How to Find the Work You Love

Recent research statistics when it comes to employees and their jobs are a little unnerving – around 80% say we're unhappy, don't feel engaged, and just don't really care for our jobs.^[1] If this speaks to you, you're in good company. But how do you break out of the underemployed, unhappily employed cycle? If you know what you can't live without, set your mind to starting a passion project, and pour yourself into your work, soon the work you'll be doing will be the work you love doing.

Steps

Finding Work You Love

1. Ask yourself some very basic questions. In order to get on the right track for a fruitful career, you've got to know yourself at your core. Sit down with no distractions and devote a few hours (or days) in truly nailing down about what your passion is. Here are some questions one should ask:^[2]
   
   • What gets me up in the morning?
   • What would I be doing if money wasn't a factor?
   • What do I do best?
   • What fascinates me and makes me curious?
   • What do I enjoy most?
   • What do I envy in other people's careers?
2. Define "success." For some people, success means a big paycheck. For others, it means a family. For others still, it means peace of mind. What's your definition of success? What would you need to do career-wise to feel successful? Whatever your definition is, make sure your definition of success and the work you're considering line up.^[3]
   
   • Let's say a major part of your definition of success is having a fair amount of time to spend with family and getting days off for vacations and gatherings. One of the paths you're considering is starting your own business. You may have to reevaluate this thought as starting your own business may require long, exhausting work weeks (at least in the beginning). Is that a sacrifice you're willing to make?
3. Determine your unique strengths - First find out what you are good at, and also what you do best! If you dream of being a cat groomer but you're terribly, terribly allergic to cats, you may have to kiss your cat grooming dreams goodbye. Sometimes, things just aren't meant to be. It's not only about what you want to do, but it's also about what you're good at. What's more, it's about what you're uniquely good at. What combination of talents do you have that you don't see in other people?
   
   • Let's say you're really good at baking. Great! But there are a lot of good bakers out there. What could you combine with this passion of yours to set yourself apart from the crowd? Do you have tons of crazy ideas and are constantly trying crazy flavors and combinations? Do you like working with kids? Is charity work a passion? How could you conflate multiple interests?
4. Check the path of your passion - Once you have an idea of what you would love to do, it's best to check your target, because sometimes it's hard to see the forest through the trees. Maybe you think you want to be a great marathon runner, but it's not because you love running – it's because you love studying how the human body moves and you'd be better off as a coach or a researcher. Maybe you think you want to be the world's best baker, but what you really love is feeding people – and you should actually open a cafe. Check that your passion is right on target before you assume anything.
   
   • Hundreds of years ago, there were a dozen jobs to choose from. Now that's a practically infinite number. In analyzing your passion, make sure to think outside of the box. Just because you love running doesn't mean you should be a runner. Just because you love baking doesn't mean you should be a baker. You could be a coach, a shoe designer, a dietitian, a teacher, anything.
5. If you've no idea, start trying everything. If you have no idea what your passion truly is, start by just trying everything. When something interests you and your gut tells you to pursue it, do so. You could find skills or interests you didn't even know you had, completely changing your course.
   
   • Take a yoga class. Teach yourself code. Start painting. Ride a horse. Plant a garden. Volunteer. Pick up a guitar. Brew your own beer. Take skydiving lessons. Sail a boat. When opportunity comes, take it. After all, it's not a lengthy visitor.

Setting Yourself Up for Success

1. Research what you're getting into. So many of us say we want to be something, when really we want the glorified, idyllic version of it. We want to be a famous author, but we don't want to deal with rejection after rejection. We want to be a blogger, but we don't want to spend hours and hours pushing content and doing virtual schmoozing. We want to be a musician, but we don't want to be flat broke. Whatever it is, make sure you're going into it knowing the downside of it, too. If you see the downside and you still want it, that's what you should be doing.
   
   • If you can, do a job shadow with an acquaintance where you can get in on a piece of the action. If that's not doable, find a few people in this position that you can shoot an email to or ask some questions. Do research online, too, getting a feel for the field. With a good head on your shoulders, you'll be more likely to succeed.
2. Surround yourself with passionate people. Have you ever heard the phrase, "You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with?" Whether you have or haven't, know that there's truth behind that statement. We tend to blend in with those around us – if they're negative, we become negative. If they're happy, we become happy. And if they're not passionate, we risk losing our passion.^[4]
   
