Conventional wisdom is that you should find a job that matches your passion. I think this is backwards. ~ Seth Godin
How many times have you heard career advice that tells you to follow your passion and find work that matches what you love to do?
This is definitely the prevailing wisdom of most career coaches and anyone who hangs out in the community of lifestyle bloggers. And it makes sense. If you love a certain hobby or field of study, why not go do that for a living?
Well, as he often does, business wizard Seth Godin turns this idea on its head in his latest (awesome) book Linchpin. Godin suggests that your passion should match your job, and not the other way around. He makes the point that transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.
In other words, find something you enjoy well enough, and then bring your passion to it to transform that into something remarkable and meaningful. You don’t have to get what you want when you want what you have.
I have to say that I really like this approach, and it seems much more realistic than finding a career that perfectly suits your deepest passions. After all, our passions and interests often change over time, right?
Contrarian Career Advice Meets Your Marriage
I am sure that you love your husband or wife. I’m sure that you care a lot about your marriage and don’t want to get a divorce. After all, you are spending your time here reading this great blog, right?
Why would you do that? Why would you ever need to be proactive about improving your marriage? Why would any married couple need to seek advice on how to keep the spark alive in their busy relationship?
Because you understand that you have to bring your passion to your marriage.
When you first met your spouse, I’m sure passion was alive and well. Chances are, your newlywed years were filled with great sex and plenty of free-flowing romance. As the years go by, though, the fuel for these passionate times starts to require you to make a choice to refill the “love tank.”
Dr. Gary Chapman cites some studies related to this phenomenon in his (also awesome) book The Five Love Languages. On average, the period of infatuation (the feeling of falling “in love”) lasts around two years. That means that for the first few years of your relationship, passion was taking the lead and fueling your relationship.
However, after those early years, infatuation fades and we’re left with a choice. That’s right, once the chemicals and crazy emotional responses wear off, we must choose to love our spouse each day. It’s no longer automatic.
Bring Your Passion
So, just as Seth Godin suggests for your career, you can’t depend on your marriage lasting because you followed your passions when you married your spouse. Instead, it’s up to you to bring your passion to your marriage every day.
Embrace your job and bring your best to your career. Be a Linchpin and do indispensable work.
More importantly, choose to love your spouse with your full ability every day. Take a passionate approach to your relationship. Invest time, energy and remarkable effort in your marriage.
Choose to live, work and love with passion.
(photo source)
so is the picture a husband and wife who hung themselves>??
Enthusiastically leaping for joy together…or cold suicide. I guess it depends on your perspective, Jay.
I think this is really true. I used to be in biotech and didn’t like it much… until I made it my mission to make my job great. This meant bringing passion to work, cleaning up dysfunctional relationships, and figuring out how to be an inspired researcher. And lo and behold, I started liking biotech more!
That’s awesome, Samantha. I can’t tell you how many times this has shown itself to be true in my life. It can be so easy to develop a negative attitude and feel burdened…when a simple change of perspective can turn the same situation into a blessing.
It’s not always easy to do, but it’s worth it.
I like this approach. Instead of pretending our elusive happiness is just around the corner, we rethink the life we have.
Exactly, Lori. Thanks for summarizing it so simply and so well.
experienced this when i was doing my undergrad, i firsst had to change my attitude before i could enjoy my school, now i need it for my phd
Thanks for the comment, chifundo. This certainly applies to all areas of life.
Dustin,
This is a great piece of advice and I absolutely loved the idea of finding passion in your marriage. It is much easier to preserve something then to fix it when something is broken.
Thanks, Anastasiya! I’m a strong believer in being proactive, especially when it comes to our most important relationships.
Great stuff as always, Dustin. I love the 5 love languages and the idea of a love tank….it does take passion in marriage to keep it full!
Thanks, Eric. The Five Love Languages is one of the best books I’ve read on any subject. I spent the whole time reading it and nodding my head in agreement with Dr. Chapman.
I definitely see the importance of bringing passion to whatever you do, however, had I followed this I would have never thought twice about entering the world of teaching people about personal finance. In my case, my passion gave me something to love. I don’t think you can MAKE yourself love a job if you truly don’t like it. I do think though that some people may “HATE” their job a little too easily maybe even though the problem is something that can be easily fixed or resolved. When I was struggling with Enemy of Debt a few months ago I could have easily declared some sort of hatred for how things were going, BUT I just needed to refocus and tap into my love and passion for why I started Enemy of Debt in the first place. I think this argument can certainly go both ways!!
