There is a progressively prevailing school of thought that says you must follow your passion, give it all, pursue it and everything else will follow.
If you don’t have something you’re passionate about in life – find it, they say.
As you start out in life, after school, through university, your first job – you first have to learn some basics and start at the bottom.
Sure, you can do it all towards your “passion” and build a career of it where first you work with others in the field and learn from then and later stand on your own two feet, perhaps even start your own business.
But what if, a few years into this path you find that your heart is no longer in it or another passion has grabbed you?
I think that careers and “one thing in life” is fundamentally wrong for many people.
Some will do well sticking to the one thing, perhaps slightly tweaking context – for example an artist might start with painting, then move into carving, then shift to clay sculptures and perhaps transgress to writing music – all in one life time and feeling engaged, passionate and deeply satisfied with their life.
What if you completely lose heart in the thing that you’ve been doing for years?
I’ve seen and met many people who hit a brick wall, go into mild depression (sometimes not mild) and loose the “life has meaning” feeling.
The answer is to keep searching, trying.
The world is an amazing place with thousands of activities, and careers. Sciences, art, sport, travel to name just a few.
The trick is to never assume that it is too late to start a new thing, to learn another skill.
People assume that if it took them years to learn one thing, after a certain time it is too late to learn another.
What they forget is that we don’t just learn one thing. We also learn various processes and approaches to doing something, including learning. All these things are the same in whatever we do – be it science, art and sport. Well, not all, but many are.
This means we can learn new things faster once we have a few years under our belt.
We can also learn more efficiently by getting one on one tuition, go into apprenticeship and by working with freelancers to cover certain very specialised skills that would take too long to learn.
The bottom line is this: if you get the “fizzled out” feeling (for a good few months – a few deeps in motivation for a few days or even weeks are normal) in whatever you’ve been doing for the last few years – don’t drone on doing it “because it’s what I do”. Get out there, look around and find something new.
The key to it all is to know that whatever you set your mind to and assume it’s doable – you’ll find a way to do it. Sorry for the hammered to death analogy, but be like water – keep flowing around the obstacles, keep looking for another way to do something when you hit a wall – and you’ll almost always will find a way through.
Change is good, change is part of life. Life is one big constant change.
If you want to change from an astronomer to rock climber, or swimmer to aerospace engineer or train driver to writer – no matter if you’re 25, 35 or 50 – there is always a way.
The only thing standing in your way is the fear of change.
Mind Iterations 