Passion built on commitment, mastery, and pride is the key to a satisfying career

It might be that, through the exploration of passion and your envisioned future that you fall head over heels in love with an activity that engrosses you—something that lights you up and makes your heart sing. However, now you must ask yourself the next question: Who would benefit from (and pay for) this?

Well, if you want to contribute your passion to society and make an income from it, you need to get realistic about whether this could turn into a career—and what you would need to do to make that happen. Moreover, think about if you would even enjoy doing those things; for some people, a passion is just fun, and turning it into work changes it from a “love to do” to a “have to do.”

We dedicate a significant portion of our lives to our work. It is natural that we seek enjoyment and fulfillment in it. We have a “passion for work” occurs when we find meaningful, important, involving, and fulfilling work.

The theory that following your passion leads to success first surfaced in the 1970s. There is this idea that your dream job is out there. You just have to find it. It is common career guidance; however, it is limiting advice. The underlying assumption is that unless you discover that perfect match, you will not be satisfied. Thus, much of today’s workforce suffers from professional discontent due to their failure to transform their passions into lucrative careers.

However, new research led by Patricia Chen, at the University of Michigan casts some doubt on that assumption. Some people inherently can grow to love their job over time — and they end up just as happy as those who seek out the ideal fit from the start. So, it is good to have a Plan B if you cannot find that perfect job to fulfill your passion.

It is not always possible to become truly passionate about your job. In How to know when it is time to seek a better job, I provide some insights to help you understand when it is time to move on and try again. Are you moving closer to your envisioned future? To achieve career satisfaction, revisit your plan at least annually. Make adjustments as needed. Remember, it is a journey, not a destination.

Your Talent Stack is Your Career Capital

Cal Newport in his book So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, offers up advice about how not following your passions will ultimately lead to satisfaction. The following four tips will help you put yourself on the path to professional fulfillment:

1. Passion comes with mastery and time. Be patient. Learn to love what you do. In most occupations only about a third of the people considered it their calling or an integral part of their life and identity.
2. Make the quality of what you do your primary focus. This mindset acknowledges that no matter what field you are in, success is always about quality. Once you are focused on the quality of the work you are doing now rather than whether or not it is right for you, you will not hesitate to do what is necessary to improve it.
3. Practice hard and get out of your comfort zone. So, how do you become the craftsman? You practice. Although deliberate practice is often strenuous and uncomfortable, it’s the only path to true mastery.
4. Acquiring rare and valuable talent stack. People with rare talent stacks (skills, knowledge, wisdom, behavioral traits, and accomplishments) are more likely to get great jobs in which they are allowed creativity and control. Your talent stack is your career capital. It sets you apart. Improve the quality of whatever you do–and if that means acquiring a valuable compatible skill, do it. All the more career capital for you.

Success does not exist in a vacuum

We have long thought about potential as being a set of individual traits: your creativity, your skills your intelligence. However, the dramatic shifts in how we approach work today demand an equally dramatic change in our approach to success. New research shows that if we only chase individual success, we leave vast sources of potential untapped. Our potential is determined by how we complement, contribute to, and benefit from the abilities and achievements of people around us.

For our first 22 years of our lives, we are being judged and praised for our attributes and what we can achieve alone. The rest of our lives our success is almost entirely interconnected with that of others.

In his book Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being, Shawn Achor sets out that the real extent of what we can achieve—requires the help of others. It relies on a virtuous cycle, an upward spiral of potential whereby with each success, you garner more resources, which in turn, allows you to achieve greater and greater successes. The people around you can be your resources. Moreover, you can be their resource, too, continuing the cycle.

When we pursue success in isolation — pushing others away as we push ourselves too hard — we are not just limiting our potential, we are becoming more stressed and disconnected. Our potential is a moving target, not a destination, and it is not something you can reach on your own.

Career Assessment

In our career assessment, I talk about the importance of a personal development plan. We believe that Career Satisfaction = Career Success. Where you:

1. Review your talent stack – your skills, knowledge, wisdom, behavioral traits, and accomplishments
2. Research options where your talent stack can be used. Acceptable options align with your values.
3. Develop a narrative about your envisioned future
4. Identify the gaps in your talent stack from mastery. Not addressing them may prevent you from your envisioned future
5. Engage people who are doing what you want to do — share your ambitions, connect with them—they will help you—you need to help them
6. Link your development to your envisioned future

You will be well on your way to cultivating not only a satisfying career, but a new, rarer kind of practical passion built on commitment, mastery, and pride. Repeat the cycle at least annually.

As Stephen Covey reminds us “begin with the end in mind.” The end he speaks about is our envisioned future. In creating our envisioned future, our goals should be moveable targets, not destinations. Our goals, passions, and dreams evolve as we execute our plan. We learn. We grow. Our plan will need to be adjusted.

The more observant you are of your surroundings, the more likely you are to capture a valuable resource or avoid tragedy. Lucky people do not magically attract new opportunities and good fortune. They stroll along with their eyes wide open, fully present in the moment. This means that anything that affects our physical or emotional ability to take in our environment also affects our so-called “luckiness”—anxiety, for one. Additional insights are offered in How to be Remarkably Lucky – Have an Open Mind. Anxiety physically and emotionally closes us off to chance opportunities. When opportunity knocks, if it aligns with your envisioned future, adjust your plan.

