Do Work You Love; Fill Your Life with Passion


by Nickolove Lovemore - Date: 2006-12-02 - Word Count: 1083 Share This!

I met someone recently who worked in insurance but wanted to do something else for a living, in fact she wanted to be a writer. She said she had tried several business ventures but all had failed. I asked whether she chose her business ventures because they appeared lucrative or because it was something she really wanted to do. She smiled and said it was the former. I smiled too for this is what I had intuitively suspected and, as my follow-on questions proved, here was yet another person who was afraid to go after their dream and do work they love because they were afraid they couldn't make a living out of it.

It is estimated that 80% of all Americans fall into this category. They are in jobs they are dissatisfied with and they go to work mainly to earn a wage so that they can feed themselves and or their family, keep a roof over their heads and have 4 weeks paid vacation each year. "What's wrong with that?" you ask, nothing, except that most people are literally trading their lives for this mediocre existence.

Well what's the alternative? Do work you're passionate about. However, if you believe that you can't make money out of doing work you love then that will be your reality. On the other hand, I've not met anyone who has told me that they wished they could follow a different career other than the one they're currently in who could not give me an example of someone who was making a living out of doing what they really wanted to do. The New York Times best-selling author, John Assaraf, said in a recent interview on Larry King Live:

"If you could figure out how to serve another human being, if you could figure out how to give them your product or your service, and figure out how to get that to the masses and serve them and do well for them, you'll be rewarded with riches."

If one person can make a living, and I'm not talking about just getting by, doing something they love surely another can as well. There's a growing opinion that doing work that you're passionate about will soon not be a luxury but a necessity. Globalisation is making the job market more and more competitive. A consequence of this is that increasingly you will need to do work you love. Why? Because this is when you do your best work and, just as you may find your job a grind, someone out there just loves to do and is very good at doing what you do. As a result, they will generally perform better than you. So increasingly, the chances are that if you're not doing work you love, you may find yourself out of a job.

The trouble is that many people have shut down their dreams. As children we all had dreams and we were avid dreamers but by the time we reach our 50s only about 5% of us still have dreams. The rest of us have settled into the humdrum of life. Really, we're just marking time waiting for the inevitable – death. This 5% generally correlates with those who also have no major illnesses, are independently wealthy and elite in their line of work. So where do the vast majority stand? The grim reality is that as well as having no dreams, 95% of 50 year olds will have ill health and no financial security.

The other issue is that many people lack clarity about what it is they love to do. They have denied their heart's desire for so long that it becomes difficult to express what they really want. Some people are actually fearful of articulating their desires. They may think they would be laughed at just for having the idea or that if they didn't achieve their goal they would be ridiculed. Some are afraid of the work that would be involved to do the work they love. Yet what they fail to realise is that they will have to work just as hard doing work they detest and that it's taking a toll on their health, family life, social life and bank balance.

One of the reasons television is so addictive is that people can escape into other people's dreams for hours at a time. People vegetate in front of the television watching the lifestyles of the rich and famous, wishing that they could have just a small slice of what these folk have yet are not willing to do what it takes to accomplish this dream. As James Allen, author of the classic book, As a Man Thinketh, puts it:

"People are anxious to improve their circumstances but unwilling to improve themselves, they therefore remain bound."

I know of no one who is successful who has not had to work at their success. However, take a look at anyone who is very successful in their work and you will find that they are passionate about their work. They would do their line of work even if it didn't pay them and they get an enormous kick out of being paid for doing what they just love to do. In fact they love their work so much it's just like play or as I heard Corey Rudyl, founder of the Internet Marketing Center, put it, "plork".

They are also very clear about what they want and what they want to achieve. As Janet Attwood, author of The Passion Test – The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Destiny says: "When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life, and only to the extent you are clear." Clarity is power. You will find that the most successful people know exactly what they want and are very clear about their purpose in life.

Your purpose in life is simply to discover what you love doing and then do it on purpose. The Greek Philosopher, Epictetus said, "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."

When you are living on purpose you will find that the people, resources, and things you need will flow to you serendipitously. So it's important to remain open to all sorts of opportunities because you never know from where and when you'll get that lucky break.

One of Oprah Winfrey's mottos is "Live your best life." When you consider that we spend most of our time working it follows that to achieve this goal we must do work we love.


Related Tags: love, work, life, dream, passion, dreams, make a living

Nickolove Lovemore is Life and Success Coach and a Certified NLP Practitioner who works with individuals and businesses to help them achieve success in their chosen endeavours. Please visit http://www.SuccessAccessories.com for free ebook and discover the success secrets of some of the world's greatest legends. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

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