‘In Order to Love What You do, You Need to do What You Love’

How do you find Passion in your career or become Passionate about what you do?

This is something I see in my son; he is very passionate about music and is willing to put in hours and hours practising his guitar and singing.

When he said he wanted to be a Musician, many friends told me that I should try and talk him into doing something else as a primary career and then look at Music, so at least he had a backup if he failed.

But I chose not to do that, I believe he should follow his passion, I believe he would be happier being a Second Rate Musician, than First Rate at something he didn’t care about.

To be honest I do not think that this has anything to do with money.

Personally, I couldn’t be the World’s Number 1 Golfer, no matter how much it paid, I just don’t like Golf enough.

People tell me yes, but that’s because you’re not very good at it, but to be honest, it’s not true, I wouldn’t want to play Golf 4 times a week plus all the practice no matter how good I was, it’s just not a sport which interests me.

Rugby on the other hand, I loved, I regularly played 4-5 games a week plus training, I wasn’t the greatest player in the world, not even close, but I loved it, I had a passion for it.

Unfortunately, not all of us can make a living out of our passions, I certainly couldn’t from playing rugby.

I was fortunate I had another passion, Problem-Solving, which I initially fulfilled by studying Mathematics at University, and I eventually found myself working in Computing then moving into first Management, and then Leadership, which in turn allowed me to fulfil another passion which was helping people achieve their full potential.

But we may not be able to make a living out of what we are passionate about, and then we cannot necessarily do what we love.

We may even have a job we don’t like, and it’s hard to be passionate about something we don’t like.

But maybe we can turn the tables, maybe we can see the job as the means to an end.

Maybe we use the job to put us into a position to open that Model Shop we have always dreamed about, or the Micro Brewing Business – as one of my colleagues is currently doing.

How can this work I hear you ask?

Well, before I ran my first Marathon I hated running, no really, I hated it with a passion, and the thought of doing a Marathon was a million miles from my mind.

But yet I did it, I found a passion for running, but this passion came from wanting to raise money for Cancer Charity, that was my real passion, and running was just the vehicle for doing it. And consequently, I became passionate about running.

So if you are having difficulty finding passion in what you are doing, then try and look at it in a different light.

Maybe you’re doing it to fund your children through college.

Try and see a bigger purpose in your work rather than just the 8-hour grind you put in every day.  There is the classic story of the janitor sweeping up underneath the stadium of the Dallas Cowboys, and someone asked him what he was doing, and he replied “I’m helping the Cowboys win the Superbowl”.

Which I think is a great answer and shows that maybe we can find passion everywhere if we just look.

Hopefully, like my son and his Music, you will get to do what you love, but if not then try and see if you can see things differently and find the passion so that you can love what you do.

How do you find passion in things that you don’t love, I would love to know!

If you want to learn more about creating highly engaged teams or being a better leader click the link to make an appointment to talk about how I can help.