Thanks, Brad! I need to clarify on the career-side of things that it’s not about chaining yourself to a dead-end job that you hate. If you are in a job/career field that just doesn’t fit you, you should definitely start planning to make the transition to a better position.
However, it’s also true that many people show up at work, go through the motions like a robot and go home feeling mildly depressed about their crappy day. If you have a job and you aren’t looking to make a big switch, then bring to your passion TO your job every day and make it exciting. You can be remarkable in most positions and avoid the mindset of “Oh damn, tomorrow’s Monday. I can’t wait to get through this week until it’s Friday again. Work is just meant to suck.”
That’s no way to live your life, and continuously changing jobs will NOT solve the problem in the long-term. Your success and happiness starts with a choice that YOU make.
Gotcha! I didn’t think that’s exactly what you meant because I know you are a Dan Miller fan. Your point was great and I think hits on many problems people face. My example to help make your point was that I felt like I had lost my passion for running Enemy of Debt, when really I just needed to be reminded of why it was so strong in the first place. Instead of writing EOD off and starting something else, I just needed to focus and rebuild around my true passion. I did, for a moment, forget that though, as you even admitted to noticing.
I think people have jobs that they love, but seem to have lost the passion to continue. Not the same as a dead end job that was hated all along or simply accepted to pay the bills. People who do those jobs certainly need to re-examine what they are truly passionate about and find a way to make it happen. Others just need to figure out how to bring back the passion.
Wow, I think my head just started spinning. Did ANY of that make sense? LOL
Keep up the great work Dustin! I admire everything you do my friend!
Oh I forgot to clarify, as far as marriage goes a couple should most certainly do everything they can to reignite the passion for their spouse that was once there…instead of hitting the road as the easy way out.
Haha! Just wanted to clarify. I responded totally on the career aspect of your statement but meant to add my thoughts on marriage. I think people often, too easily, go looking for what their marriage once had somewhere else and I think that is definitely a mistake. Like my website, the passion was once there, so me getting rid of the website thinking that I was no longer passionate about it, would have been my mistake. As I stated above, I simply had to tap into what made me passionate about it in the first place!
You know how strongly I feel about a great marriage so I wanted to make sure I didn’t give the wrong impression, especially since this is a marriage website.
Marriage hater.
Hahaha!! I have to admit I used to be, but my wife has shown me that marriage and love do exist. We just celebrated 6 years of marriage and i have to say, it keeps getting better and better as we continue to better understand each others wants, needs, ad goals. In part thanks to you my friend for what you do! Your passion for a proactive marriage is inspiring.
Hmmm, I don’t know. I mean, the big difference between a career and a marriage is that it makes perfect sense to change the former if you’re unhappy (if you’re certain it is the work and not other things making you unhappy), but the latter is meant to be permanent (except under extreme extenuating circumstances, at least). I say this as someone who’s entirely changed careers in the last two years and is extremely grateful I did so . . . while I would never considering changing husbands.
Many of us can be happy or unhappy doing even our dream work, I think. It does depend partly on seeing the forest and not just the ticks. Every job has its drudge work; it’s whether it’s worth it that matters. And THAT much is certainly true about marriage, as well.
I *totally* agree, Sally! Please see my response to Brad above for my clarification. I’m personally thinking of making career changes as well, which is why this is top-of-mind right now. However, I’ve also decided to maintain high performance and enjoy every day here at my current position.
You perfectly stated exactly how I feel Sally! You can leave a job you hate for something you are more passionate about, but leaving your spouse because you lost your passion is a completely different issue all together.
Dustin,
Great post.
I appreciated the reminder about Dr. Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages. His book really helped me to better understand that my husband expresses his love in very different ways than I do. That went a long way in accepting acts of service as his preference, rather than gifts or words to show love.
Thanks so much, Beth. The Five Love Languages was key to helping me understand the different ways my wife and I feel loved. It’s all pretty simple, but the most profound ideas usually are!
I thought I had read that book Dustin, but after looking for it in my “library” I didn’t find it. I think I may have been thinking of a different book all along. I need to read this one right away!