By Andrew Forrester
Finding your passion that connects with your skill may seem difficult to achieve. Here are some ways to guide you to reawakening who you are in your career.
“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”
Kofi Annan, Former Secretary General of the United-Nations
Sometimes I think about the little boy, sitting in third grade, being told by his teacher that he could be anything he wanted to be. That boy, depending on the week, wanted to be an artist, a dentist, a marine biologist (obviously), a famous actor, and once, very briefly, a pediatric surgeon. I am none of those things today, and here’s the truth: I’m not sure I could be. Even if we table “famous actor” as a potential category, I am lousy with math and science. I’m not a very strong artist, and I am squeamish around blood (and, honestly, bad breath). Wanting to do something is not enough, and third grade me eventually figured that out.
But there’s a flipside to that coin. Being able to do something isn’t good enough either. Just because you’re skilled at something doesn’t mean it’s the thing you yearn to be doing, day in and day out. I am good at spreadsheets, and I am good at having hard conversations in a loving and caring way, but I will never be an accountant, and you could not pay me to be a therapist.
The best possible scenario, of course, is one where your great passion—that want—meets your skill, or in the famous words of Frederick Buechner, “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” So how do you find that place in your current career? And what do you do if it may not exist?
Know Yourself
As with most things, the road towards a purposeful career starts with some self-reflection. When you think about your work, what gets you excited? Why are you doing what you’re doing in the first place? If you look back to when you first started along your current path, what were your dreams back then? Surely, there are areas in your current role that get you really excited—things that fill your cup rather than draining you. Things that, when done well, make you feel proud. Gather a list of those areas, or at the very least, make an effort to recognize when you’re in the midst of them.
Maybe you’re passionate about mentoring fellow employees. When someone asks you a question and you answer it well, make note of it. If your company’s commitment to community impact is important to you, start noticing when your professional choices and actions can be traced to direct benefits in your day-to-day world. Write them down, add them to a tally sheet, whatever it takes. But remind yourself, hey, I did the thing I care about. I’m good at this work, and I’m making a difference.
Come up with Personal Mission and Vision Statements
If you’re anything like me, you just rolled your eyes. I have sat in so many meetings, unpacking so many statements. I have come up with so many goals, at the behest of someone higher up than me, which I have then crafted into a sentence that feels a little like something I’d come up with if I were forced to defend my very existence. And yet . . .
And yet, there’s a reason mission and vision statements are a thing. People need to know what you stand for, what you care about and what you hope to do, you most of all. Most mission statements have three or four buzzwords that cut to the heart of what a person or organization does well, while a vision statement is all about what the big dream is – what someone or some group hopes to be known for.
So what do you hope to be known for? And what are you already doing really well? How are those two things working in service of one another, and what are the steps you’re taking every day that make those statements a reality? What should you be doing that you aren’t? Keeping your personal mission statement in mind while striving to attain your personal vision can help you focus on what’s important and turn even the most mundane days into something vital.
Think About the Bigger Picture
Of course, some days, it’s easier to see your large-scale impact: a proposal is well-received, a project is evaluated with hard data and comes up trumps. Other days, you answer emails and field complaints and do a million little tasks that feel like drops in a bucket that may never be filled and certainly will never be noticed or acknowledged.
Here’s where those mission and vision statements come into play. What do you need to achieve your mission? What steps will it take to pursue your vision? Your first impulse will be to list big, world-shaping things—promotions, awards and so on—but no one ever got promoted without responding to significant emails first. Awards aren’t necessarily given for the Best Data Enterer or Most Punctual Report Filer, but that doesn’t mean those little, seemingly insignificant parts of your day aren’t building towards a critical mass of professionalism and aptitude.
I was recently reading about NASA’s space shuttle program where, for every launch, even the smallest mistakes could (and sometimes did) prove fatal. O-rings can falter and insulating foam can break off—little things that, it turns out, aren’t so little after all. You are (probably) not launching a shuttle into space, but the small stuff you do each day is still part of building something functional in order to meet your goals and fulfill your mission. You might not remember it in the long run, but the small stuff is what makes the long run possible. So do it well.
Know the Difference Between Settling and Being Realistic
When you look back to your own third grade self, you might feel disappointed. Unlike those NASA scientists, you probably never did become an astronaut or put a man on the moon. I wonder if third grade me would be sad that I didn’t go to art school or study dolphins with Jacques Cousteau.
Except, third grade me didn’t know about mortgages and taxes, about saving for my kids’ college and inflation and how much all these streaming services were going to end up costing us. We have to be realistic. I don’t always feel like I’m changing the world, but most of the time, I am doing my best to make my small pocket better and to do the job I’ve been given as best I can. It doesn’t always look like I expected it to, but that’s okay. It looks like fulfilling the mission I’ve set for myself, and it looks like pursuing the vision I have for my future. I didn’t become a famous actor in the end, but what I do have? It’s not so bad.
Andrew Forrester is a writer whose work has appeared in Parents Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. Andrew also teaches English and creative writing in Austin, Texas, and has a Ph.D. in English literature from Southern Methodist University.
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