New Year.New Career. Pursue The Career You Love

New Year.New Career. Pursue The Career You Love

“Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”

A wise man once said, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” You may have read it in a self-help book. You may have done a self-development course and seen it in the course materials. This quote has been turned into a meme and shared via social media time and time again. Most of us have seen it more than once. But have you ever REALLY considered its simple wisdom?

It is a simple phrase that many of us read and we agree with its sentiments, and then brush it off without further considering its meaning to the UK. Most of us will read it and believe that while it is very true, it is advice that pertains to ‘other people’. People who we admire. People who we know have great talents and who succeed at everything that they do. It is a saying that describes ‘those people’ but it never speaks to ME in my life.

Well, why do you think that? Why do you think that it is logical that ‘talented and gifted’ folk can live their dream doing what they love and at the same time believe it is completely unattainable for me?

Think about this. There are millions and millions of talented musicians in the world. Only a few ‘make it’ so that they derive their income from their talent. Is it luck? NO absolutely not. I like another saying, “you make your own luck”. If you are a great musician, highly talented but you never share your gifts with others, then no one will ever know. Even the people who are ‘lucky’ and get discovered by record companies on YouTube decided to ‘put themselves out there’ to be discovered. So while there is some element of luck in the equation, there is also some conscious effort and hard work.

Dreams lead to inspiration which lead to action

As Henry Ford, the great entrepreneur once said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” So for aspiring musicians who do not believe they will one day be discovered, they will not put themselves on YouTube. Their fear of failure is also translated as a fear of success and it paralysed their attempts.

If you ask children, ‘What will you be when you grow up?’ you will often get really ambitious responses. Some popular responses are a fireman, president, movie star,  model, rock star, doctor, inventor, astronaut, archaeologist, writer. When we are children, we have not usually experienced rejection, anxiety or self-doubt. We slowly become cautious and conservative and actually scared to dream when one or two things fail to go our way.

Dream killing and the growth of unhappiness

Growing up, sometimes our parents can project their anxieties onto us and we can develop a fear of failure. This fear of failure can start to negatively dictate our career choices. We stick with safe ideas that we feel we can achieve. For some of us, we set the bar so low for disappointment, that we start lying to ourselves. We convince ourselves that we are happy in our career as we do not want to appear unhappy, ungrateful or anything negative. However, our health may suffer. We may overeat, drink too much, gamble or have other addictions.

These behaviours are indications that deep down we are unhappy and we are attempting to provide some momentary escape from that empty feeling inside. We do not want to acknowledge that we are bored or unhappy with our jobs.

Being complacent with our ‘meh’ feelings actually leads to disease and further unhappiness. There’s never been a better time than now to turn around the years of just ‘going through the motions’ for the sake of any job.  

Failure can be your greatest success

Having demonstrated this in my own life, I gave up on my law training, not because I was bad at it. I passed the exams and completed my studies. I set myself free from self- defeating thoughts when I realised that if studying law didn’t resonate with me, then staying in the profession was surely going to lead to misery. I knew that I did not want that. My failure at pursuing the career I was preparing for became my greatest success. I discovered the freedom and fulfilment I had lacked. I could now pursue my goal of helping to improve their own lives and fulfil their dreams.

A life without passion is a life half-lived

I can swear to you that my experience is that simply going through the motions to get my qualifications in Law was killing me inside. I did not love the Law. I was doing it to please the expectations of my parents, to get a stable and well-paying job. My experience from learning from other like-minded people has been that most people are hungry to occupy themselves doing something that gives meaning and purpose to their life.

The time to change is now

If you are reading this, you know that I am speaking to you. You may not yet know what your passion is yet because for too long you have squashed down the child dreamer inside you. Your fear of failure has stopped you imagining that things could be better for you.

As I said earlier, a dream is an inspiration that leads to action. If you have 1% of hope inside you that you can imagine a more fulfilling life, then I invite you to spend time on my site, watch the videos, check out the recommended reading and contact me. Like any coach, we work together to strengthen you, equip you for tough times and when game days come, you can shine through. I will help you develop skills that will you identify YOUR needs, desires and dreams. You will become the master of your destiny.

Together your dreams can come to life. The only question now is:

”How big can you dream?”