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www.thegrindstone.com: Former Dirty Jobs host turned Somebody’s Gotta Do It host Mike Rowe is a pretty awesome dude: He’s got that approachable, everyman thing down, but beneath the affable, blue collar exterior is a truly brilliant man with a lot of common sense.
14 comments:
Adelaide Zhang
said...
I think that the perspective Mike Rowe is providing here is extremely important, especially because it is the other side of what we are always told. People always say to do what you are passionate about, but as Rowe explains, sometimes that advice isn't the best. To some extent, it seems like it would take a certain amount of cynicism to subscribe to what he's saying, but he's really just advising people to be pragmatic. It seems heartless to tell a kid not to follow his dream, but if he really isn't cut out for it, it probably isn't the best path for him. Some would likely argue that there are people throughout history who have proven that it is possible to overcome impossible odds, but those are the ones that we hear about -- we simply don't remember the people who tried to follow their passions and failed, however many there may have been.
One of my favorite images that has been floating around lately is the venn diagram with four circles that shows how you find your dream job and how it differs from your passion, mission, profession, and vocation. Here's a link to the image for a reference: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9mo_u0MSwag/U-S26S1JAXI/AAAAAAAAEyo/20vmLS8e2ww/s640/blogger-image-1139412921.jpg I definitely feel as though Mike Rowe makes a wonderful point. If you are trying to pursue something that you just can't succeed at, then you'll feel as though what you do is worthless and will lose all motivation. People need to start to notice that passion isn't always everything and you can't get through life on passion alone. While, yes it is a great thing to have and will definitely help, it can also just damage your progression through life and hold you in one spot without any real purpose.
Mike Rowe is one of my favorite people ever, particularly because he is such a grounded an intelligent man. His advice on following your dreams is very good advice, but it must be looked at on a deeper level than as a pessimistic outlook on life. Yes, following your dreams can be beneficial, but Mike Rowe is telling us that true happiness can come from learning to love what you are good at. Learning to love being a beneficial member of society is productive to everybody, and it shows more enlightenment than most people ever achieve in their lifetime.
I am actually very happy I got to read this article and will be sire to share it with my family. I think it is very important to follow a sensible dream. Aim for the stars but shoot for the moon. If people don't understand their limitations or if they stay single minded then its very likely that they will not get what the most desire out of life. I understand that that approach may work for some but for the vast majority we need to learn to take out of life what we can. If people have a positive out look then it is simple to pull happiness out of everything.
I think the key point of this article is more of always have sense of awareness to your limitation while chasing for your dream, and learn to adjust these tow things together and come up with sensible dreams within reach and make the best out of it. I like his last word “Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.”
Also, what I got from this is article is something that is so true that I never actually notice: When you stuck with one single passion, your mind will narrow down to just things that related to this passion and forget to allow yourself to explore other opportunities in this world. When I was a kid I always thought and focused myself on being a doctor like my my cousins, my aunt, and my uncle and I pushed myself so hard without realizing that I was always unhappy because I actually don't like it and my talent and personality just wasn't go towards medical fields. Up until one day that I felt like could not dealing with it no more and I allow myself to explore all the opportunities out there while observing myself and now I ended up here. I don't like the header of the article though. Can someone think of other names that might suit this article better?
I think Mike Rowe is showing a very important side of an issue that is larger than we realize. In the circles we run in, we mostly come across people who are passionate about what they do and are good at it. We are not often exposed to people who have a lot of passion, but maybe aren't so good. This applies more often (or at least in larger numbers) to the performance side of things. There is something fundamental about humans that makes the idea of storytelling and performance inherently interesting to many. However, not everyone has the talent to do the job. So, by telling someone that, are you doing them a favor? Or are you just crushing dreams? It is interesting to explore how and why we can learn passion for what we are good at.
I can't help but agree with most of the advice Mike Rowe gives. I've often wished that I could give people similar advice...but how do you tell someone that they're just not good at doing what they love without being a douche. This is certainly not the first career I've tested out, and I've barely crossed into my mid-twenties. And I had to fail a couple times in order to get here, which is hard. But I've known plenty of others that struggled day after day trying to get thru college as a theatre student or a business student that are now waiting tables, stocking shelves or doing something else...and many of them are non-actors. Truthfully, there's nothing wrong with that, but I can't help but wonder, could they have found something they might have been more successful doing had someone encouraged them NOT to follow their dream of creating theatre? Can I still more success outside of the entertainment industry, or now that I'm almost done pursuing my MFA is it too late?
