Following your passion, what it takes
Have you ever wondered what your passion is? I always and I am yet to find one. Passion seems to be a small word but carries a lot of meaning and belief with it. It reminds me always of Steve Jobs who was the man behind Apple. I remember a quote from him “The only way to do great work is to love what you do”. He was a creator, technocrat, entrepreneur and a businessman. I always thought, how one person could be passionate about all of these at once. How he derives all of these at once whereas I am still figuring out what my first passion is? In fact, I went through a lot of view of people passion and success but still unable to prove this. Could success follow a passion or the opposite could also true?
Let me tell you a story about a young man who took admission in liberal arts and History College. He was passionate about learning Western history and dance and dabbled in Eastern mysticism. In the span of the 1 year, he got bored of the curriculum so he dropped out of college but stayed within the campus. During the same time, he was living a very poor life and eventually got fed up with living as poor and moved back with his parents. Then he joined a night shift company in his hometown. After working for a couple of months in the company, he quit his job and took a spiritual journey to find self. He returned back to hometown after few months and met with a local entrepreneur who was planning to manufacture and sell terminal devices which could help in connecting to a computer. He partnered with him and took over business part of the company. He worked with the entrepreneur for few months but one day left for the season to spend time at All-one commune. When he returned back his position was replaced by another guy. This leads him to search for some idea to make quick cash. Later on in that year, he saw an opportunity to sell computer circuit boards to several local hobbyists. So he started selling circuit boards. One day a local shopkeeper told him that he doesn’t want computer boards. And instead, he wants fully assembled computer. You will be amazed to know those were the early beginning of Apple as a company and the young man was Steve Jobs himself.
As you see from the story it is clear that if this man had got and chosen his passion as the career then he would have been a teacher instead of running a biggest computer manufacturing company. So passion doesn’t always lead to success. It seems that pursuing the passion is being fed into the mind of present children’s.
Let us take a 5-year step back, I was passionate about dancing, playing all the time. But these things I no longer passionate that much. Which clearly means out passion evolve with time and one’s success does not contemplate it always.
Let us understand why following passion could be hard for someone-
1. They suggest that passion is all you need-
See here we can fall in the trap as for proper job/work satisfaction we need to have other elements in place. For example, a chef is given a job at a popular restaurant which also involves recognition for his work. But the pay is less or not competitive then obviously he will dislike the job.
2. Many people don’t feel like they have a career-relevant passion
This situation is quite common in the present generation. As we have a lot of jobs in IT sector and many people start working to earn few buck but later on they feel like trapped for not having career relevant passion.
3. They sound like anyone can work out the right career for you in a flash of insight
Research has shown that we are very bad in predicting what good career is for us. Rather than reflecting on your passions, if you want to find a great career, you need to go and try lots of things.
4. It can make people needlessly limit their options
The ingredients of a dream job we’ve found are most supported by the evidence, are all about the context of the work, not the content.
So how to one choose a fulfilling career?
Let us see how you can follow your passion
A) Identify your greatest interests
B) Find the career into those interests
C) Pursue your passion into those careers
Now again there is a disconnection. Let me give you an example about a study which was done by high school students. Several students were asked about the career fields in which they want to pursue their career. Most of the students took singing, dance, theater arts as their first career choice. Only some of them took a doctor, engineer etc. Here the number of job or work available in the singing, dance, and theater are very less compared to other areas. So we can predict that most of the people will fail to secure job in the fields they are passionate about. Does it mean that any of them will not have any successful career? It seems that it does not work like this.
What really matters!
In a real career, interests are not decisive factors whereas other factors matter more like skills, mindset etc.
1. You underestimate the thing that your interest changes a lot according to time.
2. What matter are you doing what is considered valuable to do?
So how can one get his/her career as valuable?
1. Achievement- One need to master, work hard and be good at something useful.
2. Meaning – one needs to find a purpose, trying to do something better that makes this world a better place.
If you can help others, and others find it valuable then it is easy to become successful. It is better focusing on doing the thing which is valuable rather finding where one’s interests are present
Still, you can follow this along
1. Explore- try to know the world so that you understand what is valuable for others.
2. Be good- try to get good at flexible skill as it always pays off.
3. Solve pressing problems- try to solve the problem which is hard and valuable for others.
Last, remember that in order to do something valuable you need not become a doctor or go to forests of Amazon etc. In order to do valuable is to solve big problems. Big problems could be solved by research, developing new technology. The key is fitting your skills and doing the valuable thing.
Altruism is one thing you will never regret.
Many successful people are passionate, but often their passion developed alongside their success, rather than coming first. Steve Jobs started out passionate about Zen Buddhism. He got into technology as a way to make some quick cash. But as he became successful, his passion grew, until he became the most famous advocate of “doing what you love”.
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