Follow your passion.
This is common advice given to people from friends or colleagues because they want somebody to find something they love or their passion, right?
But I suggest that that’s actually a really bad idea and can actually be counterproductive to your career.
In this article, I’ll describe what to do instead.
Why Passion Isn’t Enough
So, you might like baking bread as one of your hobbies.
Does that mean you should be a baker? Not necessarily.
Following a passion on its own is a bit like buying a house based on the color of the door or marrying somebody based on the strength of the first dates.
It might carry you first through the initial excitement. You know, it’s a change, it’s something aligned to what you like, but it’s not necessarily sustainable and in the longer term can actually backfire and set you back in your career.
Passion matters, of course it does, but on its own, it’s rarely got enough depth to carry you through a career or a new business.
When Restlessness Hits
So if you’re successful, but feeling a bit restless, or maybe you’ve reached this what I call awakening point whereby you actually want to find something with more purpose and fulfillment, or maybe you’re looking to start a new business and looking to think where, where can you focus your efforts, this is what I recommend instead.
Three Areas to Explore
So rather than looking at passion on its own, I recommend going broader into 3 areas.
1. Strengths and Experience
Firstly, you need to look at your strengths and experience.
What are you really good at?
Where do you find a state of flow, which is where you sort of lose track of time and completely immerse yourself in something?
And I don’t mean by strengths and experience, I don’t mean, you know, you work in accountancy, that’s not a strength, that’s a domain.
We’re looking, what do you do in accountancy that really lights you up? What do people consistently come to you for?
That doesn’t mean that you’re locked into that specific career.
We’re looking for specific strengths that are unique to you that you can carry forward to your next chapter.
2. Serving a Goal Bigger Than Yourself
Secondly, how can I use those unique strengths I’ve just identified to help a cause bigger than myself?
I’m looking for a goal bigger than myself.
This is where you really find fulfillment in the second half of life, is helping a group or a cause that has a benefit bigger than yourself.
Doesn’t mean you need to go into the voluntary sector or run a community or anything, although that might be of interest.
It just means you need to focus on something.
This is where you can get real fulfillment in the second half of life if you can direct your energy, your strength and your experience to a goal bigger than yourself.
3. Passion and Curiosity
Third, let’s now bring back in things like passion, but I’d also urge you to think about, you know, what are you curious about?
What problems in the world do you think should be solved?
Are there any itches that you’ve always yearned to scratch?
Are there things in the world that should exist that don’t?
This is where you’re gonna get your interest from.
And this is where the real supercharge in your fulfillment and your energy comes from, if you can combine all three:
- Your unique strengths and experiences
- Serving a goal bigger than yourself
- Something that you’re curious about, aligned to, interested in, or passionate about
If you combine all three of those at once, then you’ve really got something that’s gonna fire you up, light you up, and it’s gonna be sustainable in the longer term.
The Risk of Passion Alone
To carry this, you need something that’s gonna carry you through the highs and lows of a new business or the highs and lows of a new career, and that needs to be more than just passion.
From my own experience and speaking to others, if you just follow your passion on its own, what happens is the novelty can wear off and you’re left with the same stuck feeling and restlessness that you had before and you haven’t gained anything.
So just be wary of that.
Next Step: Alignment
Now if any of this is resonating, a good next step is to look at your alignment.
So all of this is about, you know, taking where you are and just doing a course correction to make sure that you’re more aligned to your true direction.
That might be a small tweak to your existing career, it might mean a major pivot.
But either way, we’ve got a free scorecard on the North Star Labs website where you can take an assessment of your alignment and see where you are, and maybe that’ll give you some inspiration in terms of the change that you need.