, forget Mark Twain’s words for a little bit. If you study the life of Mark Twain as I have, you’ll find that Mark Twain never really took his own advice either. Although he eventually became rich, he did so because he was passionate about one thing and one thing only, money. He spent a good deal of his life scrounging and scraping by doing things he didn’t enjoy and had absolutely no passion for. In fact, Mark Twain became writer simply to pay the bills…the mounting bills. He was fired from almost every job he ever had, was extremely irresponsible, had the good fortune of having a massive family land bequest, and lost much of his money to stupid and irresponsible investments in inventions and ideas that had not a snow ball’s chance in hell of ever succeeding. He became rich essentially by getting General Ulysses S Grant to sign over the rights to his memoirs to Twain which eventually made him a wealthy publisher of Grant’s memoirs and later, other people’s writings. Twain would never have said that he had a passion for writing, or story telling, or creating something. No, Mark Twain, as it happened, was born during a time when a significant portion of the worlds richest people ever were developing their wealth. The Rockefeller's, JP Morgan, Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie, and several others were amassing sizable fortunes because it just happened to be during the industrial revolution. It was the period when the railroads were being built, Wall Street was birthed, and the all the previous rules of the economy were being broken and rewritten.
 
This isn’t a story about Mark Twain though, although maybe a cautionary tale about who and where you take your advice. This is a story about action, discipline, creating, and forcing yourself to do the most difficult work of all, the work of self reflection and thinking. Give some thought to the principles that you’re passionate about and then think on ways to bring energy to your work. Very few of us will ever have a true passion for the work we do but almost all of us can be passionate about how we do it and what we bring to the world on a daily basis! Be passionate and passions will develop! Don’t wait for passion to drop into your lap before becoming passionate though as this is backwards thinking. Passion is something we’re lucky to experience a few times in our lives and may lead to great memories and experiences, but becoming passionate about some greater principles and ideals will help us find meaning and energy to continue doing what it is we do to live and hopefully, eventually, do it with more passion!
 
Be well my friends and thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Real Value Podcast! I appreciate you investing your most value currency with me again this week and that is the currency of time. It’s really the only real currency we have and I take very seriously the responsibility that your investment entails. I will do everything in my power to create a return for your investment that far exceeds the initial capital but it is ultimately up to you to make something with the proceeds and profit! Reinvest your time wisely and become passionate about something that gives you renewed energy to be, do, and have whatever you desire. I thank you, love you all, and look forward to chatting with you all again next week. Fist bumps and friend hugs, I’m out…

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