Passion Is Not Enough to Be Better

There are so many popular beliefs, but most of them are probably wrong and do not work at all. Doing what you love to be successful is a wrong belief.

Passion is not enough. How can you be passionate about doing something that you are bad at? You are probably loving programming now because you believe you can do it. You feel like it clicks for you. It makes sense for you to understand code and computer stuff. But there is a point where you hit your limit because you start finding very hard things. We go back to the question: how can you be passionate about doing something that you are bad at?

I am not saying that you start hating programming the moment you face hard things. At least, resistance does not come the first time you face challenges. It comes when you keep failing. Your negative inner voices start coming out. Your self-criticism starts to surface. Your self-doubt starts coming out. These voices start coming:

• "You are not good enough."
• "You are not smart enough."
• "Programming is hard. Let's stop."
• "Look! Other developers keep posting their great works."
• "You do not understand what you write. You are stupid!"
• "You are not doing things in the best way possible."

How can you handle those negative voices? How can you keep moving forward when doing what makes you feel bad? We, humans, love doing what makes us comfortable. Doing hard things does not make us comfortable. I do not like to feel bad. You also do not like feeling defeated. But why do you keep going back to study and get better?

Your actions make you better at programming—or at anything really. Although there are difficult internal and external challenges, you keep coming back. That is the magic: you keep coming back to learn programming. Why do you keep coming back? The answer to this question is the true source of your motivation. Learning C or even C++ is hard, but you keep coming back. CSS is confusing, and JavaScript is strange, but you keep coming back. Why? You know your answers.

Passion is an extra. The necessary thing is your attitude to keep going back every time you fail.