When people talk about the relationship between passion and career, we often discuss it as if we live in a cheesy romance movie. “Find your passion, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” has a very similar energy to “Find your one true love, and you’ll never be alone again.” Real romances are rarely that simple. We get rejected, ghosted, break up and get back together. We laugh, have deep discussions, and have serious disagreements. Love is an emotion in relationships, but we also feel joy, sadness, and anger. Relationships take work, and sometimes even after many years, they end. Just as falling in love in a relationship isn’t a “happily ever after,” discovering your passion doesn’t mean work will magically be each, if you can even find your passion in the first place.
While you can find passion by random chance, as “find your passion” would imply, I would argue that it is something you can create and cultivate. That what you are passionate about can change over time. Instead of a starting point, we do better when considering it as a goal.
While there are many ways to define passion, I describe it as a result of four elements: interests, values, skills, and experiences.
When people look to turn their hobby into a business, they often focus on how their interests drive their passion for that hobby—doing my favorite hobby all day instead of filling out boring spreadsheets? Yes, please!
Sometimes it can be that simple- people turn their hobbies into a career every day. However, if that won’t pay the bills, it can help dig deeper into those interests. There is probably a reason why you enjoy a particular hobby over another. Figuring out what about a hobby interests you can help you look for jobs with similar elements.
For example: Knitting/Crochet
Colony/Automation Sim Games
Software Development
There is a common element across my hobbies and job: I enjoy making things, particularly complex systems. I also have interests that don’t share that core component. Still, understanding why I love these things is extremely helpful in looking for new things to explore. I can also better evaluate jobs within the tech world. I’ve held positions in customer support a couple times, and it never works out well as the creative component is missing.
The second element is work values. These are things that affect your environment and the impact of your work. Valuing autonomy makes it hard to work under micromanagement, and low-paying jobs are difficult when you appreciate financial stability. These are typical values, and you probably care about them, but you won’t view them equally. For instance, you might find a job more satisfying if it allows you to work remotely, even if it pays slightly less.
While you can be passionate about something that you aren’t particularly good at, it does help, especially regarding careers. Unlike interests and values, which change slowly over time, skills are actively developed. The skills that help you create your passion might differ from those directly related to your interests. When we look at a career, it often requires various skills, and struggling with something not directly related to your interests leaves you less time for the parts you enjoy.
The experiences we have deeply affect how we feel about our work, and this is what helps connect all these other items. If you have something you are passionate about, what are your memories of that activity? Are they primarily positive or negative? Work that goes against our core values is unpleasant and affects how we view it. Similarly, tasks that we lack the skills to complete correctly are often frustrating or discouraging.
It’s impossible to fully control experiences as they are often caused by external events. However, how we interpret those experiences is something we own. Frustration with failure can be reframed as an exciting challenge, or an unpleasant aspect of a job can be viewed as a minor annoyance required for getting to do the elements you enjoy.
There are two main paths for finding passion in your work. The first is the path many take to “find” it before starting a career. You might have some direction, but this is based on luck to a certain extent. You find a job that fits your interests and values and offers you enough positive experiences to develop a passion for it.
The other path is recognizing that passion is created over time and taking steps to nurture it. Identifying core interests and values helps you find a direction. Cultivating skills and experiences creates a passion that carries from job to job. It means that you can start a career that you aren’t passionate about but fits some of these elements and allow the passion aspect to grow over time.
Recognizing these elements also explains why we can lose that passion. When turning a hobby into a job causes people to lose their love for the work, things like negative experiences are often the cause. We fully control how and when you participate when something is a hobby. There are no angry customers, no marketing, and no stress over profits. It’s understandable why adding these elements to a hobby can destroy passion for something- it is difficult to maintain when your positive memories are crowded out by negative ones.
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