Passion vs Safety

>one group says that passion is a meme, that even in passion driven jobs like academia or design you will be mostly doing boring work for terrible pay and with long work hours, that you should just get good at something that pays nicely, that you will develop passion automatically once you get good at something

>other group says that following your passion is the only way to be happy and that they had a well paying job but it made them miserable so they followed their passion instead and are happier now

So who is right? Are only a small group of people (survivorship bias) able to find a way to follow their passion in a way that makes them happy?

The truth is that happiness is independent of job or condition or passion or anything, it's a state of mind. It's possible to find happiness even at the lowest points in your life. Both sides are true because you should be able to survive and satisfy your animal comforts, but also have time to either follow passion or just do nothing at all and enjoy resting.

Also worth noting that nobody actually knows what the fuck they're doing, so listening to advice (this included) is useless. Nullius in verba, see for yourself, etc etc

maybe they're both right, and there's no simple answer that works for everyone

Are you talking about the theory that everyone has a set point of happiness that they return to whatever the situation?

there's no point in living if you can't do what you want to do

No, I'm saying that happiness is a certain physical state in the body that can be controlled indirectly, just like the rest of the body, through breathing, thought exercises, and in general controlled stimulus.

Do you think that everyone can learn to do that? Could you elaborate? What kind of thought exercises do you mean? And what do you mean by controlled stimulus?

Everyone can definitely learn to do it. The most important thing to do is practice breathing exercises and mindfulness; there's a lot on this that you can look up, but for breathing I've found going for around 8 seconds inhale, 8 seconds exhale works best without hypoventilating. Mindfulness is looking at both your physical and mental responses to stuff from an external point of view. When you're feeling upset about something, or even happy about something, look at where in your body you're actually feeling pain, soreness, or where you feel physical representations of emotions (eg. anxiety as tightness in the chest, sadness as feeling tired).
Controlled stimulus is using outside stimulus to shock your system and use the body's instinctual response to change your mental state. When you expose yourself to sharp stimulus, for example taking a cold shower, your body instinctively wakes up and is on alert. This also can feel unpleasant or make you hesitant, but you can combine this with mindfulness; what does that hesitation or unpleasantness actually feel like? You'll most likely find that it's a much smaller sensation than you thought, but because you thought it was a big deal, your brain makes it bigger than it actually is.
Hope this helps and at least gives you a starting point for looking into some of this.

>You'll most likely find that it's a much smaller sensation than you thought, but because you thought it was a big deal, your brain makes it bigger than it actually is.

interesting. sometimes i feel overwhelmed by the thought of working on a task and even after i've started i still feel very anxious about it and tend to look for distractions.

can you recommend some literature that isn't too wishy-washy?

Thank you for elaborating.

>but for breathing I've found going for around 8 seconds inhale, 8 seconds exhale works best

How often do you do these breathing exercises?

>Mindfulness is looking at both your physical and mental responses to stuff from an external point of view

I've done that a few times. But I don't quite understand how that is supposed to make you happier. I guess focusing just on the physical sensation that a feeling causes can help but I can't do anything else while I am doing that and when I stop I feel overwhelmed again.

Or like when I take a cold shower I try telling myself that it's just a signal that is supposed to be unpleasant and that I am in no harm but once I feel the cold water it's just so overwhelming like my brain just enters this primal self-defense mode. I had the same problem when I tried enduring my dentist drilling my tooth without anesthesia. Almost instantly told him to give me some.