Step Into Your Real Work, Keep Going

August 5, 2010 0 Comments

Originally published at BostInnovation.com

A few of us are fortunate enough to more or less choose our jobs and careers. We pursue advanced degrees, take time off after college or grad school, spend time building our professional networks, and wait for our ideal jobs to come around. Perhaps we are lucky enough to have financial support from family while we apply for fellowships, volunteer abroad, start businesses, or build nonprofits.

 

Most of us aren’t so fortunate. We depend on a steady income to pay the bills. Maybe we get to do one or two of the aforementioned, soul-searching activities as young people, but the question of money is always there.

We balance our own happiness and job satisfaction with financial obligations to ourselves and others—and needless to say, societal expectations about what kind of work we should be doing.

One thing I often hear from peers—and remember having said myself at different times in my life—is that it’s just not realistic to do what we really love for work. If we don’t like our job, or have a fantastic idea for some new venture, we can’t just quit what we’re doing at the moment and go do it. It’s more complicated than that, it’s too hard, it’s sort of selfish. It’s just irresponsible to take such a big risk. And such risks of course get harder and harder as we get older and have families of our own.

The thing is, we’re pretty much right when we say all of these things. It’s rarely ever possible to stop everything and jump into a new life because this isn’t how change happens. But this doesn’t mean we decide to make no changes at all when we’re feeling unsatisfied, either. In my experience, change happens slowly through a series of small, intuitive steps. Every now and then we need to take a giant leap of faith, but mostly it’s the small, day-to-day choices that determine our course.

If there’s one piece of advice I can offer to readers who are looking to change jobs or start that business or project they’ve been dreaming about, it’s this: Focus on taking a single step into whatever it is that feels like your real work on this planet. Even if it’s just a step in the direction of your real work… take that step.

Maybe you don’t quit your lackluster job, but you ask your boss for flex time so you have larger blocks of time to devote to outside projects. Or, maybe you work out your budget so that you can live on the money you can earn at a part-time job for a while.

Or, even simpler, maybe you just start talking about what it is you’re really interested in, where you’d like to devote your energies beyond what you’re doing now. You’d be surprised at how something as simple as this can create new opportunities.

Many of us are out there now juggling two different professions, leading what sometimes feels like two different lives. Accountants moonlight as musicians; Investment bankers call themselves social entrepreneurs on the side; Administrative Assistants build their own startups on evenings and weekends. It may not always be an easy life, but it’s rewarding beyond measure. And through some combination of hard work, intelligence, and luck—many of us eventually get to work full-time doing the things we’re truly passionate about and have it pay.

In the meantime, we have to be creative when it comes to our own career development. We have to take our careers in our own hands, take some risks, and ask for what we want. The thing to remember is, it doesn’t have to happen in one fell swoop.

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