No, you shouldn't "follow your passion." I'm serious. This idea that you should find, then blindly follow, your "passion" is overwhelming and ultimately unhelpful.
Finding Your Passion looms large. Finding Your Thing is the way to go.
You know that feeling you've got right now? That "totally lost, I'm stuck, what am I even supposed to do with my career, can't someone just tell me what I'm supposed to be doing" feeling? Man, it sucks, doesn't it?
I know that feeling intimately. But what you've been told, this idea that you "just" need to find your passion, it's not a reasonable goal. And I learned this through two brutal career changes that nearly broke me before they remade me.
Why "Follow Your Passion" Sets You Up to Fail
I've been through two major career changes of my own and I've spent years helping clients figure out what their thing is. The reason I don't say "follow your passion" is because there's too much pressure behind Passion, the idea that it has to be the end all, be all.
But finding your thing? There's way less baggage attached to it. Fewer external and internal expectations weighing you down.
You're going to Find Your Thing, the thing that fulfills you and gives meaning to your life not because it's your one all-consuming passion, but because it supports your interests, talents, and values. It allows you to be the most you.
Just think about these two simple statements:
"Carol left her corporate job to follow her passion of Pet Care Marketing."
"Carol's thing is Pet Care Marketing."
It's all psychological, but it's an important distinction.
The expectation with "passion" is that it's so burning and all-consuming that there's nothing else of meaning for Carol, and it may not even be something she's good at. She's just obsessed with it.
However, it being her Thing? That indicates that she's good at it, she enjoys it, and she knows what she's doing. It's clearer, more concise, more concrete. It's actually MORE Carol.
And you can be more you too.
My Story: From Dream Job to Devastation to Discovery
Let me tell you how I learned this lesson. Name a job and I've probably done it: housekeeper, bartender, executive assistant, retail, marketing assistant, private caterer, lifeguard, swim instructor, vintage reseller, construction coordinator with a hot pink hard hat, and many, many others.
Many of these I held simultaneously while working my way through college, then grad school, and then in pursuit of my dream career: College Professor.
Making it through school, working any combination of jobs, and getting into a teaching position wasn't easy. But it was my dream job. And I worked incredibly hard to get it.
I spent the next 12 years as a Humanities Professor at several fantastic colleges in the Bay Area, teaching courses like "The History of Creativity" and "Values and Culture." I loved my job. Capital L Love.
As I'm sure you know, education and academia isn't exactly a cash cow, but I really did love my job, like REALLY loved it, so I scrimped, saved, and worked those weird little jobs in the cracks between classes to make ends meet.
Then I got divorced. In San Francisco. One of the most notoriously expensive cities on the planet. And things changed.
Let me say it again: I LOVED teaching. But I also now had to pay the rent all on my own. Due to the recession and with education budgets being what they are, I found my course load shrinking year after year.
I finally hit a breaking point financially and was forced to reconsider and reevaluate. It all came to a head when my options were: move across the country for a tenure track position and still struggle financially, only now far from home and family, OR find a new career.
How did I feel about my options? I was devastated. It was like a long-term, "this is it forever" romantic relationship ending. It took me months of soul searching and not a few tears to get to a place where I could even acknowledge that there really were other doors. Wide open doors.
The Breakup I Couldn't Accept
While intellectually I knew I had to make a career change, I just couldn't give up a job that I loved so much it had been the basis of much of my identity. I was a teacher.
I made my way back to advertising and marketing, where I had worked before grad school, as I struggled to keep teaching by holding on to one or two night classes. I dabbled in several roles and took a series of jobs that I knew I would hate, which I looked at as a good thing because I thought I could somehow still make teaching viable. Any other job would "just" be a day job that I could leave when I finally found a way to make teaching work.
It was like booty calling my ex-career.
After two, yes TWO, years of drunkenly texting my ex-career, I finally had "the talk" with myself that someone always has to have with you after a breakup. The "IT'S OVER, MOVE ON" talk. The hard truth that your bestie gives you. But unlike a true breakup, nobody was telling me they "never really liked my career anyway." Nobody understood that I was grieving. Forget bringing over ice cream to help me get through it.
After the talk with myself, I knew the era of the "day job" was over. I needed a new career, for real. I decided to do what I needed to do to figure out what it was, while keeping one class a semester to get my teaching fix in.
In the search for "The One," I took ALL the quizzes, filled out all the workbooks, took all the workshops. In essence, I online dated the crap out of my career.
After a while, I became convinced I'd be a sad, lonely, old career cat lady.
The Magic Isn't in Finding Your Passion
I tried working with a few career coaches in the hopes that they would magically tell me what I should do with my life. Spoiler alert: it totally doesn't work that way.
It took working with a coach who specialized in career changes to come to the certainty that I wanted to continue educating and helping people find their thing.
I knew I liked helping students figure their own stuff out, but I had NO IDEA what form that would or should take in a career. All signs were pointing toward "Coach," but I absolutely did not want to be a coach. That I knew. At the time, there was still generally a stigma around coaching. The common perception was that there were only two versions: executive coaching for the uber high-level or woo-woo life coaching for the L.A. based.
I wasn't up for either. But educating people on how to navigate their careers? I knew I wanted to do that. Cool, but knowing what I wanted to be was only part of it. I had to figure out how to make my teacher skills make sense in corporate-land.
