Finding Your Passion
So first things first, I think it’s important to say that your field of study/career doesn’t necessarily have to be your passion. But if you do want a career that you feel passionate about, how do you find it?
When searching for your passion, I would suggest making a list (no matter how short), of the things you love, the things you’re good at, the things the world needs, and the things you can be paid for. Look for overlaps in each category, and try your best to think creatively about how you can combine the different categories. For example, maybe you love movies, you think the world needs to know about global warming, and you’re good at organization. Your ikigai in that case might be to be a coordinator on documentaries that focus on global warming. It’s a job that pays pretty well, and also incorporates the other sections on your list, so it’s likely to feel fulfilling.
Moving away from this exercise, there’s this story that I think about a lot. A great uncle told it to me, and I always assumed it was a story from his life until one day I discovered it was actually a chain email called The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman and the Banker. I still think about it a lot, though, and it’s shaped the way I view work, so maybe it will be useful to you as well. It goes like this:
An American investment banker was taking a much-needed vacation in a small coastal Mexican village (in my uncle’s story, the fisherman is from Kalymnos and he dives for sponges) when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. The boat had several large, fresh fish in it.
The investment banker was impressed by the quality of the fish and asked the Mexican how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican fisherman replied he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman replied, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life, señor.”
The investment banker scoffed, “I am an Ivy League MBA (in my family the school is always Harvard), and I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats until eventually, you would have a whole fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to the middleman you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You could control the product, processing and distribution.”
Then he added, “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City where you would run your growing enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But señor, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15–20 years.”
“But what then?” asked the Mexican.
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions.”
Millions, señor? Then what?”
To which the investment banker replied, “Then you would retire. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
The question that this story prompts for me is, if you had unlimited time and resources, what kind of life would you lead? Where would you live? What would you spend your time doing? Who would you be with? Would you have pets? Kids? What would your daily routine look like? Maybe the answer for you isn’t a university degree or an office job. Maybe it’s not millions. Maybe it’s diving for sponges on a Greek island or being a fisherman in Mexico. I think it can be helpful to put together an image of that perfect life and then try to reverse engineer the best way of getting there instead of putting the onus on the job you have to shape what kind of life you want to lead. Maybe you really want to have kids, so you need a job that will have a good parental leave policy or that has flexible hours or that will pay enough to support the family you want to have. To me, those considerations are just as important as whether or not you feel interested in the job you do every day.
I would also think about the opposite- what kind of life could you absolutely not stand living? What kind of workplace would drive you crazy? Knowing what your “hard nos” can help you to narrow down the potential field of options. For example, my hard nos include anything to do with venipuncture, jobs that require me to be organized on behalf of other people, anything that’s heavy on performing/public speaking, jobs where people have high expectations of me (incidentally, this is the reason I’m not a therapist), and any environment that wants me to work more than 40 hours a week. For some people, all of those are totally doable, but for me they’re not, and that’s okay. There’s no reason to spend your life doing things that make you miserable.
The last thing I’m going to suggest is the CareerExplorer quiz. I like this quiz in particular for a few reasons. First, it’s a really comprehensive test, and so I think it can help you find the language to describe what you’re going through, what your hard yesses and hard nos are, and what you need in a work setting. Even if the answers the test gives aren’t perfect, I think it provides a framework to think about career options because of the questions it asks. The other reason I really like this test is because so far it’s been 100% correct for everyone I know, even those with more obscure careers, so it seems to be more exact than other career aptitude tests out there. And the user interface is really nice as well, which is a bonus.
Hopefully some of that is helpful in your decision making process. And if you ever want someone to bounce ideas off of or help coming up with careers that might be a good fit for you, I’m happy to help.
