Who decided that exploring our passions had to come with a paycheck, anyway?
___
by
Have you found your passion?
It seems to be the thing to do these days. The worst thing that you can do with your life is to live without direction, without purpose, or without passion. You can find your passion in two minutes, uncover your purpose in four easy steps, with just a quiz, a seminar or a workshop.
But should passion really be that hard to find?
I mean, if you are really passionate about something don’t you think you would know about it? Passion doesn’t strike me as something that we really need to go searching for. Yet if we don’t have one overriding passion, if we have yet to discover our elusive purpose, we are made to feel incomplete, even inadequate. (Usually by someone who has found their purpose and who wants you to buy whatever they are selling.)
Confucius or Confusion?
Not only are we supposed to find our passion, we are supposed to make a career out of it:
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” –Confucius may have said this—but probably not.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
Behind this is the belief that once we find the one thing we are “meant to do,” life will just fall into place and it will be all rainbows and unicorns from there on in.
I call bullshit on the whole finding your passion premise because it is simplistic, and implies some pretty sweeping assumptions about work, life and happiness.
No, I am not cynical, bitter, or jaded. And no, I don’t think that people should be working at jobs that they hate.
Turning something we love into a career can sometimes kill the passion we have for it.
|
I find the whole premise similar to the “finding your soulmate” fairy tale. They both hinge on the limiting belief that we must find that one right pre-destined job, or person, that will fulfill us and “make” us happy.
What do you do when passion sucks?
The road to fulfillment isn’t a lightning bolt of passion that hits us out of nowhere (or is revealed to us from somewhere within), but rather an accumulation of life events, experiences, choices and even mistakes. Sitting around hemming and hawing about finding your passion isn’t going to get you anywhere—going out and experiencing life, even without knowing where you will end up, is. Maybe finding our passion isn’t as important as living with passion, regardless of what we are doing.
The truth is that every job sucks sometimes, there is no such thing as a job that will keep you happy, engaged and motivated 100% of the time.
|
The truth is that every job sucks sometimes, there is no such thing as a job that will keep you happy, engaged and motivated 100% of the time. Even dream jobs come with mundane tasks and shitty days:
- The most passionate teacher can still get bogged down by administrative tasks
- The most excited artist might still hate marketing themselves
- The most caring therapist sometimes gets pissed at no-shows and scheduling conflicts
We are being sold a story that slogging through a shitty day on the job for the sake of our passion or purpose is more noble, more acceptable somehow, than for putting food on the table or paying the rent.
I am just not buying into that.
I mean I’m pretty sure that throughout most of history our “workdays” were spent just trying to survive—you know, hunting, gathering, building shelter—it’s still like that in parts of the world. So the idea that working for something less than our elusive passion is somehow beneath us is kind of the ultimate in modern, western privilege.
Turning something we love into a career can sometimes kill the passion we have for it.
I almost fell into this trap a few years ago when I became a hypnotist and decided to buy into the life purpose idea. While I love what I do—interacting one-on-one with clients—I’d have to hypnotize a whole lot of individual people every day to make a living out of it. I did the math. What I discovered is that with hypnosis (and a lot of other personal development-based fields), it is generally the training aspect that is most lucrative, not the actual work itself. You will notice that most yoga studios, hypnosis centers, coaching programs, and so on make their living “training the trainers,” so to speak. Simply working in the field, directly with clients, is not where the money is.
Better question: How do you make a life that you love?
There are a lot of other things that I’d also like to experience in life—security, abundance, connection, comfort, excitement, intimacy, romance, freedom—to name a few. I could choose a career that offers the opportunity and possibility for any number of those things, and find the opportunity and possibility for others elsewhere. The whole experience of those things together is what creates a life you are in love with.
So while passion is certainly something I want to experience in my life, I don’t expect to have it, or any other good feeling, in every activity I undertake. What is wrong with working at an interesting job, with fun people, for financial reward, and exploring my passions in other areas of my life?
Who decided that exploring our passions had to come with a paycheck, anyway?
A job can be part of the whole that contributes and supports us moving towards the life that we love, without being passion inspiring in and of itself. That doesn’t mean it is necessarily zombifying. It could bring other things to the table: professional recognition, financial abundance, socialization, challenge, or a host of other things.
The belief that any job that doesn’t align with our passion can be self-fulfilling. Give yourself permission to let go of it, and the self-recrimination that comes along with it. The most important thing is choosing the job fully, however it may serve us in creating happiness and fulfillment, within the framework of a life that we love.
◊♦◊
A version of this article was previously published by Spiraling Up. Used by permission of the author.
Gail Jankovski is a certified hypnotist, life coach, and aspiring writer and poet. Her approach to personal development is pragmatic: baby steps are OK—and small changes can add up to big rewards. She also keeps busy as an admin assistant, wife, and mom to three grown children.
Photos by Anthony Easton and MattysFlicks