Everyone should dream, but we shouldn't foster a generation of dreamers, because the gap between dreaming and doing is growing. Pursuing a futile passion can be infuriating, depressing, and fruitless. But as Mike Rowe suggests, being pragmatic and strategic about what you are passionate about is key. Knowing your limits and what you can't do is an invaluable asset, as important as knowing what your skills are. We are handed down these success stories, but they often come to us romanticized, and unreal. There is a lot of value to Mike Rowe's words, if only people listen and adjust their expectations moving forward.
Although this headline was an immediate turn-off, I think there is validity in what Mike Rowe has to say. Although we would all like to imagine that passion and big dreams can get us wherever we would like to go in life, it's essential that people also look at the practicalities of life and find a realistic course of action to accomplish their goals. Sometimes this may entail giving up on some dreams to allow new, unexpected ones to come in. That being said, my favorite quote from the article was “Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.” Well said, Mr Rowe.
For someone who hosts Dirty Jobs, I would not have expected such wisdom. (Which is a whole other discourse in itself). This question of passion and profession has been plaguing me in recent years. I've done theatre for a while, tried engineering for a second, it was too structured, so I bumped back to theatre and never really considered doing anything else. After I got into a bunch of colleges for theatre I remembering having this moment of, "wait, why am I doing this?" I thought about architecture or something else but still gravitated back towards theatre. I think self-consciousness slips in a lot and the very personal nature of the work we do. I know there's certainly been times where I'm like am I really good enough to be doing this for the rest of my life? Just because I love doing this, what if I'm actually not super good at it? While I often am reminded of why I'm here, sometimes I do wonder if I jumped in too quickly. I'm very passionate about the work I'm doing, but maybe this passion pushed me too quickly. Fortunately, I certainly don't think it was disaster but it could have been. I do wonder what if I had done something like industrial design or computer science? Some day am I going to wish I had done something that would make more money and still interest me? It's hard to know. What I do know is that I'm constantly being stimulated and finding joy in the work I'm doing so that means something is right.
First I'd like to say that Mike Rowe is way more intelligent than most people make him out to be. His advice here is spot on and I think that if more people had this thought process we'd be living in a much more successful world. We can tell people to pursue their passion forever and then where would we be. As a kid I always wanted to be a professional hockey player on the New York Rangers. When I played I was good, but I was never the best, I was a sloppy skater but a great hitter and shot blocker. When you think about it there is really just one thing that separates me from the NHL and that is the fact that I'm not good enough. I think that this can be translated into every profession. I know this is a bold statement but you know what would really lower poverty in the United States? Stop telling people to follow their passions and just get a job thats available and make themselves the best at it.
I think subjects like these are really tricky to navigate in the art world right? So much of "being good" at something is so subjective, and it's challenging to rely on the reception of audience, because lets be honest, ticket revenue for most places isn't putting bread on the table. I think defining success in the fields of art really become personal, and not something that you can really take from others. Also having affirmation from "industry professionals" may not always be important. Think about the greats! The artistic genius's! Were they supported and favored, and considered to be successful during their times? Regretfully no. But now they are revered and being called masters, and artistic geniuses!
I think however there's a huge difference between relying on your "passion" to be someones main source of income however versus not doing something because people don't think you're good enough. Don't be ignorant and homeless, have another job to financially support you and your passion. This economy is to atrocious to do so.
I understand the sentiment of this article but I feel like we are all initially bias about this. The motto of of school is "my heart is in the work" in that people come here to work on what they are passionate about. With that being said I think the author could have title the post differently because the article is more about setting realism to our dreams. We live in a society where too often we confuse the idea of realism with pessimism. While often these to do overlap but everyone forgets that optimism is part of the idea of realism too. I feel like a more appropriate title for the article was having more realistic dreams because there is nothing wrong in following your passion because when you are doing what you love in theory you should never "work" a day in your life.
Mike Rowe makes an important point and can be directly applied to theatre. Theatre and acting, directing etc, most certainly take a great deal of passion and creativity, and usually insanity, to pursue it as a career. Without those characteristics, many peoples acting careers would end after their first audition. Without a doubt, I will be turned away from more auditions than those I'd book, but passion for this art form is what keeps me coming back. It is what gets me to goo to the next audition and the next audition after that. I find myself agreeing with Rowe. "I don't see a shortage of people who are willing to dream big. I see people struggling because their reach has exceeded their grasp." This could not be more apparent than in the Unified auditions. I found that there were so many kids willing to kill to get into some of the BFA programs, but in reality, its mostly the same 100 or so kids who get into the top programs. Not even 100. The talent pool is small, but the "passion pool" is huge. Now, it is not my place to comment on someones talent, but I did find it interesting just how many parents were managing their children, in hopes of gaining access to a top conservatory, when their kid lacked ability, but this was their "Dream". In contrast, sometimes I find myself in need for some of those peoples passion. I become a little too comfortable. I start taking too much for granted.
