How to Find Passion in Your Career
If you’re passionate about what it is you do, then you’re going to be looking for everything you can to get better at it. – Jack Canfield
Article written by BridgeMaker contributor Alex Fayle, Someday Syndrome.
Growing up and living most of my life in North America, it always seemed natural to ask people upon meeting them what they did for a living. Then I moved to Spain where people rarely ask that question. I’ve been here two years and still don’t know what some friends do to pay the bills.
This lack of interest in people’s professional lives at first confused me, like people didn’t care enough about their friends to bother finding out what they did eight or ten hours a day.
After a while, however, when the cultural shift started happening in my brain, I understood the reluctance to ask: Work life isn’t important.
For a majority of Spaniards, a job is what you do to pay for the fun you have outside of work. Coming from a culture obsessed with discovering your passion (and being a mentor who helps people do just that), this concept of unimportance blew me away.
How could your career NOT be important?
A Different Point of View
There’s a generation in Spain that got the short end of the stick career-wise. Being the first generation to grow up in democracy a huge number of them went to university – it was what you did. Unfortunately there weren’t the jobs waiting for them on the other side, so they found what they could. Many of them were getting paid a very basic wage of 1000 Euros a month even into their late 30s and early 40s.
With their early dreams crushed and hope for change equally bleak, these mileuristas (1000 Euro earners) learned to find other passions in their lives and think of work as something to pay for these passions.
To a Spaniard, the best job is as a funcionario, a government employee, who is guaranteed a decent wage and a job for life. The obligatory exams for the various positions across the country normally have tens of thousands of people competing for very few openings. Actually liking the job is optional.
Entrepreneurs are looked at weirdly – anyone who would purposefully accept a life of risk and insecurity must have something wrong with them.
Passion isn’t the goal – security is.
Happiness & Career
Unfortunately this concept of security leads to a lot of unhappy people. Imagine training for four or five years in a field and then discovering upon graduation there are no jobs and there will likely never be enough positions in your field.
What would you do?
In Spain, people accept the bleak situation and get on with the rest of their life, finding purpose and meaning outside of work.
After being in Spain a little while, this attitude began to infect me and I seriously considered finding a job that would pay the bills and let me enjoy life outside of my work hours. I even gave it a try, working as a full-time English teacher for two months.
I hated it.
I realized pretty quickly that I’m a North American to the core. I need to feel passionate about my career or I hate my whole life. I’m not able to parcel up my life like that.
I need to be happy in my career even if that means insecurity and a lower-than-average income (at least during the startup years).
Finding Passion
So, if you’re like me and you can’t just settle for whatever’s offered or whatever everyone else is doing, how do you find that career that fills you with passion and gives you a sense of purpose each morning?
Here are nine steps you can take:
1. Be aware of your life.
Take a look at what you like and what you don’t like. Turn off the autopilot and start paying attention to your day to day actions. When you’re aware of your actions, then you can make conscious decisions that lead you to a purpose-filled career.
2. Stop focusing on the negative.
Our thoughts are just as subject to the laws of physics as our bodies. Once a certain pattern of thoughts start rolling along, it’s very difficult to get them to stop. This is true for negative and positive thoughts.
If your job isn’t your dream career but it allows you to enjoy your life in many other ways, try focusing on the positive aspects of your work. After a little while, you might just find that a job you thought you hated actually isn’t that bad and with just a few minor adjustments could fulfill your needs.
3. Take off the rose-coloured glasses.
On the flip side, if you’re in a job that is beating you down and makes life intolerable, recognize this and stop trying to find excuses to stay there. Sometimes there are worse things than being unemployed. If your job has gone past the point of being a drag and has started heading into abusive territory, stop justifying the abuse and get out.
4. Learn to direct your energy.
Do you know what you want? What fills you with energy? Many people have lots of dreams but very few can clearly articulate exactly what they want out of life. Without that focus you’ll find it very difficult to discover purpose and passion in not just work but your whole life.
5. Do what’s right for you.
Who’s dream are you living? Do you even know? Peer pressure and the pressure to conform affect us just as strongly as adults as they did when we were kids. Take a step back from your life and ask yourself “Is this what I really want from my career?” You may be surprised at the answer.
6. Recognize the difference between dreams and daydreams.
Daydreams are inactive things. They are flights of fancy that have no actions attached. A dream is something that’s realistic and motivates us into action and accomplishing goals along the way. While daydreaming can be fun (and is something I do quite a bit) remember that you have to be willing to act and that means recognizing when to stop the daydreams.
