Your Career – Build it Based on Your Passions
Your Career – Build it Based on Your Passions
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We’ve all known people who seem to be a perfect fit for their jobs or their careers. Not only are they successful but enjoy what they’re doing with a passion. We’ve also known people who are successful but hate what they’re doing with a passion. What’s the difference? Which category do you fall in?
I can tell you from experience (listening to others gripe) that it must be awful to be in a job for many years hating what you do. My first part-time job when I started college I worked in the main Post Office in Chicago where I worked with people who had been there 25 – 35 years or even longer. I heard so many of them speak of how they hated their job, but were too old, made good money, and had such good benefits that they couldn’t quit. Then and there I vowed that would never happen to me. It hasn’t happened. I was eighteen then and am a senior citizen now and never had a job I hated.
If your prime motivation is the bottom line then maybe it doesn’t make any difference as long as you’re making money and providing for your family a desirable lifestyle.
But, if you long for a job or career you love and could do with passion then it may be a more difficult.
True, some people just fall into their lifelong passion with little or no trouble at all. They are the lucky ones. Maybe they grew up in the family business, never knew anything else or cared to learn anything else and found contentment there. However, this is not the normal situation. Most of want to try something different or don’t have a silver spoon in our mouth.
It’s never too early, or late, to discover your passions and act on them. However you must first determine what you’re passionate about. When you understand your own passions, and this may not be easy for some, a whole new world of possibilities opens up.
Step back and take a close look at where you are now and how you got there. You might make good money doing whatever you do, but if you’re not happy and dread going to work, then the money is not your motivating factor. If this is your situation then you’re learning something about yourself already.
Look at your passions from all angles. If you were doing what you really like it could possibly open up new doors for you or create new friendships. You’ll never know the results of doing what you really have a passion for versus doing something to get by or even make big bucks as the case might be.
What you think your passions are could be just admiration of others who do what you think you would like to do. Would you like to become a writer but hate to sit down to a computer and write?
Do you admire a person who makes birdhouses for a living but you hate to be cooped up in a wood shop all day. Don’t confuse your passion with admiration. And be prepared for the realization that doing what you love will not always put bread on the table. Realize that a bird in the hand is not always better than two in a bush. Sometimes you need to break out of the stagnant mold, become a freethinker and seriously think of taking a chance in pursuing your passions.
You can bet people who are working at whatever their passion spent long hours to get where they are today. But, if it’s truly your passion, getting there will be a joy. Explore your passions whether they’re a love of animals, gardening or photography and take these passions to the next step.
Learn all you can about your passion. Take a class or a course, volunteer or intern in the field you love. See where the path leads. It could lead you right back to where you were in the first place but you owe it to yourself to find out. Even if you are in your later years or retired, it can pay you in sheer satisfaction to do some of the things you are passionate about – even if there is no monetary benefit to be derived from it. Enjoy the journey.
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