6 ways to find a job you are passionate about
You almost certainly have heard the well repeated phrase “Do what you love, and you will never do a day of work in your life”. Whilst the central message is one of following your passion, which of course I applaud wholeheartedly, it doesn’t address the more tricky challenge of how.
To help you overcome this challenge, I have compiled 6 ways you can start to explore what you are passionate about, what matters to you, and how to move forward with it. This will take a bit of time, but I promise you, the result will be a step closer to where you want to be.
Open your mind
This seems so simple, but is actually the hardest step to take, and possibly the reason you have stalled in previous attempts.
Start by shifting the narrative away from the negative and adopt the perspective that you can do what you love with your life, and that you do have the capacity to make these changes.
A powerful way to do this is to seek out people in your life that demonstrate this is possible. Who do you know that is passionate about their job? Then think more broadly, how can I connect with others who are inspired by what they do?
What makes you happy?
Once you have set your mind to finding your passion, we need some practical ways to bring to the surface what makes you happy.
One useful concept is that of ‘Peak Experiences’. Take some time to do a mental scan of your career/life to date. What are the 2, or even 3, absolute highlight moments for you? Take a few moments to consider all the elements of each experience that made it so brilliant. Have a look back over your notes - is it every element about the experience that was brilliant, or are there specific bits that light you up? Discard the bits that don’t.
Look for the themes
You now have a list of elements that bring you joy, flow and fulfilment. It’s time to join the dots. Are there some really clear themes and patterns? Look a bit more closely to see if there are some other connections beneath the surface that weren’t obvious at first glance.
Now start to think more broadly about how these elements transfer into your next career move. Can you harness these within your existing career? Can you retrain to work towards something new? Are your existing skills transferable into a new career that satisfies these elements? Are you thinking of starting a new business and working for yourself?
If you would like a deeper dive into this to look at these peak experiences in the context of your wider career, and to see where these themes and patterns show up, have a go at my Career Lifeline worksheet.
What do you want your life to look like?
I’ve put this here, but you can also use this as a starting point. It’s going to require some visualisation on your part.
Start by identifying a time frame that’s right for you. It could be 6 months, 1 year, 5 years. Whatever works. The next step is to answer these questions:
What do I want my life to look like in x months/years?
What is most important to me?
What impact do I want to have?
How do I want to feel each day?
These are big questions which require some real thought, so take your time here.
Understand your motivations
This is where you need to interrogate your ideals vs. reality. You have already started to build the shape of what you want, but what does it mean in reality. When does something you are passionate about become a viable career option?
The first key question to answer here is who would benefit (and pay for) what you do? If you feel there are opportunities within this area, you next need to consider what you would need to do to make this happen, and more importantly, will you enjoy doing these things? For some turning their passion into into work changes it from a thing they love to do, to a thing they have to do.
It would be remiss of me not to mention financial viability here too. How important is money to you? Have you worked out your minimum requirement? If not, what would you need to do to work that out? Does your dream job have the capacity to cover your minimum requirement? If not now, when?
Be brave
The penultimate section is about challenging yourself beyond your comfort zone. The biggest reason you may not have taken positive action already is because it is hard to step out of the security of what you know and what feels comfortable.
If it feels difficult to get started, ask yourself how you will feel in 12 months time if nothing has changed. Does this give you the motivation to do something? It doesn’t need to be huge, it can be a very small change or step forward. Don’t forget tiny steps accumulate to create much bigger shifts. Think of it as expanding your comfort zone, rather than stepping out of it completely.
What one thing can you do this week to challenge yourself and move yourself closer to your goal?
A different perspective
I wanted to finish this post by offering another perspective.
Adam Grant is a organisational psychologist who produces a podcast WorkLife. In Season 2: Episode 4 he considers The perils of following your career passion. It is an interesting counter argument, and he recommends that rather than concentrate solely on finding your career passion and trying to work out what will make you the happiest, you should seek out careers where you will learn the most. He argues that you may miss out on developing and discovering other interesting career avenues if you stay too focused on exclusively following your passion.
What I takeaway from listening to his thoughts on the subject, is that there is some value in relaxing your expectations around ‘following your passion’. If you can be anchored by your values and the things that make you happy, whilst equally keeping an open mind to how you can apply these more broadly in your career, you might find hidden opportunities that you never knew were there.