Discovering Your Passion: How to Make a Living by Doing What You Love
SUMMARY
It is vital that you do what you love and not settle for a job you do not enjoy. Success is simple: know your strengths and do what you are good at. However, if what you love is not what you are good at, there are three options: do what you are good at and hate your life, do what you love but struggle to make a living, or make a transition to do what you love by preparing yourself and becoming good at it. Explore your passions, test the waters, and eventually transition to doing what you love for the rest of your life.
EXPANDED DISCUSSION
Doing what you love. I talk about that all the time. Swimming upstream. I use that phrase a lot. Unfortunately, I don’t think most people do what they love, and I think most people try to swim upstream. From my experience and what I have seen in others, this is no way to live one’s life.
Success is simple. Know what you are good at, then do it. Success will come. We need to know what our strengths are. But what if the thing you are good at is not necessarily what you love? This is where things get tricky. We are left to do one of three things: do what we are good at, excel, but hate our lives or what we do; do what we love but are not good at and fail to make a decent living (the starving artist syndrome); or figure out what we love and by sheer effort and discipline become good at it so that it becomes our work (making a transition).
For most reading this, no one is relegated to a career or forced by the government or other power to stay in that career. I forget the source, but I read in one book or article that the average person will have three distinct careers before they die. Three! Before, people only had one and retired. Now, with people living longer, the average person finds themselves at distinct crossroads at least three times in their life where they can jump ship from doing something they are good at but hate to something they love. The question is always: are you willing to jump that ship? Are you ready to prepare yourself so you can jump that ship?
We will excel at what we are good at, not necessarily what we love. That is why I recommend the third option I gave above. You have to work to make a living, but move towards working at what you love (you may not make a living at it at first) until you reach the point where you can work at it solely. This is preparing yourself and serving your apprenticeship. We’ve all done jobs we don’t like. We must make a living, but we must become good at what we choose to make a living at if we want to make that change. The good thing is it is doable. We excel at what we love, but we must prepare ourselves to choose that career choice because that career does not always come naturally. I firmly believe in the school that says we must live and do what we love, not work just to get paid for it because at the end of our life…well…you know…
Think about it right now. Are you writing full-time if that is your wish? Or are you working at a job you don’t like while dreaming about writing? You can fix this. You can eventually quit “work” and do what you love (because that doesn’t count as work, does it?). When you make that jump, ensure it is what you want to do. Explore it. Investigate it. Test the waters. Give it time. What you eventually wish to do with your life is to do something you would miss doing if you could not do it anymore. For me, that is writing. If you prepare yourself when it comes to that time, instead of retiring, if you love what you do, you continue to strive to get better, you will continue to have a purpose, and you will have no interest in retiring because your work is too fulfilling.
Some of us are getting older. If writing is what we love, let’s prepare to do it for the rest of our lives but make the transition sensible. As far as proven scientifically, we only walk through this life once. Let’s make it the best journey a mind and body could take. Do what you love and make that your work. Don’t give up. You can get there.
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