7. Create a simple plan.
The emphasis here is on the word simple. The more complicated the plan, the less likely you’ll achieve it because with each layer of complexity, you’re less able to adapt to changes along the way. Plus the more detailed the plan, the more you’ll be tempted to spend time working on the plan itself instead of on completing the plan.
8. Look for progress.
As you move towards your dream and towards finding passion in what you do, it’s easy to see only what’s not happening and how far you have to go to reach your dream. By focusing on the progress you’ve made, no matter how small, you recognize each victory as it comes which will motivate and excite you to keep going. And if your job isn’t something that fills you with passion, looking for the small victories may help you find the desire to do your best with what you have.
9. Live in the moment.
Life exists only in the present. Looking back at the past will depress you, either because you’re dwelling on previous injuries or because the golden age of past days will always be better than today. Dreaming about the future also drains your passion in the present because the present can never compare to the unreal fantasies we construct for the future.
By following these nine steps, no matter what your work situation is, you’ll find something to excite you and to give you a sense of purpose and will give you a reason to spring out of bed with a smile on your face.
Alex Fayle, of Someday Syndrome, is a former procrastinator who uses his visionary ability to uncover hidden patterns and help you break the procrastination obstacle so that you can finally find freedom and start living the life you desire.
Learn more about how you can start loving life again at SomedaySyndrome.com
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Comments
13 Responses to “How to Find Passion in Your Career”
What do you think?
You’ve said “Entrepreneurs are looked at weirdly – anyone who would purposefully accept a life of risk and insecurity must have something wrong with them.” I get that very often from my friends, who must think there must be something very wrong with me for not going back to a corporate career as a banker! I enjoyed your point #4 very much on directing your energy.
Living in a latin country with a big Spanish heritage, I can say that, at least in here, an entrepreneur is seen as someone brave, because he’s willing to take risks.
On the other hand, most of those entrepreneurs don’t have a plan, therefore, they most likely fail.
I liked your step #5 “Do what is right for you”. Eventually, it’s your life, so live it the way you like it.
I’m Australian not North American. We don’t have the same cult of the entrepreneur over here as in the US.
For me I’ve realised that I value my independence. If people would give me a job where I could do what I wanted, I’d take it. (No offers so far.)
I think people only look at entrepreneurs weirdly until they make a lot of money. I hope people will stop looking at me strangely some day soon.
@Evelyn:
I never got the strange looks until I moved to Spain. In my circle of friends back in Canada starting your own business was seen as choosing freedom, but here in Spain doing coaching is seen as “selling smoke” and few people really get it, but fortunately I’m happy going my own way (and focusing my energy on what I love doing).
@Claudia
That’s great you get that response. It’s very similar to the one I received when I started my first business as a Professional Organizer back in Toronto.
@Evan
That’s a very good distinction – a poor entrepreneur is crazy while a rich one is a maverick.
I tried the government “job for life” thing and if nothing else, it showed me how much it’s overvalued. I had many co-workers who were miserable and stressed out but are still there even 10 years after I’ve moved on, and they can’t leave because the money is too good and they don’t want to give up their lifestyle. I think the government has to pay well or no one would stay (at least here in Canada).
@ Janet: Thanks for sharing your story. My goal is to never allow a job to hold me hostage. No matter the circumstances, I try to find value and puropose – some days are just harder than others.
@Janet
That’s something I’ve never understood, living in a world you hate just for the sake security and to have enjoy money to enjoy life later. It’s like life starts for them at retirement…
This is a very helpful and timely article. I guess I was one of those people who tried to find happiness and function outside of one’s job. It’s a compromise and there will come a time when you will feel so exhausted and drained you might forget what your real passion is. Being true to one’s heart is the key. Standing up for it will open the door towards your joy.
@Jocelyn
I know many others who’ve tried to find passion outside their work and all it did was show them that they needed to change jobs. As a part of the journey it’s a great way to know how important passion and purpose in your career is for you.
Hope you now experience passion in all parts of your life!
[...] Fayle recently wrote a post on How to Find Purpose and Passion in Your Career with some interesting tips that I will reproduce [...]
This is a great list. When we take the steps to make our career come alive then we are truly working happy.
Creating a simple plan that wasn’t painful to execute was how I did it. Each day I build a little more. One day without even noticing it I found that I’ve built a strong foundation.
@Karl
That’s how I approach all of life these days – bit by bit I build it up until without realizing I’ve created not just the foundation, but raised a whole tower!
[...] it with passion. Still, if we can’t do what we love, we still have to have the passion. So, How to Find Passion in Your Career ? This lack of interest in people’s professional lives at first confused me, like people didn’t [...]