"Passion is too important to be without, but too fickle to be guided by. Which is why I'm more inclined to say, 'Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.'"
14 comments:
I think that the perspective Mike Rowe is providing here is extremely important, especially because it is the other side of what we are always told. People always say to do what you are passionate about, but as Rowe explains, sometimes that advice isn't the best. To some extent, it seems like it would take a certain amount of cynicism to subscribe to what he's saying, but he's really just advising people to be pragmatic. It seems heartless to tell a kid not to follow his dream, but if he really isn't cut out for it, it probably isn't the best path for him. Some would likely argue that there are people throughout history who have proven that it is possible to overcome impossible odds, but those are the ones that we hear about -- we simply don't remember the people who tried to follow their passions and failed, however many there may have been.
One of my favorite images that has been floating around lately is the venn diagram with four circles that shows how you find your dream job and how it differs from your passion, mission, profession, and vocation. Here's a link to the image for a reference: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9mo_u0MSwag/U-S26S1JAXI/AAAAAAAAEyo/20vmLS8e2ww/s640/blogger-image-1139412921.jpg
I definitely feel as though Mike Rowe makes a wonderful point. If you are trying to pursue something that you just can't succeed at, then you'll feel as though what you do is worthless and will lose all motivation. People need to start to notice that passion isn't always everything and you can't get through life on passion alone. While, yes it is a great thing to have and will definitely help, it can also just damage your progression through life and hold you in one spot without any real purpose.
Mike Rowe is one of my favorite people ever, particularly because he is such a grounded an intelligent man. His advice on following your dreams is very good advice, but it must be looked at on a deeper level than as a pessimistic outlook on life. Yes, following your dreams can be beneficial, but Mike Rowe is telling us that true happiness can come from learning to love what you are good at. Learning to love being a beneficial member of society is productive to everybody, and it shows more enlightenment than most people ever achieve in their lifetime.
I am actually very happy I got to read this article and will be sire to share it with my family. I think it is very important to follow a sensible dream. Aim for the stars but shoot for the moon. If people don't understand their limitations or if they stay single minded then its very likely that they will not get what the most desire out of life. I understand that that approach may work for some but for the vast majority we need to learn to take out of life what we can. If people have a positive out look then it is simple to pull happiness out of everything.
I think the key point of this article is more of always have sense of awareness to your limitation while chasing for your dream, and learn to adjust these tow things together and come up with sensible dreams within reach and make the best out of it. I like his last word “Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.”
Also, what I got from this is article is something that is so true that I never actually notice: When you stuck with one single passion, your mind will narrow down to just things that related to this passion and forget to allow yourself to explore other opportunities in this world.
When I was a kid I always thought and focused myself on being a doctor like my my cousins, my aunt, and my uncle and I pushed myself so hard without realizing that I was always unhappy because I actually don't like it and my talent and personality just wasn't go towards medical fields. Up until one day that I felt like could not dealing with it no more and I allow myself to explore all the opportunities out there while observing myself and now I ended up here.
I don't like the header of the article though. Can someone think of other names that might suit this article better?
I think Mike Rowe is showing a very important side of an issue that is larger than we realize. In the circles we run in, we mostly come across people who are passionate about what they do and are good at it. We are not often exposed to people who have a lot of passion, but maybe aren't so good. This applies more often (or at least in larger numbers) to the performance side of things. There is something fundamental about humans that makes the idea of storytelling and performance inherently interesting to many. However, not everyone has the talent to do the job. So, by telling someone that, are you doing them a favor? Or are you just crushing dreams? It is interesting to explore how and why we can learn passion for what we are good at.
I can't help but agree with most of the advice Mike Rowe gives. I've often wished that I could give people similar advice...but how do you tell someone that they're just not good at doing what they love without being a douche. This is certainly not the first career I've tested out, and I've barely crossed into my mid-twenties. And I had to fail a couple times in order to get here, which is hard. But I've known plenty of others that struggled day after day trying to get thru college as a theatre student or a business student that are now waiting tables, stocking shelves or doing something else...and many of them are non-actors. Truthfully, there's nothing wrong with that, but I can't help but wonder, could they have found something they might have been more successful doing had someone encouraged them NOT to follow their dream of creating theatre? Can I still more success outside of the entertainment industry, or now that I'm almost done pursuing my MFA is it too late?
Everyone should dream, but we shouldn't foster a generation of dreamers, because the gap between dreaming and doing is growing. Pursuing a futile passion can be infuriating, depressing, and fruitless. But as Mike Rowe suggests, being pragmatic and strategic about what you are passionate about is key. Knowing your limits and what you can't do is an invaluable asset, as important as knowing what your skills are. We are handed down these success stories, but they often come to us romanticized, and unreal. There is a lot of value to Mike Rowe's words, if only people listen and adjust their expectations moving forward.
