Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
Choose a job you love… and you will never work a day in your life.
This was allegedly said by Confucius, more than two thousand years ago, in China.
What are your thoughts on the idea that you need to make a job out of what you love?
Do you think that your job has to be something that brings you joy and delight?
Until recently, this demand for passion-driven jobs was uncommon.
Very few books recommended this until 1990 [source: https://arata.se/source-559g].
From there on, this idea began to grow slowly and, from 1995 to 2005, it started to be promoted
more and more.
That’s why you have probably already asked yourself if it’s necessary to love what
you do for a living to enjoy a happy life.
However… is this accurate in real life?
Does your type of job really need to have a routine with plenty of parties, happiness
and emotions… or is it alright if you have a routine job in a common office?
Is your job just something you do to pay the bills, looking for happiness in other areas
of your life?
Many people think of their jobs simply as an occupation, a way of serving people and
earning money in return.
That’s fine.
And we can even go deeper:
Believing that you have to turn your passion into a career may be ruining a significant
part of your life satisfaction.
Wise minds are willing to analyze different perspectives on a specific subject before
making an important decision.
And that’s why we are going to explore the opposite of what Instagram motivational coaches
recommend.
Instead of telling you to “do what you love”, let’s just look with curiosity at an alternative
point of view: making you happy is not your job’s function.
Making you happy is not your job’s function.
The idea that you can escape suffering in your job is just wishful thinking.
In order to explain this perspective, I’ll have to ask you to imagine that you are a
comic book enthusiast.
Imagine that you have been reading comics for forever now, and you know all the characters.
You have a deep knowledge of comics: you even know how to analyze elements such as illustration,
script and editorial work in a critical way.
Despite this passion, you currently work as a lawyer.
Meeting clients, writing petitions and following legal proceedings are part of your routine.
That’s how you make your living and support your family.
And by feeling that your professional life isn’t very exciting, you end up getting
yourself a little down.
By using social media, you start repeatedly watching motivational speakers telling you
to make a career out of what you love.
And this starts to strengthen the internal belief that your job has to bring you pleasure.
You relate to the proverb that says “do what you love, and you will never have to
work a day in your life”.
One day, you decide to give up on being a lawyer and start to work with comic books.
In other words, you decide to turn your passion into a career.
You create a comics review YouTube channel and an online store to recommend comic books
and gain commissions for each sale.
It’s done, now you do what you love and therefore you won’t have to work a day in
your life, right?
Wrong!
At the moment you turn your passion into a career, suffering comes along.
Loving comic books is different from being capable of working with them.
In your idealized dream of doing what you love, you imagine that you will spend your
day reading good stories, networking with great artists, meeting other comic book enthusiasts.
However, in reality, your day will be taken up by a series of problems.
You will have to script, record and edit videos.
You will need to deal with Youtube issues.
You will have to assure that your online store is running.
You will have to deal with clients and complaints of undelivered comic books.
If your business gets big, you will have to hire employees.
You will have to lead the team, deal with internal complaints, know when one of your
team members will be absent from work or quit.
If you’re not satisfied, just changing jobs will not always fix how you feel.
There are people who are always changing jobs and, yet, they keep complaining, because their
main problem is themselves, and not the work they do.
Don’t keep hoping that doing what you love will magically make all your problems disappear.
Believing that by doing what you love you will not have to work is a mistake.
Having a job means rendering services to other people - employers, clients or employees.
Every job requires effort, dedication, patience to deal with problems and frustrations.
As soon as you turn your passion into a job, suffering comes along as a package deal.
And you should not run from it.
Doing what you love requires a combination of passion, capability and demand.
And it doesn’t eliminate suffering.
You don’t have to give up on the dream of turning what you love into a job.
You just have to learn that, if you take that step, there’s no guarantee of a life without
annoyances, frustrations, suffering or problems that need solutions.
It’s not possible to eliminate suffering just by doing what you love.
You need to be practical and analyze if following your passions professionally is truly viable.
Passion isn’t the only required component of a good job.
And your passion for a subject can even decrease when it’s not just a hobby anymore.
If you want to turn your passion into a career, this life change needs to be based on three
pillars: passion, capability and demand.
Passion is what you really love doing.
Capability is your ability to do it professionally.
And demand is people’s interest in paying for your capability on a scale that enables
you to make a living from it.
To learn more about this, I recommend that you consider Ikigai, which I explain in episode
140 of the Hello!
Seiiti Arata series, available at arata.se/hello140
For example, let’s say you’re really into classical music.
It’s your passion.
Now, if you don’t have the ability to play an instrument, if your city doesn’t have
any orchestras, theaters, or simply doesn’t value classical music, you could hardly make
a living out of it without having to move out of your city or take your business online.
I’m not saying it’s impossible; however, the effort required will be a lot greater.
Not everyone wants to turn their passion into a career.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
If you have capability and demand, you can start building a successful career using this
ability to serve the market’s needs.
On the other hand, someone who has passion and capability, but lacks demand, is not able
to make a living from their own work.
Someone who has passion and demand, but lacks capability, is incapable of making the market
pay a good price for their work.
The demand pillar is key.
The University of Montreal did a study on their students’ biggest passions [source:
https://arata.se/source-7f2v], and they found that those passions didn’t have enough opportunities
in the workplaces available [source: https://arata.se/source-01gh].
This is a conclusion that anyone can come to.
Usually, people are passionate about their hobbies, which often involve sports, art,
games, traveling… but there’s not enough space in the labour market for everyone to
work with those things, so you’d have to face serious competition in order to succeed.
Suffering is part of life.
The fear of suffering may end up paralyzing your life.
If you fit the intersection of passion, capability and demand, you can invest in the project
of turning your passion into a career.
But, it’s natural to have a certain fear of taking that step, because you’ll end
up turning something you love into work.
And working means serving other people and getting ready to face a series of problems.
Don’t let fear paralyze your life.
If you have really decided to do what you love, keep going with the knowledge that giving
you pleasure isn’t your job’s function.
Those who seek a job which only brings pleasure will probably not stay in the same job for
a long time.
Those people will be like rolling stones, unhappy, thinking that a solution will always
be in another job.
Instead, you can dedicate yourself to your current job, or even to your passion.
Try to dominate this activity, giving it your best, welcoming the natural advantages and
disadvantages of your job.
Those who try to run away from work problems end up in a standstill, incapable of taking
action.
As soon as you accept suffering and become able to draw strength from your problems,
getting better with every solution, you will be ready to face any type of job, whether
you are passionate about it or not.
The recommendation that everyone should follow their passion to do what they love is nothing
but an illusion.
Just giving pleasure is not a job’s function.
Only wanting to do what you love limits your options a lot.
This doesn’t mean you have to give up on that idea.
Just know that it’s not something that’s easy to do.
If you are at the intersection of passion, capability and demand, keep going.
However, be aware that, as soon as you turn your hobby into a job, the suffering will
come along with this decision.
You will end up realizing that your happiness doesn't depend solely on doing what you love.
What does your happiness depend on, then?
In an ideal world, happiness doesn’t depend on external factors.
This is very hard to do; however, training your mind and using the right techniques will
make you able to increase your happiness levels in no time.
I teach many of those techniques in the Happiness course, which you can learn more about right
now at https://arata.se/happiness