Blog-Post
“THE ONLY WAY TO DO GREAT WORK IS TO LOVE WHAT YOU DO.” - STEVE JOBS
When it comes to your career, there are two paths that you can consider. A career that you build a passion for or a career built on something you are passionate about. Identifying and understanding the direction you want to take in your career is essential. It requires you to examine your motivations, beliefs, and the role you want your career to play in your life. Both paths offer great opportunities and different fulfillment.
Passion for Career
Not everyone has the luxury of turning a passion into a career. It could be due to fewer opportunities, your passion may not align with your strengths, or at the end of the day, there is no financial stability in that field. No matter the reason, it does not mean that you cannot work with passion. For some, reaching a goal is more fulfilling than the journey. A sense of productivity, reaching career goals, or receiving positive feedback is enough to ignite your passion for work.
Being passionate about your career starts with setting yourself a goal. It could be a promotion, a pay raise, or maybe something as simple as an “Employee of the Month” badge. But once you have set your sights on what you want to achieve, passion will naturally help you commit to fulfilling your job duties successfully and efficiently. This motivation can help you stay on top of your game and keep work interesting.
Be open to making errors. Passion is easily lost when perfectionism gets the best of us. What used to be enjoyable becomes a task. Cut yourself some slack in the knowledge that mistakes can equal growth. You may benefit from a few errors in the workplace to hone your abilities.
Find a passion for your career by challenging yourself to learn more. Further developing your skills is always welcomed and appreciated by companies. When the time comes and you can display your new skills or knowledge, management may notice your growing skill set and understand the value you bring to the company. Passion for your career will lead you to do your job well and take pride in what you do.
Career on Passion
Turning your passion into a career can be risky. It takes a lot of reflection, planning, and research. You need to make sure your passion is your passion. Passion and interests are different things. Interests can be more short-lived activities or likes that can change throughout your life. Passions, however, are all-consuming, they are a source of joy, and enthusiasm and are hard to move on from, they can even be skill-based or a talent you have.
After you have identified your passion, the work begins. Invest in your passion by looking for ways to sharpen it and learn new skills that can complement it. For example, if your passion is traveling and you want to make it into your career, you can look at enrolling in a language course. Or maybe your passion is video games, look for coding or graphics-based certificate courses. Seek to improve the skills needed to turn your passion into your profession.
As mentioned, turning a passion into a career comes with risk. Once you have chosen the passion you want to pursue, you must determine the level of demand in that chosen field. Entering a field with low demand or with a high rate of competition is a risk. Re-evaluate your skills and be open to flexibility, as this career path may be a difficult one. You also need to look inward and ensure that this passion is not something you will fall out of love with when things get tough.
Envision what success looks like for you and create a plan. You may want to set smaller steps to fulfill your overall career plan, but when your passion is your career, you’ll get to do what you love daily.
Conclusion
No matter the path you decide on, just remember that passion for what you do will help you further your career faster, and leave you feeling more fulfilled. Passion for work will help drive productivity and will only make work overall more enjoyable. A career driven by passion will not be easily given up on. As Chinese philosopher Confucius once said, choose a job that you love so you will never have to work a day in your life!
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