Offered Alternative - Poster Presentation International Positive Psychology Association 8th IPPA World Congress 2023

Will your passion feed you or eat you alive—protecting your passion when it pays the bills (#913)

Kim Wimmer 1
  1. UPenn, La Crescenta, CA, United States

Background 

Robert Vallerand has identified two specific kinds of passion: harmonious and obsessive, which are distinguished by how one internalizes the passion within their identity.[1]  Harmonious passion connects us to meaning and higher creativity while obsessive passion is corrosive and leads to burnout.[2] When we make a career out of our passion, we place a tremendous amount of pressure upon it. With the added component of gatekeepers to success, and the precarious dependence on lucrative output from the passion-based endeavor for basic survival, maintaining harmonious passion is essential, not only for success, but also for resilience and well-being.

[1] Vallerand (2010)

[2] Vallerand & Verner-Filion (2013)

Aims

While no one wants to experience the corrosion of their passion in pursuit of their career, most don’t even realize it’s a risk until it’s too late. Further, few know how, specifically, to maintain harmonious passion and intrinsic motivation when everything is riding on success. While the considerable research clearly identifies the necessity of harmonious passion, there isn’t much attention given to course-correcting when passion veers into obsessive territory.

Method

Depending on time allotted, strategies/exercises may include: practicing an alternate, balancing passion; engaging the passion in a novel way, not tied to income; routinely creating space for passion-centric flow; practicing self-compassion when we fail; regular self-assessment for passion health; passion-based volunteering in service to others. Example populations include actors, entrepreneurs, psychologists, coaches, and teachers. 

Results

Attendees will learn strategies for passion maintenance. While the exercises themselves are not empirically validated, they are supported by the passion research of Robert Vallerand and colleagues.

Conclusion

There’s an old truism that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. But if we don’t learn how to cultivate and maintain harmonious passion in the face of external validation,  rejection or failure, we risk destroying the very thing that lit the fire of inspiration for our work in the first place. 

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  2. Vallerand, R. J., Verner-Filion, J. (2013). Making people’s lives most worth living: On the importance of passion for positive psychology. Terapia Psicológica, Vol. 31, pp. 35-48).
  3. St-Louis, A. C., Carbonneau, N., Vallerand, R. J., (2016). Passion for a Cause: How it affects well-being. Journal of Personality, 84:3, 263 - 276.
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  11. Bélanger, J.J., Lafrenière, & Vallerand, R. J. (2013) Driven by fear: the effect of success and failure information on passionate individuals’ performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 104, 180-195.
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  13. Berg S., Forest J., Stenseng F. (2020) When passion does not change, but emotions do: Testing a social media intervention related to exercise activity engagement. Frontiers in Psychology. 11:71. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00071
  • Please select up to 3 keywords from the following list to best describe your submission content: Career and Work, Meaning and Purpose, Resilience and Posttraumatic Growth
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