Success is not just about how creative, smart or driven we are but much more about how well we can connect, contribute to — and benefit from — the ecosystem of the people around us. Almost every attribute of our potential – from intelligence to creativity to leadership to engagement is interconnected with other people.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb

What is your envisioned future?

Creating your envisioned future is very exciting. You want to describe your virtuous cycle of success. If we do not have an envisioned future, many of us follow the path of least resistance on our career journey — just like nature — unless there is a compelling reason to do something else we keep going the most natural direction.

I am passionate about helping students find their path. I encourage you to have any high school student you know read Powerful Career Advice for Your High School Student. It may help them discover their passion, plan to start building the right talent stack for them.

Be intentional — start on your development plan by being clear where you are going. If you do not have an envisioned future, any path will do!”

One of the most effective ways to vividly envision our futures is to write about it. The act of consciously crafting your narrative of an event—past or future—directs your energy toward it. In her paper The Health Benefits of Writing About Life Goals, researcher Laura King found that when people wrote about their best possible self, the type of person they aspire to become, their health and well-being significantly improved.

In other research, individuals were invited to write once a week about the best future self they could imagine. They needed only a month to elevate their physical well-being, happiness, and connectedness significantly. These are the most crucial components of sustained potential.

If you have goals you want to achieve, at work or in your personal life, write about them! And do it as vividly as possible. Think of it as writing a screenplay for a rich Technicolor Hollywood blockbuster starring your best possible future self.” – Shawn Achor

This technique will have a lasting impact on your efforts to vividly conceive of a positive future. In one study of people suffering from clinical depression, visualizing increasingly vivid images of the future increase optimism and lessen depression. Those effects still endured seven months later.

This finding is crucial. Once we can honestly see ourselves overcoming whatever challenges we face. We can sustain our efforts to help create a better world!

To be or do anything noteworthy, you must access the power of optimism―the incredible discipline of living a positive life. It is an exciting journey because there is no telling who or what you could become by embracing such a dominant life force. At your very best, a positive life could take your dreams from desire to reality.

All it takes is the belief that you can do it

If you think that your dream job is out there waiting for you, go ahead and search for it. As Confucius said, “choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Optimism refuses to believe that the road ends without options. So, you can take a decent-looking position and grow to enjoy it — then the corollary is also true “love the job you’re in, and you will never feel that you are working.”

I was very fortunate as a child. At an early age, my mother introduced me to “If” by Rudyard Kipling. (She enjoyed Kipling and named me “Kim” after his book). If, continues to resonate with me as it eloquently describes the essence of poise:

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch…
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son!

Poise is essential to commitment, mastery, and pride in our work.

Visualization

You’re probably already familiar with visualization. Any good golfer knows the key to winning is first to visualize where your ball is going, make good contact with the ball, then follow through fully. Too many of folks have only a vague picture of where they want to go. Thus, they do not follow through because they believe they have already failed. If you say, “The future is bright” without providing any of the details, you are unlikely to connect with that future on an emotional level.

Action is not driven by the past but pulled by the future.” — Martin Seligman

If you can evoke vivid imagery in your mind — you dramatically increase your chances of achieving it. We are magnetically drawn toward vivid pictures of the future.

Use optimism to get started

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” ―Noam Chomsky

To get started on documenting your envisioned future, tap into your positivity. For the next two weeks, each day reflect on one of these motivating quotes about being an optimist. Consider an experience or your envisioned future that relates to the quote. Start writing your narrative for your envisioned future. It does not matter how old you are — your future has yet to unfold — shape it.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” ―Winston Churchill

An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere. They learn from mistakes and failures and are not afraid to fail again.” ―Harvey Mackay

Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something is not to your liking, change your liking.” ―Rick Steves

Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” ―Benjamin Franklin

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ―Martin Luther

It is the hopeful, buoyant, cheerful attitude of mind that wins. Optimism is a success builder; pessimism an achievement killer.” -Orison Swett Marden

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” ―Helen Keller

One misconception is that entrepreneurs love risk. Actually, we all want things to go as we expect. What you need is a blind optimism and a tolerance for uncertainty.” -Drew Houston

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.” ―Lucille Ball

Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects.” ―Norman Cousins

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant―the digitalis of failure. ―Elbert Hubbard

Optimism refuses to believe that the road ends without options.” ―Robert H. Schuller

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” -Colin Powell

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” ―John Wooden

What is hope but a feeling of optimism, a thought that says things will improve, it won’t always be bleak [and] there’s a way to rise above the present circumstances.” ―Wayne W. Dyer

We are incredibly passionate about Behavioral DNA and the impact this scientific insight can have on you. Using SuccessFinder, we help you discover your behavioral strengths and challenges.

High performers in each role share a common subset of behaviors. Our talent analytics compares your behavioral traits and competencies — with high performers in given roles. We show you how to use these powerful analytics to achieve career satisfaction and success.

Focus on your strengths and manage your challenges. We include both in your development plan. You complete the assessment online, we then provide you a report and personal feedback via video call. We offer the service worldwide. We’d love to hear from you!