“If you love what you do, you’ll never work another day in your life.”
This oft-quoted phrase hits home with a few.Those who have jobs they enjoy are truly blessed.
For most, though, a different, yet oft-quoted phrase is more applicable. “If it weren’t work, they wouldn’t pay you to do it.”
Rory Vaden, the New York Times best-selling author of “Take the Stairs,” talks about the “enjoyment requirement” many young folks have about work. They need a job they enjoy. They need work they are passionate about and wait — unemployed, living with mom and dad etc. — until it comes.
Often, they don’t know what it is they are passionate about. It’s, like, you know, they will know what it is when they find it.
As Vaden, who discussed this in a May 2013 column in The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville, says: “There is no perfect job. There is no perfect marriage, there is no perfect life that you find; there are only perfect ones that you create by working your butt off to make them that way.”
His point is that those who “find their passion” are willing to put in the time to be successful. Tiger Woods and other golf professionals are passionate about their sport, so they put in the time on the practice range so they can play successfully in tournaments. Passions, like anything good, need to be nurtured with hard, unglamorous work.
Some jobs are nothing but work. You have to find things about them that make it palatable, if not enjoyable, for you to keep doing them. Perhaps what you’ll find is that the job is good because it serves a temporary purpose — it gives you a paycheck while you await your passion.
Other jobs might require you to improve your skills to the point in which you are so good at them, you become passionate.
Others still may have fulfilling purpose for you, but barely make you a living. So, you have to do something a little less fulfilling to improve your financial situtionn.
“Don’t quit your day job” is yet another oft-quoted phrase. If you have a “day job” or a “night job” and are looking for your passion, you may find it by visiting www.bign.com/pbilodeau. If you like what you see, know that a potential fortune is there — if you work at it. But, you can work at it while you are working at something else.
Perhaps you’ll adopt the oft-paraphrased mantra: work full time at your job and part time on your fortune.
Don’t wait for the ideal, Work for it, to paraphrase Vaden. You don’t have to love what you do. You have to create a situation you love. Or, in another oft-quoted phrase, “life is what you make it.’
Peter