Q: “How can I make myself passionate when I don’t get paid enough?”

A: This question sounds about right… until you realize that it’s actually ridiculous. Increasing external rewards like pay very often has a negative impact on one’s level of passion. You know this. Here, I’ll show you:

A subordinate comes into your office and flops down in a chair. She’s clearly upset, and she says, “I really like this company, but I just can’t seem to bring ‘my all’ to the job… I mean, how can I make myself passionate when I don’t get paid enough?” (Cue gentle, paternalistic advice about how she has it backward.)

A friend at dinner bemoans his boss, his job, his projects, and his commute. He says, “I don’t get paid enough to be passionate about this work.” (Cut to you looking at your friend and saying, “You mean to tell me if you got paid more, all this crap suddenly wouldn’t matter?”)

A Board member of a well-known, ailing company is being interviewed by a magazine about the outrageous compensation of their CEO. He responds, “If we didn’t pay enough, he wouldn’t be passionate about the job.” (Cue apoplectic snort.)

See? It’s ridiculous when other people say it. It’s only when you say it that you forget how stupid this question is.

Ah, the joys of the human condition.

Don’t worry, we all do it. The good news is, although it takes a lifetime of discipline and focus to overcome this uniquely human frailty, the mechanics of how to overcome it can be laid out in four easy-to-understand (though sometimes really-tough-to-do) steps.

Trust your gut. Rewards don’t beget passion, they replace it, and in your gut, you know this. Relying on external rewards for satisfaction turns work into a four letter word. You can feel it. You know how when someone says, “Hey! You’re having fun,” it can actually drain the joy you feel? That’s an example of how an external reward (someone else’s comment) can diminish an internal one (your actual enjoyment).
Make a choice. Do you want money and extrinsic rewards or the passion and satisfaction? These options represent very different visions of success—as different as Manhattan and Hawaii. I’m not saying that both can’t be great—heaven knows money makes certain aspects of life much easier—but I am saying that you can’t live in both places at the same time… if you try, yes you’ll get some of the benefits, but you’ll also end up living out of a suitcase and missing a lot of benefits, too. You can’t outthink this choice. All you can do is accept it. And then choose.
Take 100% personal responsibility for your own success. Once you’ve chosen one path or the other, put everything you’ve got into reaching it. And I mean everything. Every single obstacle you face is feedback that you are not totally aligned with one goal or the other. For instance, if you’re going after passion, and you find yourself complaining about money, the time you spend complaining is time you spend not chasing your passions (unless you’re passionate about complaining?); complaining is an expression that you want more extrinsic rewards; this is a step along the path to that other goal. And it’s not even a step forward. Regardless of the validity of your complaint, the process of complaining is feedback about you.
Accept that mental ruts are tough to avoid. Don’t be surprised when certain situations trigger automatic responses within you. These are the decisions that, in real time, seem so obvious, yet in hindsight make you cringe because they are consistently so the opposite of how they seemed in the moment. That’s you falling into your mental ruts. Don’t judge yourself for having them, we all do. Just get the help you need. Yes, I’m talking about coaching, training, and development. If mental ruts were easy to break, the world would be utopia. It ain’t. There are people who are experts in this process. Use us.

See? Four steps. Easy to understand… really, really tough to do. But such is life, so you might as well learn to enjoy it! After all, if you had really wanted a life without struggle, you would have incarnated as a cat.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.