Understanding Your Passion for Thriving in Your Career
Passion is one essential factor to succeed in your career life. What is “passion” actually? How can it be one of the vital factors determining your success?
What differentiates the strong chess player from the weaker ones? The stronger player practice more.
Research by Campitelli and Gobet found a strong correlation between chess skill and the number of hours of practice. It takes 12,480 hours of practice to reach the grandmaster title for players who start at age 10.
That's a crazy time commitment there! How come professional chess players willing to spend nearly 1.5 years accumulated to only playing chess?
I started playing when I was 9. I just began playing and enjoying the game. Since very young i was very competitive and I never liked to lose. I was analyzing games and mistakes. I became a strong self-critic. I used to study and practice chess 8 hours a day.
— Gildardo Garcia, Chess Grandmaster
He is passionate about what he is doing — playing chess.
Passion might be more complicated terms, despite its popularity by being used in the motivational session about life, specifically about careers.
There are misconceptions about the term passion. Some people believe that passion refers to something they like doing.
In everyday life, you might also hear, “Maybe its time for me of quitting this job, I am not having fun anymore,” or “I enjoy social media so much, maybe I'm passionate about creating digital content, hence maybe this sales job doesn't suit me at all, and I should quit.”
The difference between Job and Career
I did a mini online survey using my Instagram stories:
Of 80 sample users, 81% chose to agree, while the other 19% disagree.
There is no right answer between agreeing or disagreeing about the presence of passion in terms of working or making money. Here are some thoughts why the two options can be right:
- Agree — There are tons of ways of making money, start from selling tangible products to the customer (books, gadget accessories, clothing, etc.) or working for a company. Not passionate about your current job is okay. What important are you have a clear goal in mind for what you really want to do.
- Disagree — Why doing something you don’t truly mean it? or in this case, you like the things inside it?
A job is a tool. It is related to your position in a company and how you can make money for a living. Where career is your life journey. It is related to happiness and achievements during your lifetime.
Job is temporary, where career is a long-term journey. Your job is actually a part of your career.
When you hear the term “Passion,” you should set your mind to a career — not a job.
So What is Passion Actually?
Your biggest force is not in what you are good at. It lies in the things you are truly interested in, care about, and feel. This is called passion.
Passion and hobbies are different, it also differs from what you like to do. It is a uniqueness in you. It grows personal interest and emits tremendous energy when doing it.
Passion is not about relishing exciting parts; it's more about enjoying the struggle.
I will give you an example about content creation. According to The Sun, surveying 1000 children, the biggest portion — 34.2% of them wants to be a Youtuber. Followed by Blogger/Vlogger 18.1%. The rest, including musician, actor, filmmaker, doctor, athlete, lawyer, etc.
Knowing what you want to be is not enough. You should focus on the activities, not the job title.
Youtuber is the job title, but do you know what they are doing — so they called a Youtuber?
Let's say they are: Creating a concept, making a script, video taking, video editing.
Those four points above are not exactly correct. Some Youtuber even have a giveaway and fans meeting. Some Youtuber don't have to do all four things because they have a personal production team — which helped with video taking and video editing. But in general, those are the basic activities you need to produce one video.
Let's say you want to be a Youtuber. You like taking videos and editing videos. You are trying to make your first video; it was hardly done. You don't like writing the script and experiencing a creative block. Time goes by, and you turn the whole set of activities into something you dislike.
You like filming and editing videos, not to become a Youtuber.
Why enjoying the struggle matters.
Gallup researched that 7,500 full-time employees in the United States having burn-out at work.
According to the report, how people experience their workload has a stronger influence on burnout than hours worked.
Engaged employees who have job flexibility tend to work more hours per week than the average employee while reporting higher well-being. When people feel inspired, motivated, and supported in their work, they do more work — it is significantly less stressful on their overall health and wellbeing.
In short, passionate about what you are doing in your job is great. When you already have a particular job that you think, “This is for me, I really love the job and all the activities following it,” keep it!
Passion = what you love doing + what you're good at.
In Search of Passion
Finding your True Passion is hard. Many people hardly found their true meaning for doing, including me. You can say that I'm still in the phase of figuring out what I really passionate about.
According to Rene Suhardono, in her book “Your Job is Not Your Career,” Passion originates from sincerity and honesty in you, not from an outside force like money, possession, and position.
Passion can be found by exploring many things. Developing it can be a bit hard, but knowing the pattern will help you a lot.
Talent alone is not enough. In some cases, your talent might not your passion. You have a good voice, and you like to sing, but it doesn't mean you have to be a singer.
1. From “what you love” to “what you're good at.”
Most of the people I know making the first approach. Start by knowing what you love and then practice it to become better and better, like Gildardo Garcia, on the example before. He started playing at nine and practice every day because chess is something that he loves.
My friend also experiencing the same. She is a Youtuber and freelancer, doing voice-over and song covers. She likes to sing since junior high. As time goes by, she develops to nurture her voice and use her talent by giving freelance service. She can earn $1,000 at most per month.
I personally can say that both Gildardo Garcia and my friends above are passionate about what they are doing. They already fulfill two criteria: loving something and good at something.
2. From “what you're good at” to “what you love.”
The second approach may sound uncommon. But it is not impossible to start loving your current activities that you don't have any idea you grow fond of it.
It happened to me as a writer. As a college student, writing is the most done activity and one of the essential skills I need to acquire.
My professor hired me to help her write a research paper and other projects related to academic writing. I don't know exactly why she decided to hire me, but I think I can write. It is not just the literal “writing” activity but the process related to it, like researching and constructing a framework to test the hypotheses.
Writing is not my thing. I like reading but not writing. The struggle of thinking way so that audience can understand our message is hard. I'm a little bit self-centered; I like to gather as much information from the outside world but not share it with other people.
My excitement began when I start made microblogs in my Instagram Account. The feelings of sharing my thoughts on certain topics or issues really fulfill me. The feedback from my audience also gives me an additional motivational boost for making more content. I found that casual writing is exciting.
Fast forward, here I am, writing in more specific tools — Medium.
I am enjoying the process: from researching to check my drafts technically. Not to mention the excitement after the draft has been published and got reactions from the audience.
Finding passion is an exciting journey, don’t stop in the midst. Just keep going until you are convinced that “This is it, it’s my passion!.”
If you haven’t found it or seem like you don’t know your passion, contemplating is a good way while trying several new things.
If you are presumptuous saying you are passionate about something, don't just say you love it, thrive to be the best! — Ika Natassa on Thirty Days of Lunch Podcast
