Passion versus Skill

A friend posted a question on Facebook:
Will your skills and passion gives you a purposeful, fruitful and rewarding life?
I volunteered to respond with a Blog on this question.  However I had a blog post similar to this topic a while back: Talent is Overated in business. I allow you to visit the blog and read it too.

My view and understanding is that as far as business is concerned Passion is very important to an entrepreneur.

Passion is an intense emotion, a compelling enthusiasm or desire for something. 
It is so unlikely for entrepreneurs or anyone for that matter to not succeed in their pursue of business or carreer in their chosen field that they are passionate about.

Skill is a learned ability to carry out a task.

Anyone can learn a skill about anything but will the skill learned with no passion last for long?

For example I can cook, and I can learn other and further type of dishes but I am just not passionate about cooking. People who gets to taste my food they are always happy with them but believe me it always a force for me to cook, if it was up to me I would love not to cook and only do it when I feel like it, this is regardless of how skillful I may be. Therefore I shouldn’t even be tempted to start a business that will want me to cook because I am just not passionate about it. What happens when I reach those difficult challenges in business? I will easily give up because passion was never the foundation of the cooking business.

But when I do things I am passionate about nobody reminds me, instead I want to learn more and more (obtaining skills) you know why?
Passion is a motivation, passion drives you, and you do your work with no complaints, you actually look forward to solving problems if any.

Unlike when you are depending on skills only. As much as this two goes together but I emphasise on Passion first. A person who is only skillful tend to be limited because they are relying mostly on what they know and when the going gets tough will need the urge to push them or even need the same passion because once they have it they will be able to want to learn further and be more skillful.

I remember when I finished school, Nursing was the “in” thing, the most popular career that was advertised, that was mostly open for jobs. You do training while they pay you for two years and on completion you were offered a permanent job. I was given the forms and lots of information on how to go about it, but I refused to join because I just didn’t see myself doing the job. I am a very sensitive person, I am really scared of dead people, I can never look at wounds unless maybe it’s me affected or people close to me needing help. I fear blood. So imagine if I had allowed myself to be pushed by the pressure of the availability of jobs in this sector where would I be by now? Miserable. I would be skillful yes, but happy?  Never. The reason there are  many  people that are stuck in jobs and careers that makes them miserable, because they have chosen skill over passion. You don’t want to be a miserable CEO.

Therefore my advice to my fellow Entrepreneurs is to choose to pursue business in fields that they are very passionate about because even if it said it won’t work but You will make it work.

Passion First.