Still Searching For Your Passion? Don’t Feel Bad About It.

By Martha Plotkin, Lead Career Counselor, Career Moves at Jewish Vocational Service

Much of what we read today in the career literature focuses on finding our true “passion”, with the not-so-subtle implication that until we find it, we won’t be fully realized people.

The passion idea does sell magazine articles, books, and coaching sessions. But its overuse in the interest of marketing these products and services does many of us a disservice.

The unfortunate if unintended consequence of this message is that it gives people one more thing to feel bad about. Of course, it’s wonderful to feel strongly about our work, to wake up every day fairly jumping at the chance to get to our workplace and produce, create, save the world, whatever. But not all of us place that much significance on our income-earning activities. And some of us would like to feel passionate about our work, but we haven’t figured out what type of work would make us feel that way.

So what can you do to find a career or job that will give you a measure of satisfaction, keeping in mind that (at least for many of us) there is more to life than our work? You can start by assessing your skills, interests, and values. A well-developed awareness of these critical components of one’s work life will help you to evaluate career and/or job options, and to move towards doing work that is satisfying and fulfilling.

SKILLS

We all have a variety of skills that we use in our work and personal lives. It’s helpful to analyze these skills to figure out which ones we like using (and would like to use more) in our work. One way to do this is the ‘ PARS ’ exercise. Start by writing brief descriptions of five to eight achievements from any time in your life and from any setting in your life: work, hobbies, family, volunteer work, sports, travel, play. Choose activities that gave you both enjoyment and satisfaction. Describe the situation or PROBLEM that you were addressing, the ACTION you took to accomplish your goal, the RESULTS of your action, and the SKILLS you think you used in achieving your goal. If you have difficulty coming up with the skills you used, ask a supportive friend or two to brainstorm with you to create a list of skills you used. The results of this exercise will give you a list of skills that you enjoy using, and that you might want to use in your work life.

INTERESTS

What section of the bookstore do you gravitate towards? What part of the newspaper do you read first? What kind of movies do you enjoy? When you’re at a party do you tend to get into conversations with the artistic types, the business people, or the scientists? What are your favorite hobbies? If you were going to open a business, what kind would you open? If you were going to make a documentary film, what topic would you want to cover? If you won the lottery and never had to work for money again, how would you spend your time? Answering questions like these (and putting the answers on paper) can help you to focus on the subject matter that you might like to work with.

For example, if you love reading fictional stories by Latin American authors, read newspaper articles that cover that part of the world, and enjoy Latin music, you would probably enjoy work that has some relationship to Latin American politics or culture.

VALUES

Different people value different things about their work. Some examples are status, friendship, financial gain, intellectual stimulation, physical challenge, working alone, working as part of a team, helping people in need, advancing social justice, mentoring others. It’s helpful to decide what aspects of work you place the greatest value on, so that you can decide which types of work will give you the greatest rewards.

There are many books with exercises that can help you with some of these activities. Or a career counselor or coach can help you with them. However you chose to do this important work, once you develop your list of skills, interests, and values, you’ll have taken the first critical step in making a career transition. Once you’ve got these basics down, you’ll be in a good position to explore and evaluate options, and to move towards a satisfying career, one that might even inspire some passion.

Martha Plotkin is the Lead Career Counselor with Jewish Vocational Service's Career Moves program where she provides career changers with one-on-one counseling and coaching, and leads group programs on a variety of topics, including our popular Success Groups. These groups provide a weekly forum for career changers and job seekers to help each other with support, suggestions, information, and contacts. Martha has provided career counseling and coaching to students and professionals for eight years, and worked in non-profit management and human resources for over ten years. She has an MBA and an M.Ed.

Jewish Vocational Service, a non-sectarian agency has over 65 years' experience helping job-seekers in greater Boston to find jobs and build careers. Career Moves staff work with hundreds of professional job seekers each year and offers top quality job search and career counseling services at an affordable price.

To learn more about Career Moves at JVS visit www.jvsjobs.org or call 617-451-8147 .