Although this headline was an immediate turn-off, I think there is validity in what Mike Rowe has to say. Although we would all like to imagine that passion and big dreams can get us wherever we would like to go in life, it's essential that people also look at the practicalities of life and find a realistic course of action to accomplish their goals. Sometimes this may entail giving up on some dreams to allow new, unexpected ones to come in. That being said, my favorite quote from the article was “Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.” Well said, Mr Rowe.
For someone who hosts Dirty Jobs, I would not have expected such wisdom. (Which is a whole other discourse in itself). This question of passion and profession has been plaguing me in recent years. I've done theatre for a while, tried engineering for a second, it was too structured, so I bumped back to theatre and never really considered doing anything else. After I got into a bunch of colleges for theatre I remembering having this moment of, "wait, why am I doing this?" I thought about architecture or something else but still gravitated back towards theatre. I think self-consciousness slips in a lot and the very personal nature of the work we do. I know there's certainly been times where I'm like am I really good enough to be doing this for the rest of my life? Just because I love doing this, what if I'm actually not super good at it? While I often am reminded of why I'm here, sometimes I do wonder if I jumped in too quickly. I'm very passionate about the work I'm doing, but maybe this passion pushed me too quickly. Fortunately, I certainly don't think it was disaster but it could have been. I do wonder what if I had done something like industrial design or computer science? Some day am I going to wish I had done something that would make more money and still interest me? It's hard to know. What I do know is that I'm constantly being stimulated and finding joy in the work I'm doing so that means something is right.
First I'd like to say that Mike Rowe is way more intelligent than most people make him out to be. His advice here is spot on and I think that if more people had this thought process we'd be living in a much more successful world. We can tell people to pursue their passion forever and then where would we be. As a kid I always wanted to be a professional hockey player on the New York Rangers. When I played I was good, but I was never the best, I was a sloppy skater but a great hitter and shot blocker. When you think about it there is really just one thing that separates me from the NHL and that is the fact that I'm not good enough. I think that this can be translated into every profession. I know this is a bold statement but you know what would really lower poverty in the United States? Stop telling people to follow their passions and just get a job thats available and make themselves the best at it.
I think subjects like these are really tricky to navigate in the art world right? So much of "being good" at something is so subjective, and it's challenging to rely on the reception of audience, because lets be honest, ticket revenue for most places isn't putting bread on the table. I think defining success in the fields of art really become personal, and not something that you can really take from others. Also having affirmation from "industry professionals" may not always be important. Think about the greats! The artistic genius's! Were they supported and favored, and considered to be successful during their times? Regretfully no. But now they are revered and being called masters, and artistic geniuses!
I think however there's a huge difference between relying on your "passion" to be someones main source of income however versus not doing something because people don't think you're good enough. Don't be ignorant and homeless, have another job to financially support you and your passion. This economy is to atrocious to do so.
I understand the sentiment of this article but I feel like we are all initially bias about this. The motto of of school is "my heart is in the work" in that people come here to work on what they are passionate about. With that being said I think the author could have title the post differently because the article is more about setting realism to our dreams. We live in a society where too often we confuse the idea of realism with pessimism. While often these to do overlap but everyone forgets that optimism is part of the idea of realism too. I feel like a more appropriate title for the article was having more realistic dreams because there is nothing wrong in following your passion because when you are doing what you love in theory you should never "work" a day in your life.
Mike Rowe makes an important point and can be directly applied to theatre. Theatre and acting, directing etc, most certainly take a great deal of passion and creativity, and usually insanity, to pursue it as a career. Without those characteristics, many peoples acting careers would end after their first audition.
Without a doubt, I will be turned away from more auditions than those I'd book, but passion for this art form is what keeps me coming back. It is what gets me to goo to the next audition and the next audition after that.
I find myself agreeing with Rowe. "I don't see a shortage of people who are willing to dream big. I see people struggling because their reach has exceeded their grasp." This could not be more apparent than in the Unified auditions. I found that there were so many kids willing to kill to get into some of the BFA programs, but in reality, its mostly the same 100 or so kids who get into the top programs. Not even 100. The talent pool is small, but the "passion pool" is huge.
Now, it is not my place to comment on someones talent, but I did find it interesting just how many parents were managing their children, in hopes of gaining access to a top conservatory, when their kid lacked ability, but this was their "Dream".
In contrast, sometimes I find myself in need for some of those peoples passion. I become a little too comfortable. I start taking too much for granted.
"Passion is too important to be without, but too fickle to be guided by. Which is why I'm more inclined to say, 'Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.'"
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