Find your passion and you’ll never work another day in your life.
We’ve all heard people say this, or maybe we’ve even been given this advice. We’re told we will wake up each and every day feeling like life is a vacation. Work will be easy and fun. We will be excited, motivated, and inspired because we will live every day doing what we love.
But what if you’re someone who doesn’t have a passion, or hasn’t discovered it yet? Or maybe the thing you’re passionate about can’t financially support you and your family?
What then?
To paraphrase Steve Jobs, passion helps you persevere during the tough times.
We’ve all heard people say this, or maybe we’ve even been given this advice. We’re told we will wake up each and every day feeling like life is a vacation. Work will be easy and fun. We will be excited, motivated, and inspired because we will live every day doing what we love.
But what if you’re someone who doesn’t have a passion, or hasn’t discovered it yet? Or maybe the thing you’re passionate about can’t financially support you and your family?
What then?
To paraphrase Steve Jobs, passion helps you persevere during the tough times.
It doesn’t mean life will always be fun or easy. But doing something you are passionate about will keep you in the game, give you the mental and emotional fortitude to hang in there when quitting seems like the easiest option.
There is a big difference between work that makes us happy and work that is meaningful. The way many people talk about finding our passion makes it sound like this will make us happy. But if we find work that has meaning, it may be potentially more challenging but it also gives us a higher level of career fulfillment and satisfaction.
If we get caught up in the “passion trap,” many of us will be on an endless search, leaving us feeling disillusioned. In our quest for happiness over meaning, we might end up overlooking or dismissing some really great career opportunities.
Instead, let’s reframe how we view work.
Sometimes, we need to find work that works for us. This means assessing our lives at this point in time and making responsible decisions. What this doesn’t mean is staying in or taking a job we hate or that sucks the life out of us. But it is absolutely acceptable to work in a job that you aren’t passionate about if you need to pay the mortgage, pay off student loans, or support yourself. That is perfectly okay and for many of us, this is realistic and responsible. We can find meaning in work that works for us where we are, right now.
Passion shouldn’t always be the driving force for work. If that were the case, there would most like be a LOT of us who simply wouldn’t be employed.
Instead, if we apply the best of ourselves to something and do our utmost to learn and grow, quite often we can find meaningful work. It won’t always be fun. It won’t always be easy. It sure as heck won’t feel like every day is a vacation. But it will be fulfilling.
To hear more about this topic, listen to the Pick the Brain podcast episode called “What we’ve been told about passion is BS.”
There is a big difference between work that makes us happy and work that is meaningful. The way many people talk about finding our passion makes it sound like this will make us happy. But if we find work that has meaning, it may be potentially more challenging but it also gives us a higher level of career fulfillment and satisfaction.
If we get caught up in the “passion trap,” many of us will be on an endless search, leaving us feeling disillusioned. In our quest for happiness over meaning, we might end up overlooking or dismissing some really great career opportunities.
Instead, let’s reframe how we view work.
Sometimes, we need to find work that works for us. This means assessing our lives at this point in time and making responsible decisions. What this doesn’t mean is staying in or taking a job we hate or that sucks the life out of us. But it is absolutely acceptable to work in a job that you aren’t passionate about if you need to pay the mortgage, pay off student loans, or support yourself. That is perfectly okay and for many of us, this is realistic and responsible. We can find meaning in work that works for us where we are, right now.
Passion shouldn’t always be the driving force for work. If that were the case, there would most like be a LOT of us who simply wouldn’t be employed.
Instead, if we apply the best of ourselves to something and do our utmost to learn and grow, quite often we can find meaningful work. It won’t always be fun. It won’t always be easy. It sure as heck won’t feel like every day is a vacation. But it will be fulfilling.
To hear more about this topic, listen to the Pick the Brain podcast episode called “What we’ve been told about passion is BS.”
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