If You Want to ‘Follow Your Passion’ You have to do the Pre-Work
You might have found your passion and not have realised it
“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”― Alain de Botton
It’s a bumpy road to occupational happiness. Well, bumpy might be the wrong word. Maybe an offroading experience with one deflated tyre, running low on fuel and too much coffee to concentrate is more apt. It’s a recent revelation that if you want to win in your work-life there are a few non-negotiables that you must master. Think of these as the foundation to life before even starting to find your passion. It’s like the pre-work before rocking up to the meeting.
But through the chaos that is the working world I’ve dissolved that there are five core skills to master before you even contemplate finding your dream career. Without these skills mastered, you may very well end up in your dream career without even realising it. So what are they?
- Learn to communicate well — Understand your audience, listen to them, make it clear what you want from them.
- Build relationships — Cultivate relationships and concentrate on others.
- Be Kind — No you do not have to be a total dick to win in work.
- Get your mindset right — Understand that the story you are telling yourself affects everything.
- Become self-aware — Know who you are and what you stand for.
An Unexpected Story Time With a Very Important Message
Willie King was due for surgery the very next day. He was a heavy machine operator. But once he was made aware of his heart and diabetes problems, he had to quit. He was a father of three and enjoyed the quieter life. Happiest when fishing. Nothing was particularly out of the ordinary about King but his health problems had to lead to a serious surgical procedure.
The removal of his right lower leg. Diabetes had meant that he had lost good blood circulation down there and it needed to come off. Amputations are disturbingly common amongst diabetics, according to the American Diabetes Association, worldwide, a person loses a limb due to diabetic-related issues every 30 seconds.
Willie, unfortunately, was one of those people.
All was well on the day of the operation. Rolando Sachez, the surgeon in charge of the procedure had a lot of experience under his belt so King was in safe hands. Sachez did all the routine checks that day, checked the blackboard and the surgical report for the details of the surgery. Tick, tick, tick. King went under and the surgery began. It wasn’t until mid-way through the procedure that the operating staff realised something was catastrophically wrong. A nurse came in crying, shaking her head and at that point, Sachez realised there was something obviously wrong.
He’d begun amputating the wrong leg.
Already halfway through muscle tissue and nerves, the damage was done. Sachez had to continue on with the surgery and break the news to King that they had in fact, severed the wrong leg.
Years later, Sachez told the hearing examiner that both the blackboard and the medical report had mistakenly detailed the amputation of the left, not the right leg. However, the patient’s surgical consent did have the correct information detailed. Yet surgeons were not required to check the patient’s consent prior to the operation. The blackboard and medical report were sufficient.
And Why is This Remotely Important?
It was the basics that went wrong on that day. And often it’s the basics that go wrong upon our pursuit of passion. Someone, somewhere tells us we need to ‘follow our passion’ and off we go. As if ‘follow your passion’ is any type of advice for anyone that has no idea what their passion is.
It feels like a fix because it’s a definite answer. But just because something is said with conviction does not mean it’s right.
It’s only when we begin to question things that we realise that in fact, we’d be doing it wrong all along. There are some basics that we need to get right before we can even attempt to follow our passions.
1. Communication is Hard — Repeat Yourself, Repeat Yourself Often
Communication is difficult. Perhaps more accurately, communication seems to be the root of a lot of problems in life. Saying what you want to say isn’t hard, you just say it. However, people hearing what you said, in the way you thought you said it, that’s the difficulty. Communication can go wrong in several different ways:
- Someone could misunderstand what you are asking
- Misunderstanding what the goal is
- Confusion over who’s doing what
Where communication goes wrong, people get angry. Very angry. Work on getting your communication skills up to scratch. Test different methods, try telling a story.
The biggest conversation you’re having on a daily basis is the one with yourself. Being mindful of your own narrative is imperative if you want to find your passion.
2. Focus on Relationships
People will be the difference between getting what you want to be done and not getting what you want to be done. A person is at the end of every phone call, every query you have and ultimately, any job you interview for. Building relationships is probably the most important skill to have in the workplace.
If you focus on cultivating relationships you won’t go far wrong. And building relationships is a fine art.
3. Be Kind — It Costs Nothing
It’s the first thing we learn in school and the first thing we let go of as we enter the working world. TV will tell us that you have to be cut-throat and ruthless at work but that’s because the TV has the job of dramatising life.
You can win by being kind and you’ll feel 10x better about yourself along the way — which is also important.
4. Work on Your Mindset — The Difference Between a Good and a Bad Day
In life, there are few things we can control. The weather we have no control over, somebody’s mood is quite difficult to get a handle on and we have no jurisdiction over the way people drive — although sometimes that would be nice. The point is that there are many things not in our control. However, there are many things that.
Hard as we might try we can’t make it sunny when it’s pouring rain. Yet the one thing we can control is how we view the world. When it’s raining are you letting it get you down or are you dancing in it?
Life can be hard, and there is no substitute sometimes for a good old cry and down days are always going to happen. However, if you are always looking for the bad you can’t see the good. It may well mean you could have found your passion and be miserable.
Understanding your mindset is key to this passion thing.
5. Self-Awareness is the Superpower
If I was to give one piece of advice, just the one, for anyone starting out, I would say this:
Forget everything else and work on becoming as self-aware as possible.
Spend time working out what brings you the most joy and what you can’t stand. Have some hypotheses about what you think you will enjoy and test them out. Figure out if you like to teach, sing, dance, data, creativity. There are so many jobs out there, if you want to figure out the career for you, you need to test lots of different things.
Figure out what’s important to you. Not the surface stuff like money. Of course, that’s important but over a certain amount, it won’t give you anything. Figure out what your brain needs to feel good.
Only by testing and looking introspectively will you be able to figure out what your ‘thing’ is.
This ‘finding your passion’ thing is hard and mostly because you don’t know what you are passionate about so you don’t know what to follow. Instead, there are 5 things that will get you closer to the truth:
- Learn to communicate well — Understand your audience, listen to them, make it clear what you want from them.
- Build relationships — Cultivate relationships and concentrate on others.
- Be Kind — No you do not have to be a total dick to win in work.
- Get your mindset right — Understand that the story you are telling yourself affects everything.
- Become self-aware — Know who you are and what you stand for.
Think of these as the prework to finding your passion. And most likely if you focus on these instead of your passion, you’ll stumble across your passion anyway.
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