How 'follow your passion' leaves ambitious idealistic people jobless
The only thing we hear these days is how we should drop the corporate job (or never attempt to start working in one) and follow our passion. This makes a lot of ambitious young professionals who work or want to work for corporates feel dumb, selfish and definitely not hipster.
It also limits job opportunities for currently unemployed.
I coach highly educated people that find themselves without a job or people that would like to move away from corporate jobs - to be able to follow their true passion.
Interestingly, most of the people I coach that never worked for a big organization or a bigger business have never even considered this to be an option. Why? Because they feel it is wrong.
“Why do you feel it’s wrong?” I ask. The response goes something like “Well I am not working for the benefit of others” or “I’m not changing the world” or “it’s not in line with my dream job,” forgetting that you can still stick to your principles and impact people’s lives by how you treat them and how you do your work for example.
The most common thing we do next, is consider the person’s skills, what they want in life – their dreams & their minimum criteria to be happy in a job.
Often, when we consider skills and minimum criteria, we find plenty great work options that are satisfactory enough, that teach useful skills, that broaden opportunities,...
Even more interesting is that once a person drops the belief that the ‘corporate’ job is bad, they actually start to enjoy the idea and see how they can have positive impact on a small scale – on customers, colleagues, or the environment – in or next to their job.
Let me repeat this because this is extremely important – the moment a person drops the belief that what they do is wrong, they not only enjoy it but find ways to have positive impact in line with their beliefs.
This change of mindset makes a person feel like they are no longer trapped between two worlds, gives them the energy to make the best of what they have right now and most of all lifts the sense of guilt for doing something they later discover they actually enjoy and are good at.
Do we stop dreaming? No, after a person accepts their current situation, we make a plan towards achieving their dream and break it down into realistic periodic goals. This also often feels like a relief because suddenly, the pressure to have that dream right now is lifted.
Sometimes, people are fit and ready to leave the corporate job and start their dream career but more often than not, people limit their success by the belief that they should have already been doing something else in life.
Today, we get bombarded by global success news of ever younger people that achieved so much more than you by now. Adding a pinch of the follow your passion movement is a recipe for people to feel like failures by doing a normal job.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a passionate idealist and I definitely follow my dreams. My point here is that you should not feel bad by working for a business or an office job. Maybe you enjoy it, you might need it and maybe it will get you to your dream job eventually – one step at a time.