I searched and searched for a job opening that fit the bill, but NOTHING seemed right, and man, did I do some epic wallowing. Then a former coworker who had moved on to another company reached out. She knew I was miserable in my current relationship, uh, day job. She wanted to introduce me to a new job. A new job that she knew I would rock. A job that played on all my strengths. A job where I got to teach people how to work together and help them develop their careers.
Isn't that always the way? A friend of a friend introduces you to the right thing.
That role where I found my footing was creative management and staffing. It's truly a mix of recruiting, management, learning and development, and a healthy dose of career coaching.
I racked up almost 10 years of experience in creative recruiting and staffing. Was it "love" the way I loved teaching? Not quite. You only get one first love. But I really dug my gig and it made sense. Teaching college is helping students figure out what careers and futures they're interested in. Career development was the next logical step.
I enjoyed the recruiting aspect of the job because I loved helping people get the jobs they were lusting after. The one that made them SO. FREAKING. STOKED. But through this career, it became clear to me that I loved, and always had, helping people find their thing.
The part of my job I especially loved was directly helping women with their career development. However, it was only a small part of my day-to-day work.
Career coaching suddenly just made all sorts of sense.
Finding My Thing (Finally)
I knew it was time for career change number two. It took another two-plus years for it to all come to fruition, and it wasn't an easy or even a direct path. But now I'm currently teaching others how to find fulfillment in their own careers, and there's no way I could be where I am without the heartbreak of having to give up being a professor.
I am in love with my job in a whole new way, and I can't imagine not being a coach. Life's funny that way, huh?
Now I can proudly say: my name's EB. I'm a certified career coach who spends her time showing creative types how to leave the fear behind and find their thing so they can achieve the fulfillment they really want.
What I Learned: The Truth About Finding Your Thing
Here's what two devastating career changes taught me: the answer is most likely right in front of you. But you can't see it when you're desperately trying to follow some mythical "passion."
It doesn't take months of going back to school, years of trial and error, or even days of pulling your hair out to Find Your Thing. You just need to be prepared to dig really deep.
It all starts with looking inside, taking stock, and being honest with yourself.
This process can be overwhelming in the best way because you will go from "I have no options, I have no idea where to start" to an overabundance of options and opportunities.
It doesn't take years of effort, but there's also no magic wand. You have to do the work, the introspection, the deciding of just what it is that lights your fire.
Yes, you could pick something out of thin air or have someone tell you what you should do, and you could absolutely do one of those. But it will never be as fulfilling as coming to the decisions on your own and working through why you want to do that particular thing.
What "Your Thing" Actually Means
Finding your thing is what creates a meaningful, fulfilling career. If "meaningful" to you is helping a nonprofit that cares for orphans, awesome. If fulfillment means traveling 70 percent of the time and letting your partner handle the homestead, fantastic. But it needs to be meaningful to you.
Only you can know what's right for you, and I promise the process becomes easier and way more fun when you ditch the concept of "passion" and focus on finding your Thing.
Maybe you have a job but you're unfulfilled. Or you're climbing the monetary ladder, but your gig isn't in line with what you see yourself being happy doing long term. Did you get laid off recently and decide this is the perfect opportunity to do something you actually want to do? Maybe you're looking to switch careers but have no idea which direction to turn, and everyone is telling you to "follow your passion," but you have no freaking idea what that might be.
No matter what your situation, let me guess: you feel stuck, frustrated, lost, and you're freaking out to varying degrees.
Don't fret. I'm here with good news.
The Work Is Worth It
When you show up in the world as your most you, you are a better person, partner, employee, business owner, parent, and community member.
Look, I understand the feeling. You just want someone to hand you a piece of paper that says you're amazing at these five things, you should go be a fill-in-the-blank with a random career, and have a huge lightning bolt moment of "YES, THAT'S IT! I JUST NEVER REALIZED IT BEFORE!"
I hate to tell you, but that's not how it works.
Often what we are told we are supposed to want, or feel that logically we "need" to do in our careers veers far from what actually makes us happy, whole individuals.
Only when you take the time to be honest, dig deep, and come to a genuine understanding of what makes you truly happy will you come to an understanding of what kind of career will be meaningful to you.
Again, the idea of what is "meaningful" work is different for literally every person on the planet. If "meaningful" to you is simply making enough money to never have to worry about ordering extra avocado, that's great. But you have to come to that conclusion on your own.
And it's worth it. It's worth the work to wake up excited about what you do. To feel genuinely fulfilled by engaging in meaningful actions. To create a career for yourself that makes you and those around you happier people. I promise.
Because here's what I know after teaching for 12 years, recruiting for nearly 10, and coaching for years: your thing is out there. Not your passion. Your thing. The work that makes sense for who you are, what you're good at, and what you value.
And when you find it? You won't need to "follow" it with blind devotion. You'll just show up as yourself and do the work. That's the difference. That's what makes it sustainable. That's what makes it yours.
So stop looking for your passion. Start finding your thing.
Yours in ‘you bet I’ve got bartending stories’ goodness,
EBS
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EB Sanders
Career Coach for Creative Types
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Helping you figure out what you want to do and how to do it your way!