The Perils of a Passionate Career
How many times in your life have you been told that following your passion will lead you to the right career? How many of you immediately feel miserable when you hear this? A sense that something must be wrong with you? That you have somehow missed your true calling and will never reach the pinnacle of happiness?
Trust me, you aren’t alone! It’s the single most anxiety-provoking statement that anyone can make to someone contemplating their professional future.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: it’s absolutely terrible advice. Here’s why.
It assumes that there is only one ‘true’ career for each person. (Not true).
It puts an immense amount of pressure on career seekers to discover their passion. (The job search is already stressful enough, thank you).
It keeps you from being wide open to new opportunities. (World-class blinders).
It positions your job as your sole purpose in life, rather than encouraging you to focus on yourself as a whole person, with many facets. (Pretty unhealthy).
There’s no evidence that it’s actually true. (Sorry, Uncle Bob).
Choosing a career based on passion occasionally works out, but it’s pretty rare. Research shows that the opposite is generally true: people find the most satisfaction and success in their careers when they seek out a job that aligns with their strengths and values and when they keep themselves open to new ways of thinking and being. Passion for your work actually develops as you thrive and succeed. And you can - and hopefully do - find many ways to experience passion and fulfillment in your life.
New research in the Harvard Business Review adds even more weight to this argument. In “When It’s Time to Leave a Career That Your Passionate About,” Berry, Lucas, and Jachimowicz show that people who believe that their job is their passion have an incredibly difficult time leaving those jobs if they aren’t enjoying them. Why? Because they worry about being judged if they stop persevering. For those of us pondering a career transition, that’s a lot of extra unproductive guilt and unhappiness to carry around. Instead, “people flourish when they see their careers as evolving journeys rather than fixed destinations.”
You’ll hear me talk about evidence-based coaching a lot - and it’s central to my work with clients - but I also speak from lived experience. I came to career coaching through a long and winding path, limping through years of what I imagined career success should look like, instead of prioritizing what I truly excelled at and enjoyed. Once I understood my strengths, and how I could use those strengths to help others, whole new rivers of opportunity began to flow.
Strengths-based coaching works, because it blocks out all the unhelpful noise and helps us focus on what really matters.
