Discovering What You Really Want to Do and Doing It

Number One of the Ten Most Commonly Heard Career Issues

SUSAN W. MILLER, M.A. | Career Counselor

In order to discover what will really make you happy careerwise, you must find your passion.

Passion, by definition, is any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling such as love. And it's your passion, loving what you do, that will bring you your greatest rewards at work as well as get you through the hard times.

To find your passion, you must discover your gifts, your skills and your interests.

To help find your passion ask yourself the following questions:: 1. What is easy and effortless for you to do? What's as easy as breathing? These are your gifts.; 2. What has given you the most satisfaction in your life?; 3. What have you continually struggled with (work, relationships, money, alcohol, weight, creativity, etc.)?; 4. What drives you? How could what drives you benefit others?; 5. What's the common theme of your passions?; 6. Who are your role models and mentors? What are their qualities that you most admire? When do you mirror those qualities?; 7. If money were no problem, what would you do?; 8. How can you use your gifts, talents, experiences, and struggles to be of service?

Once you've found your passion, think of times in your life when you have been supported in your goals as if by magic-when people, money, or resources just seemed to show up. Act as if that will happen again with your current desire. Expect the magic and move toward it.

However, avoid the "Job Charming" fantasy. Your perfect job will not come riding into your life on a white horse so you can live happily ever after. The process more like going out into the wilderness and roping in a wild horse.

Most of us hate to look for work. Period. Most of us also hate to market ourselves. The Inner Critic whispers loudly:: "I shouldn't have to."; "They should know how valuable I am by the work I've done."; "It's not nice to talk about myself."; "I'll look foolish."; "They'll think I'm boasting and conceited."; "It feels sleazy."; "I just don't want to."

It's no wonder so many people bury their heads in want ads and spend countless hours responding to ads, even though only a small percentage of job seekers find work from this method.

To many people, the image of selling or marketing themselves is so onerous that they will do almost anything to avoid picking up the phone or initiating contact. However, when asked to describe people with whom they like to do business, they say those people are informative, honest, thorough, attentive, good at following through, service-oriented, and persistent.

In other words, recognize that you can sell yourself by exhibiting positive qualities and you won't necessarily turn people off. If you don't let people know who you are and how you can help them, how will they know?

Ask yourself another question: Do you really want to realize your dream or do you just want to hold on to the fantasy of it?

Fear of success can sometimes be as immobilizing as fear of failure. We all have anxieties, but success depends on being willing to fail - often. You have to embrace and learn from failure.

You have to persist to succeed. History gives us countless examples. For one, Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for lacking ideas. He also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

For other another example, Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as both unable and unwilling to learn. In addition, Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

If you get a no, that doesn't mean it's no forever, it means not right now. The path to yes is littered with no's. As William Barrett said, "Anxiety is simply part of the condition of being human. If we were not anxious, we would never create anything."

Follow your bliss.

When you find your passion or what you really want to do and go about doing it, as Joseph Campbell said in The Power of Myth,: "you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."