Our innate drive for a sense of belonging is a powerful force. In the ancient times, exile from our group meant certain death, and it isn’t too different today. We are social animals after all, the immense benefits of coordinating with others have made us so. Even our sense of personal identities cannot exist devoid of our group relationships: to be is, in large part, to belong. It isn’t at all surprising then, that this inherent trait is exploited by everyone, all the time. Political movements are more potent when the group is clearly demarcated from others, so there is an “us” to belong with and a “them” to fight with. Advertisements are more compelling when they focus on who you’d like to be instead of on the product itself, so you feel like buying your way into a desirable tribe instead of a mere object. Self-help advice often says that if you want to accomplish something, focus on who you wish to become, and not on what you want to achieve, because identity-based goals (which are tied to social groups) trump outcome-based ones.

This last example, on the best way to build habits to do hard things, has always felt a bit off to me. I have no doubt that it is highly effective and beneficial for most people in most cases, even just from my personal experience, but it seems incomplete. I think true passion can and should stand alone, independent of everything else, including our yearning to belong. A truly passionate musician makes music because that’s what they want to do, not because they want to “be in a band”. Someone who truly loves to write would just write, not so that they can belong in the group of “people who have a blog”. Someone who is really just want to build better products would do the work required no matter what, and not because they want the benefits and respect that come with the group of “product managers at tech companies”.

Of course, most things that we do are done not out of true passion, but for other reasons. To make a living, to gain status, to have or signal a specific identity, to belong in a group. That’s all just part of life. But it’s important to recognize that true passion is independent of all the other forces, with its own drive that is the most powerful. For the things we are really passionate about, we don’t need to use the desire to belong as a “motivation hack”. Yet often, we don’t even realize - and I mean truly realize, not in a self-deceptive, misleading way - that there can be something else, something more, that drives us.

Here’s a mental exercise that can help shine the light on things. Ask yourself, if all external signals of your group association from an activity become invisible, would you still engage in that activity¹? For example, hypothetically, if nobody will ever know that you are a writer and you can only write anonymously, would you still write? I suspect that if we all sincerely asked ourselves these questions about the things we do, only very few answers will be “yes” for each person, if any at all. That’s certainly true for myself. But these are the things that we would do, period, independent of everything else, not for the sake of “to be someone” or “to belong somewhere”. These are precisely the things that we have true passion for, find them, nurture them, and let them thrive!