   • In short, your environment is huge. If the people around you hate their jobs, you're more likely to hate your job – and be totally complacent about it, because they are, too. Instead, try to surround yourself with people who are equally driven and who will support you (instead of thinking you're crazy for pursuing your dreams). They're just the type of people you need to get started.^[5]
3. Be a "wide achiever." When starting out on a new life path, don't devote all your time and energy to one "seed," or one idea you're starting to cultivate and grow. It's not about being an over achiever, it's about being a wide achiever. That is, someone with a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, cultivating multiple interests. Some call this a "portfolio worker." Not only are you fulfilling multiple sides of your personality (many of us have many interests, and this is why we're torn), but you're also shirking the risk of losing your income, too.^[6]
   
   • A good question to ask yourself is, "If I were a wide achiever, what would I be doing with all my time?" Instead of having work be one thing and one thing alone, it could be several different projects, all fulfilling a different aspect of your passion.
4. Have a branch project. Alright, for the vast majority of us, it's not easy to just pick up and start over, hoping that this thing we love takes root. Instead, something more feasible is to have a branch, or side project. You have your main gig during the day that isn't so great, but you have the thing you live for on the side. And it'll grow and grow until you don't need that main gig anymore.
   
   • It doesn't matter if it's 1 hour a week or 15 hours a week – just start somewhere. It'll also fuel you to feel better about your life. You won't be defined anymore by work you loathe and you'll be putting effort into something meaningful. It'll feel good.
5. Keep honing your strengths and talents. You probably haven't spent years and years cultivating this passion – otherwise you'd probably already be doing it. And even though it's a strength of yours, keep honing until. We all have room to improve, even at the things we're great at. In order to turn it into a money-making venture, you've got to be the cream of the crop.
   
   • If you're a great baker, take a new class on a technique you've never tried. Start experimenting with flavors you once thought were too wacky. If you're a writer, submit your work to different websites, take a class on a different style of writing, and push yourself to write about new things. And above all, don't give up.

Achieving Your Passion

1. Prove yourself wrong. Before Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, people said it couldn't be done. Then he did it – and guess what? Others started breaking it all over the place.^[7] Sometimes, obstacles are only in our minds. If you think you can't do it, you may not be able to. So prove yourself wrong and go for it anyway.
   
   • This is a large part of why it matters who's around you. If you're with a bunch of naysayers who say "just build your resume" or "stick to something that offers security," you may never go for it. In the end, you'll probably end up agreeing with them. The last thing you want to do!
2. Pour yourself into it. Just because you love something doesn't not mean it's going to be easy, unfortunately. Your business may takes years to start making money. You may not feel like an expert until you're practically retired. There may be weeks where you're burning the midnight oil to get your efforts off the ground. It likely won't be pretty, but it'll be worth it.
   
   • In order to make it happen, you may have to exhaust all your resources, hit up friends of friends of friends of friends, spend your last nickel, lose sleep, and contemplate shutting down. Sometimes you have to hit bottom before you skyrocket up. And this is a chance you'll have to take – and hopefully it'll pay off.
3. Let the adversity brush off you. There is nothing easy about following your passion. People will try to be logical and tell you not to do it. People will be jealous and tell you not to do it. People will be negative and tell you not to do it. You can't listen to them. They'll be there regardless of what it is you're trying to do. It has to do with their way of thinking and has nothing to do with you.
   
   • That being said, you can't be too hard on yourself either. If you don't believe in you, why should anyone else? If you're the source of your own adversity, nothing will come of your dreams because you're standing in the way. Get out of the way and your dreams could start flowing freely.
4. Try to try again. Life can be looked at as a series of small failures. Not in a pessimistic way, but as a life-lesson type of way. One relationship fails, so we find another. One job isn't great, so we move on. This is normal. This is what life is about. This is how we learn and grow. This is how we become the best person we can be. And this is what the path to doing something you love is going to be like, too. It's not going to be any different. There will be times when you feel like you failed. And then you pick up and improve and move on.^[8]
   
   • You cannot be let down by setbacks. Use them as a "now I know what not to do" kind of mindset. You're only getting closer to your goals by failing. You've got to keep trying for the jackpot to strike. And when it does, you won't work another day in your life.

Tips

• Be-careful when soul searching for something that you love, make sure it's something you truly love doing.
• Once you finish soul searching, you have to be dedicated in studies or training or whatever it takes to reach the job that you'll love and won't mind doing the rest of your life.
• You can take a aptitude test. In which they test your knowledge in every field within a period of time and after in results they tell you that in which field u are food at. They also make a statistic of how you have performed in every field and show you.

Sources and Citations

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from How to of the Day //www.wikihow.com/Find-the-Work-You-Love
via Peter