“Work is love made visible.” – Kahlil Gibrail
When you do something you love, you wake up excited, work intensely and happily, and go to bed looking forward to another day of work. It’s not work you force yourself to do for the money, it’s work you love to do, and would do for free or very little pay.
Most of my life, I thought this was an impractical dream. When I was much younger, my writing was much better and my dream was to be a fiction writer. I threw that dream aside because I thought, novelists starve and are poor, I’d rather be a rich banker.
Now that I’m older, I’ve realized that I don’t want to waste my life in a meaningless job, I’d rather earn relatively less, live frugally, and spend my time happily applying myself to something that I love.
Why should you bother to try to find work that you love and find fulfilling?
- It makes your days so much brighter, it’s like living in the shade and then suddenly moving into the sunlight. I didn’t really believe how big a difference doing something you love could make, until I started this blog and my other business. Now I think about the blog almost all the time, and what to write and do and so forth and I love it! Doing something you’re passionate about makes your life amazing.
- You make the world a better place. You might trivialize your skills or what you love doing, but even if your great love is banking and you become a good banker, you’ll have maybe created new banking products that will really help customers. On the other hand, if you love scrapbooking, and choose to teach others this hobby, you’ll have made their lives more enjoyable. What you love to do doesn’t have to appear to be a great task, like building houses for the homeless, it just has to be something you enjoy. Regardless of what it is, it’ll help other people.
So now maybe you’re convinced that you do want to follow you passions and work on something you love, but how exactly do you go about it?
- Believe that it’s possible
This is the first thing you have to do, and something that no-one else seems to talk about. Most people are skeptical about their ability to turn dreams into reality, or to make money doing something they love. You need to believe it’s possible. It’s possible that you can do whatever you want, no matter how crazy it sounds to others. If you try work hard enough, it’s possible to do anything. And if you do something you love, it’ll seem like fun and you’ll work harder than you ever have, without even breaking a sweat.
Believe that you can do anything you want to do, and you will. - Find your passion
You have to look for it, it doesn’t look for you. Try different things, and see what you like. Think about what you already love doing – reading, cooking, tinkering with cars. Some of these may translate into work directly, some may not be things you’d like to do every day. - Convert that passion into work
There are many ways to turn a passion into work. For instance, maybe you love dogs, but you don’t see yourself shampooing them all day in a dog saloon, or looking after them in a kennel. But you might like the idea of becoming a certified dog trainer, and becoming a trainer. On the other hand, you might like writing as well as dogs – hello new dog blog!
Think about how you’ll turn what you love into a job. You could start a business around it, maybe providing supplies, or start a blog, or go to work for someone else in that line of business. - Dip a toe in the water
If you think you’ve found your passion, don’t quit your job to chase your dream. Chances are, it may not be what you ultimately wind up doing, and even if it is, it may be a while till you make money from it.
A good way to dip your toe is to take classes on the side, start a small business on the side, or volunteer to work for someone after work or on the weekends. - Don’t despair if it’s not smooth sailing
It may take a couple of attempts. Maybe the first go, you have too many existing work commitments and can’t study enough. Reduce your work load over time and study up.
Maybe you like design, and decide to be an interior designer. You offer to help out an established designer for free after work and on weekends, so you sit with him while he designs, and go with him shopping and to clients’ houses. You find that, while you like shopping and designing, you don’t really like interacting with high-end customers, over-charging them and acting snooty
So take a step back and identify what went wrong. In this case, it would be the client interaction. So is there any way you can still do design work but not overcharge and deal with high-end customers? Maybe you can start a design magazine – there are many designers who’d love you to showcase their work, and you enjoy talking with them. You can reach a mass market who can then apply those design concepts to their own homes without spending a fortune.
When you identify what you don’t like, you don’t have to incorporate that into your daily life. You may find it tolerable, and worth the opportunity to focus on what you love. Or you may try to redesign your work away from those elements, and switch back to Step 3, converting your passion to work.
Alternatively, you may find that you’re not really that passionate about it and can’t conceive of doing it every day. So you switch back to Step 2, and look for what else you love. - Don’t stress about money
If you do something you love, the money will follow. However, it may be a bit late in following.
Don’t stress about it. This is the advantage of following your passion. You’re not really in it for the money, you may even be just doing it on the side for a while. Sure, it would be nice to get paid to do it, but you’re happy to do it for very little in the beginning, because one or two or three years down the line, you’ll get paid lots for it. Because you love doing it, you’ll work much harder and smarter than other people doing the same thing, who don’t really love it. So the work, projects, clients and responsibility will flow to you, and you’ll be happy to deal with them. Leading to a pay rise or more business.
The key here is persistence. Don’t give up when the going is tough, and pretty soon it’ll be a much smoother journey. - Enjoy
