Before you can find a job (or partner... or passion... or purpose) that you love, you need to be honest with yourself about what you love. Most people aren't.
That's an old photo of my son above. No, he's not injured or tired, just delighted to see snow after being forced to endure another balmy summer and fall. He didn't care that the white stuff was coming from a snow gun, or that it was really cold and wet under that gun. He loves snow.
What do you love?
Don't edit your answers. What do you love so much that you'd gladly do it all week and happily skip the weekend to keeping doing it?
I'd like to suggest that most people skip or minimize this step. They dismiss the question, saying it's not practical. They argue that to support yourself, you have to make compromises.
But if you skip this step, how will you compete with people who actually love what they do? They'll work longer and harder than you ever could. They'll bring more energy and creativity to their work, and they will inspire the people around them.
To figure out what you love, you might have to think a long way back in time.
A close friend once stunned me by observing that it was too bad I never paid attention to how much I loved working at a summer camp while in college.
I actually didn't understand her comment at first. Did she mean I should have been a professional camp counselor? (No.) She was simply saying that for a few decades I never gave serious thought to teaching or coaching, and that might have been an oversight.
Bingo. In retrospect, she was 100% correct
To sort this out, I turned to my old friend Jim George, author of Time to Make it Stop: the How of Now. He told me, "When deciding what you love, remember that you don’t have to come up with just one thing, one catch-all activity that covers all the bases. Most of what successful people do is actually a syntheses of two or more things that they love.
"Just allow whatever you love to do to come up in your mind. Save the editing for later. What do you love enough to do even though you 'shouldn’t' do it? If you won the lottery and money was no object, if you could do anything at all, what would you do? I promise you there is a career in that somewhere."
Jim said that it takes a bit of creative thinking and a new perspective to gain important insights. He added, "Forget money for a moment. Forget earning a living. What lights you up? What distracts you from the things you 'should' be doing? Whatever that may be, there are people - lots of people - out there who either want or need what you do, or share your interest in it."
Don't miss the things that you love. Be honest with yourself.
I am Bruce Kasanoff, an executive coach who can help you get what you want. Book a one-hour call with me and I’ll prove it.