In my recent post “Discover Your Passion - Life Is Too Short For The Wrong Job“, I mentioned that activities that we enjoy, and being in the “zone” are clues to our passion. In response to these points, Dave asked a very interesting and valid question:
Lawrence, I have another query that you might be able to comment on.
What advice do you have for those of us whose passions all fall outside the world of work? For example, I am in the “zone” when playing PC games, watching cricket, hiking in the mountains, playing with my son, traveling overseas etc. None of which sounds very useful when it comes to guiding my career choice. Perhaps, as I am beginning to suspect, my calling is towards multiple divergent careers.
To answer Dave’s question, there are two points that I like to address:
- Turning your hobby or interest into a career.
- “False passions”.
Turning Your Hobby/Interest Into A Career
In my opinion, we are a batch of very fortunate people; thanks to advances in technology, we live in an age with unprecedented amount of opportunities to pursue our passion and make a living out of it. Today, there is also greater diversity in career choices than there was fifty years ago.
I remember when I was young, my mother used to tell me to stop playing computer games, to study hard, so that I can get a proper job when I grow up.
Interestingly, a few months ago, I read an article on World Cyber Games (WCG) championship. It stated that teens winning these tournaments are earning tens of thousands of dollars in price money. Talk about getting a proper job… To top it off, the gaming industry is growing and in Singapore, they are even setting up diplomas on games programming to feed the market demands for these professionals. So you see, the idea of a “proper job” is fast becoming a thing of the past.
My point is this - in this age, with a little bit of creativity, you can make a career out of almost anything.
To Dave’s query, here’s some suggestions to convert an interest into a career:
- Playing PC games - I’ve mentioned this earlier. Be a games programmer or designer. If you’re not technically inclined, how about being a games marketer? You’ll get to be involved in a lot of the events like WCG, and I think that’s really cool.
- Watching Cricket - I’m not familiar with crickets, but a few ideas may include things like sports commentator, sports column writer or you can setup a shop selling cricket gears and related apparels.
- Hiking In The Mountains - how about becoming mountain guide?
- Traveling Overseas - maybe a tour guide or columnist for a travel magazine?
All these are possibilities, and as you can see, there’s no lack of it. Don’t be limited in what a career looks like - as long as you create value and have someone to pay you for your products or services, that is a potential career.
False Passion
Having said that, there’s a word of caution I like to give - interests or hobbies are not your passion. They only give you clues to your passion. If you simply assume that your hobbies are your passion, then you may fall into the trap of what I call a “false passion”.
False passions are simply things that we enjoy doing because it’s fun, exciting or fresh. However it doesn’t provide the inside-out motivation or the drive to sustain you as a career. A passion is more than that - it must be meaningful.
To avoid “false passion”, you have to look at the common traits among your interests. As Andrea has rightly pointed out in her response to Dave:
All your various passions are really about “the zone,” aren’t they? What is it about those hobbies that puts you in the zone? The common thread? Is it total absorption? Being in a completely different environment? What is it that causes that “click” within you? What does it awaken inside you?
I am not Dave, so I cannot say on his behalf, but for illustration purposes, I like to use the common traits in Dave’s interests as an example:
- Freedom to manage his own time.
- Being outdoor or active.
These can be indications of passion.
Another important question to filter out “false passion” is: Do I feel that this is meaningful work? What am I contributing?
All of us need to have a sense of purpose. A Career Lover enjoys his work not solely because it’s fun per se, but it’s enjoyable because there is a sense of purpose. It feels like you’re making a difference. Doing meaningful work provides this feeling. Speaking from personal experience, when one feels that his work is meaningful, then the daily nonsense that life throws at us becomes inconsequential. This sense of meaning will differ from individuals to individuals - only you can define it.
Building on the earlier illustration, if Dave finds that traveling the world and writing about it to help educate people is meaningful, then that is a passion. With this discovery, Dave only needs to find a job that pays him to do this, or he can simply start his own business to live his passion.
For further details on making money with your passion, I have shared my thoughts on monetizing your passion.
So what do you think? Do you have any ideas about how Dave can translate his interests into a career?
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Lawrence,
Great posting. Please forgive this lengthy comment, but I started writing and then things just kept coming and coming…
Dave, if I understand you correctly, you are looking for work that is meaningful and purpose-driven, hence the search for your true passions. If that’s not what you are looking for, please disregard everything I say below. If that is what you are looking for, I would, first of all, highly recommend reading this post by Dick Richards, author of “Is Your Genius at Work: Four Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move,” which is a fantastic book on connecting work with purpose and which I highly recommend as a way of getting a better understanding of yourself and how you can connect your deep passions with your work:
http://www.ongenius.com/blog/index.php/the-path-to-purpose
The somewhat disheartening point of his post is that purpose is not something that we can intellectualize our way towards. According to Dick, purpose is not discovered; it is, rather, something that presents itself when we are ready, and we are ready when we have transcended the various urges, needs and desires of our egos and personality.
