FOR THE LOVE OF WORK

Communicate Magazine

More than 16 years ago I switched from finance to advertising. I had no clue what I was stepping into. You could call the decision naïve, but I knew one thing for sure: I wasn’t a finance guy.

The problem is we spend most of our lives chasing something we don’t even understand. Family, friends, people we trust keep repeating “be a doctor, be a doctor, be a doctor,” and before you know it you’re in med school. The irony is you should only trust yourself. And stop hiding behind the “working hard” excuse. We convince ourselves that hard work alone will magically take us where we want to go.

You think you know what you’ll do because you have a “plan,” a “strategy,” the one your parents drilled into you. “Work hard and you’ll have a good career.”

And sure, if you work hard, you’ll succeed at one thing: getting more opportunities to work even harder.

Work hard and people might notice. Work hard and maybe you’ll get paid well. But are you really convinced that alone gives you a great career, when most evidence says otherwise? Are you sure it will make you happy if you don’t love what you do, if you don’t wake up actually excited to start the day? How far do you think you’ll go if passion isn’t in the equation?

FIND YOUR PASSION, I’m not sure why we sometimes avoid doing it. Maybe we’re just lazy. Maybe it feels too hard. Or maybe we’re scared that if we actually look for our passion and don’t find it, we’ll feel stupid, so we make excuses and pretend we’re not looking.

It’s not about what you want in life. It’s about what you need. And what you need is passion. It goes beyond interests. Make a list of the things you’re into, and one of them will pull you in harder than the rest. One of them will grip you, engage you, and outshine everything else. That’s passion.