Find your career passion, and you may discover work that you can sustain for decades rather than simply tolerate until retirement. But what if the usual advice to “follow your passion” isn’t quite right?
After thirty years as a coach, I’ve seen how powerful it can be to build a career around something you genuinely care about. But I’ve also learned that passion on its own isn’t enough. A fulfilling career usually requires something more: a combination of what you enjoy, what you’re naturally good at, and what other people are willing to value and pay for.
That distinction can change the way you think about your career and how you approach the search for your career passion.
I absolutely believe that building a career around something you love can be a wonderful idea. But loving something isn’t enough to make it a viable career or business. Your passion has to meet the marketplace.
You may adore collecting seashells, for example, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should quit your job and open a seashell shop. You may love photography, gardening, or baking without there being a profitable business model that makes sense for you.
That doesn’t make the passion any less valuable. It simply means you need to distinguish between something you love doing and something that can support you financially. When you find something you care about, are naturally good at, and that other people value, however, you may have found a very powerful career combination.
One of the exercises I recommend in Coach Yourself to a New Career is to think back to what you naturally did as a child. Before you had a career counselor telling you what subjects would lead to a good job, before you knew what jobs paid well, and before you started worrying about whether something was practical, what did you do simply because you enjoyed it? What could you happily do for hours? What did you constantly draw, build, organize, investigate, collect, write, perform, or take apart?
For me, the answer was mud. I was always in the middle of a mud pile. I loved getting my hands dirty and making things. Looking back, I can see a creative and tactile thread running through that childhood obsession. The adult version might be pottery or gardening. And, if I were feeling particularly adventurous, perhaps mud wrestling!
I love throwing pots on a wheel. There is something wonderfully satisfying about taking a lump of clay and turning it into something useful and beautiful. I also love puttering around in the garden. But I have no intention of making pottery or gardening my career.
That isn’t because you can’t make a wonderful living as a potter or landscape gardener. Plenty of people do. It is simply that, in my case, those interests didn’t turn out to be my strongest career opportunity. I can love pottery without needing pottery to pay my mortgage.
That distinction is important. Finding your career passion doesn’t mean turning every interest into an income stream. Sometimes, the things we love are best enjoyed without the pressure of making a living from them.
This is where my own experience has made me rethink the whole question of passion. Thirty years ago, I went into life coaching somewhat reluctantly. I didn’t know whether anyone would actually pay me to do it. I was skeptical that it could become a viable income. It seemed like a wonderful idea, but was it really a career?
So I didn’t exactly leap into coaching because I had an overwhelming passion for it. But once I started doing it, I discovered that I was very good at it. I loved helping people solve problems. I loved figuring out what was really getting in someone’s way. And I loved watching someone make a change and seeing what became possible as a result.
And then something interesting happened. The more I did it, the more passionate I became about it. Thirty years later, I am still passionate about coaching.
This is why I don’t think you always have to discover your passion first and then build a career around it. Sometimes the process works in reverse. You discover something you are naturally good at. You get better at it. Other people value what you do. You become more confident. You enjoy it more. And somewhere along the way, passion develops.
In other words, your career passion might not be something you discover fully formed. It might be something you develop as you explore your abilities, build confidence, and discover the difference you can make.
If you aren’t sure what you are naturally good at (and I certainly wasn’t), there are ways to get some objective information rather than spending years guessing. My Career Change Kit includes comprehensive assessments designed to identify your innate abilities, workplace motivators, and potential career directions. Sometimes having a clearer picture of your natural wiring can open up possibilities you simply hadn’t considered.
One of the most useful ways to think about career success is to look for combinations of abilities. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest writer, artist, salesperson, or teacher. You might simply need to find the particular combination of abilities that makes you valuable.
Perhaps you are a good writer who also understands technology. Or perhaps you love people and are good at organizing. Maybe you are analytical but also creative. Or you could be a natural teacher who knows a great deal about a particular subject. Perhaps you are good at sales but also deeply interested in psychology. These combinations can be surprisingly powerful.
I think we often overlook our natural abilities precisely because they feel so natural to us. If something comes easily, we may assume it isn’t a real skill. But what you find easy may be exactly what someone else struggles with.
One of the great gifts of a career that fits you is that you don’t have to spend all day fighting yourself. When you combine your strengths with work you find meaningful and a market that values your contribution, you’re much more likely to build a career that is both satisfying and sustainable.
There is one trap I would avoid, however. You can become so attached to the idea of finding your passion that you overlook whether anyone actually wants what you have to offer.
If you love baking, that doesn’t automatically mean you should open a bakery. If you love yoga, you don’t necessarily need to open a yoga studio. And if you love writing, you may discover that the particular kind of writing you enjoy isn’t the kind people are willing to pay for.
Test the idea. Could you find people who would pay you? Could you solve a problem for them, create something they value? You don’t have to know all of the answers before you begin. In fact, experimentation is often the best way to find out.
Rather than deciding your entire future and then trying to force it to happen, you can try things. You can build skills, notice what gives you energy, pay attention to what you are naturally good at, and see what other people value.
Perhaps the biggest mistake we make about careers is believing that we have to choose one thing and get it right. We don’t. Your career can evolve as you do.
You can take something you learned in one career and combine it with an ability you didn’t know was important. You can develop a skill, discover that you love using it, and eventually turn it into a business. Or you can follow an interest that starts as a hobby and discover that there is a commercial opportunity hiding inside it.
Sometimes the career that fits you best isn’t something you can identify by taking a test or making a five-year plan. Sometimes you have to follow the clues.
Look at what you did naturally as a child. Notice what you do easily as an adult. Pay attention to what gives you energy. Think about the problems people naturally come to you to solve. Notice what you could happily spend years getting better at.
Then ask the practical question: Could this become something that people would actually pay me for?
That, to me, is a much more useful way of thinking about how to find your career passion. You don’t have to choose between passion and practicality. You can look for the intersection. And when you find it, you may discover something even better than a dream job: work that you are naturally good at, genuinely care about, and can actually make a living from.
Because ultimately, a fulfilling career isn’t just about finding something you love. It’s about discovering what you do well, finding ways to use those abilities, and building a life around work that matters to you. And that may be the most rewarding career passion of all.
If you are thinking about changing careers or finding work that fits you better, the Career Change Kit is a good place to start. It includes assessments designed to identify your natural abilities, career possibilities, and workplace motivators, along with my book Coach Yourself to a New Career.
My book Coach Yourself to Success also explores how to identify your strengths, clarify what you want, and make practical changes that move your life forward.