This, to me, means that, as you go about your life and engaging in various activities, you need to be tuned into your intuitive side and that you also need to trust that the insights will appear when you are ready. What can you do in the meantime? I would try to pay attention to the following:
1. What do you do, what have you ever done, or what would you like to/could do that contributes to the well-being of others? As Lawrence points out, we derive meaning from our sense of contribution to the larger world/community outside ourselves. I now firmly believe that meaningful work has some kind of service at its core. Which is not at all to say that you have become a Mother Theresa, and I certainly don’t believe that a life of service means saying good-buy to financial success. I’m a firm believer in the dictum that when you do what you love, money follows. But identifying the service element is important.
Keep in mind also that “service” does not necessarily mean working for a non-profit with an obvious world-saving cause in its slogan. What are the things that people come to you for? What do you do, in your everyday life, that people feel grateful for, that improves people’s lives? If your answer is “nothing” or “I don’t know,” you are simply not aware - which is natural. We often don’t notice when we do the very thing that constitutes what Dick Richards calls our genius. Asking your friends and family is one way of realizing how you contribute.
2. What would you like to be remembered for? There is this classic life-purpose exercise which I love, even though some may find it a bit stark. Imagine that your time on this planet is over and you are looking down from wherever you are now on your own tombstone. What would you like for the inscription on that tombstone to say? I would actually sit down and write out everything that comes to mind. Don’t judge it in any way - just let it come out. It was when I did this exercise that it became patently clear to me that the path I was on at the time was absolutely untenable and that I had to begin moving in a different direction.
3. Finally, sometimes it may seem that we are wasting our time at our current job or occupation because it just feels so awful, boring, and draining. I have to say that it is only now that I’m beginning to appreciate all the detours I’ve made in my life for the insights I gained about myself, as well as the particular skills I learned. All of those are now coming together completely and beautifully. It’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s completely, completely true: Whatever it is that you are doing right now is exactly what you are supposed to be doing.
I know that this is short on concrete answers, but unfortunately - or fortunately! - the only person who really has them is you, whether you know it or not… I hope this helps in some way nevertheless.
Best regards,
Izabella Tabarovsky
www.ProjectCreativeVision.com
Hi Izabella,
Thank you for your valuable contributions and recommendations. “Is Your Genius at Work: Four Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move” sounds like a very interesting book, and I’m going to take a look at it as well.
I think you have made a few very valid points.
The one that really strikes me is about providing service and earning money out of it - very good point. Really.
I used to have the wrong mindset that service means giving for free. That’s so untrue. That’s nothing wrong with providing a service and getting paid for it. In fact, It’s the tenet of value creation and the engine that drives the capitalist system. Provide a value/service that benefit someone else and get paid for it. It improves your life and someones elses’ at the same time. The true win-win strategy, and manifestation of abundance mentality.
If only more people understands this.
Dave there is a big clue for you in your own words. “Perhaps, as I am beginning to suspect, my calling is towards multiple divergent careers.” Try that on in your imagination for a while. Give yourself permission to believe that multiple divergent careers is not only okay but exactly what you need.
Run out and buy Barbara Sher’s excellent book, Refuse to Choose. It will help you to diagnose yourself to verify if you are indeed what she calls a Scanner. Scanners flit from career flower to career flower like a bee, only staying long enough to suck the fresh nectar out and then move on. If that’s what you are then celebrate it.
There’s nothing wrong with multiple streams of income. It’s a model that many of us follow quite well. Don’t try to fit into any appropriate mold. Cast your own mold and be your wild self!
Wow, looks like my reading list has just grown longer again - “Refuse To Choose”
Thanks Tom.
So refusing to conform to standard worldview of how a career is like, can be considered a career option as well. I think it’s inline with what I’d said about be open minded on career options. So go for it Dave. I agree with Tom that the last thing we need in this age is to conform to old-age mindsets.
It’s not easy, but let’s try.
Lawrence, this is another great post in this series! I do like the warning of the “false passion.” I think sometimes we love our hobbies for the escapism, for the suspension of “real life” that they offer us. When those hobbies and interests become “real life” they lose their magic, if they are not our real passion.
I also agree that anything, absolutely anything, can be turned into a career or business. I would even say that you can turn anything into a business with very little money to start, thanks to the technologies available today! Any kind of expertise can be turned into information products, for example.
Great article!
Blessings,
Andrea
Hi Andrea,
Yes, like you, I have seen cases of “false passion”, where the magic of the hobbies simply disappear when they turn that into a career. As such, I felt the need to raise this point when I see Dave’s questions.
“So refusing to conform to the standard worldview of how a career is like, can be considered a career option as well.”
I absolutely agree with this view as well. I really believe that conforming to a standard view of a career is a recipe for having a miserable life (unless you truly can stand behind that standard view). Eliminating from your psyche all the “shoulds” concerning your career is a really important part of the process in my opinion. And it’s really amazing how many of those “shoulds” we carry around. Getting to the bottom of what you truly want - not your parents, not your friends, not the society - can be tricky, and yet it’s so, SO important.
You views on passion and finding the right job is interesting. I do understand you, but not all of us have the luxury of being passionate about their jobs…
nice!
It is very important to find your passion. It is the way to go, if you work with passion, it is often success