“Will I Ever Find My Passion?” 9 questions that may unearth yours

I have a client who’s an engineer and feels he’s just going through the motions, afraid  that his career will always be humdrum. He asked, “Is there any chance that at my age, I’ll find my passion and make a living at it?”  My Psychology Today article today offers nine questions that may unearth your career passion.

Follow Your Dream?

I write my PsychologyToday.com article today as an antidote to the incessant polllyanism I see and read in the media.

These anecdotes about people who followed their dream are true. I've just  changed irrelevant details to protect my clients' anonymity.

Stories of Seclusion: Losing Wife and Child Drives Him to Isolation

Today's installment in my PsychologyToday.com series of seclusion tells the composite story of a man who goes into seclusion after his wife and baby die in childbirth. That seclusion resulted in his making a risky career decision.

Passionate About Nothing?

A caller to my KGO show last night said something like, "I'm a trainer for a cable company and I like it fine. It's stable, it pays well, I'm good at it, and the people there like me, but I'm not passionate about it. Would you help me find a career I'm passionate about?"

Given that in his 3o or 40 years on earth, he'd not heretofore found a career passion, I asked if, rather than take the time and income risk of changing careers, would he be wiser to recognize that he's got a pretty good deal? Might he may be one of the many millions of people who would not find a career they're passionate about that also "pays well, I'm good at it, and the people there like me,'"?" And if so, should he focus on being grateful for his good if not passion-filled career and find additional gratification outside work, for example, by spending more time doing the things you like: a hobby, playing with his kids, volunteering, and so on.?"

He said, 'Absolutely. You figured me out precisely. Thank you."

We live in an era where "follow your passion" is widely viewed as unequivocably to be sought. Fact is, too often, if you do what you love, poverty will follow. Or you end up spending a life of discontent, waiting for Godot: searching for a career passion where, for you, none ever reveals itself.

Rather than accept "do what you love" as a universal postulate, I invite you to consider which goal, for you, offers a higher risk-reward ratio:
A) a career or job you're passionate about
B) a career or job that pays reasonably, is ethical, and in which you have a good boss and coworkers, and where you find additional juice outside of work.

An Unexpected Path to Career Contentment

A guy who recently graduated from Michigan State in liberal arts spent six months back at his parents house, doing nothing: sleeping late, hanging out. 

He had seen a career counselor but nothing turned him on enough to seriously look for a job.

At Christmas dinner, one of his relatives who worked for a tractor manufacturer said that the company was in hiring mode. His family pressured him to seek out a job there and reluctantly he did. 

He got a job installing dashboards in the tractors. He was not exactly thrilled, but it gave him money to take his girlfriend out. 

But he was smarter than the average assembly-line worker and when he couldn't get a question answered by a co-worker, he'd go home and google it. So, pretty soon, he became kind of a go-to guy on the factory floor--he'd come to knew a lot about stuff like mitering and glue.

Soon he got promoted and learned more and more about tractor manufacture, and before he knew it, this liberal-arts type felt passionate about, of all things, tractor manufacture.

Fact is, career passion rarely comes from being in a "cool" career.  Because so many people would kill for a career in such fields as entertainment, fashion, and nonprofit work, the pay generally stinks and the boss doesn't treat you especially well because he knows he can easily find a replacement for you. 

In contrast, in a field such as tractor manufacture, employers are more likely to treat their  good employees well because there usually isn't a line of quality people ready to take the job.  

Career passion most often comes from being an expert in a field in which few others are expert, and having boss and coworkers appreciate you and provide the attendant job security and a reliable, decent paycheck.  And you're more likely to get those in a non-cool career. Ironically, status and coolness are enemies of contentment.

Lessons from Chopin

Frederic Chopin, at the age of 38, wrote this in a letter to his friend, Auguste Franchomme:

"I have promised to play at a concert for 60 pounds. ...I am counting on earning that 60 pounds. What to do with myself next, I don't know, but I earnestly wish that somebody would give me--to the end of my life--an annual pension for not composing."

Two lessons I derive:

1. Even a composer as great as Chopin (my personal favorite), may always have to worry about money. Alas, things haven't changed.

2. Even people in so-called dream careers often feel disillusioned with it. Some of Chopin's discontent came from his already starting-to-fail health, but reading his letters suggests that much of his malaise derived from his personality. I believe that contentment lies primarily within one's hard-wiring, which can be ameliorated only somewhat by a persistent effort to remain positive.

And now, I invite you to take 4 1/2 minutes from your busy life to watch this video of a scene from the movie The Pianist. Not only is it great Chopin, but it is moving for another reason. Click HERE.

Straight Talk about Finding a Career

Career contentment rarely comes from figuring out the right career for you. It generally comes only after you've gotten into some career that's a reasonable fit, done a thorough job search so you can land a decent job, and then gotten really competent at your job.

So, pick something, anything--perhaps a career in which you have connections that can help you get a good first job or at least be a mentor to you. Then throw yourself into your work as though you were totally passionate about it. I've found that to be the surest route to career contentment.

If you're older than 25 and still trying to figure out what career to pursue, be sure you're not just procrastinating because you really don't want a career.