Make Your Career Your Passion

Hello and welcome this week’s episode of the podcast. How are you? It is March already.  This year has gone by so fast!  It just seems like time is flashing before us and even though we just started 2021, I get the sense we will be facing December in no time!

Today’s episode is all about passion.

Cue the tawdry music. Ha!

Seriously though, when people reach out to me they often say, “I’m just not passionate about my work” or “How can I find a career that brings me happiness and that I am passionate about?” 

When you ask this question it indicates that the work you are doing isn’t connected to the real you.  Either it was at one point and you’ve outgrown it or maybe it never was.

I see this in people at all stages of their career, all departments, and genders.

It’s especially common with parents.

There’s a couple of reasons this happens.

One can be you never discovered what you are passionate about to begin with. Maybe you just did what you thought made sense, what was expected of you or what we’ve all been taught to do.

So many of us were raised that when it came to career it was title and salary that mattered.

We didn’t talk about actually liking your job, work/life balance, mental health, happiness.  Those were icing on the cake.

The goal was to get the cake and if you found some icing, well good for you, but don’t complain. Just be happy for the paycheck and just keep climbing that ladder for more money and more status.

That’s one scenario that could have happened.

Another is maybe you discovered your passion, your ideal career, but things changed. As you grew and got more experience, you realized what you’ve been doing isn’t a great fit anymore. It no longer sparks joy as Marie Kondo would say. You are now just going through the motions wondering what the heck happened?  Will it come back? Is it gone forever?

A 3^rd option, and this is the one I see in parents most, is you kinda lose yourself.  As you grow your family and get older, your priorities shift. You spend many years focused on your family and being a good parent, a good partner, making sure your job allows you the time off for family vacations and soccer practice, and you don’t really think a lot about what you like.

Time passes and you may become so wrapped up in your family and identity as a parent, spouse, provider, you don’t really know what you like anymore.  Then this transfers over to your satisfaction in your job. You realize you’ve just been going through the motions there thinking you like it but when you really think about it, you didn’t really choose it, it just happened.  Somewhere between the school drop-off line and having dinner you lost touch with who you really are as a person and what makes you happy as an individual.

The common denominator of all of this is whether it’s because of one of the options I mentioned, a combination of all 3 or another reason entirely, the passion isn’t there.

You might even question if passion is something you should have in a job? Is that unrealistic? Passion is a feeling, does it even belong with work?

So let’s talk about that.

What is passion anyway?

Well the dictionary defines it as a strong and barely controllable emotion. It could also be defined as a strong liking or desire.

When we liken passion to work I am talking about an enthusiasm and excitement for what you do. It’s something that makes you happy and you look forward to doing.

It’s not to say you won’t have tasks you don’t enjoy sometimes or maybe a pesky coworker you don’t care for, this isn’t care bear land, and even if it was, there were problems there too.

It’s really about being happy with what you do, being excited and motivated to work.  I would also add that it’s feeling like the work you’re doing brings joy to the real you, it’s connected with your unique talents, skills, and abilities, and you feel your best when you do it.

So how do you get that?

How do you feel passion in your career?

The bad news is that you can’t buy it off a shelf.  You can’t go to the store and request an X-Large cannister of career passion.

The good news is that it is attainable!

What it takes is taking a deep dive on you.

To get passion in your career, you have to understand what passion is to you.

Because I guarantee what is passionate to me, is not passionate to you.

We are all beautifully different.

This is the genius of my career mapping process.  We discover your ideal career, what your passion is, by getting to know you organically.  Not your resume, what school you went to or how many methods or processes you can perform, but who you are.

When who you are is aligned to what you do, you have passion in your career.

What I recommend then is to reflect on a number of areas and pull that information together to create a picture of you.  When we reverse engineer the career mapping process, we can be certain you are looking at your career from the perspective of who you are and what type of life you want to live, instead of what makes sense or what is logical or what your brain has been programmed to do your whole life.

Some things you can think about are:

What are your unique talents and skills?

What are you really good at?

What types of activities energize you?

What activities drain you?

What are your strengths?

What did you want to be as a child? Why didn’t you pursue that route? Do you still want to?

Something really interesting about that question is that it can be really telling about who you are and where you maybe went off-course.

When we are children we have an imagination and belief in our possibilities that we don’t have as an adult.  As we get older and gain more experiences, we also gain more limitations and beliefs about ourselves, others, and how the world works.

Things we saw as possibilities in the past, become irrational, impractical or pipe dreams.

It’s also important for you to know that your brain is designed to protect you.

It has 3 main motivations – to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and be efficient.

Your brain also processes 10s of thousands of thoughts a day, but you are only consciously aware of a small percentage of them.

So where do those thoughts go?

Well, your brain, distorts and deletes information.

It is making decisions for you subconsciously based on your beliefs and prior experiences and also based on it’s motivation to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and be efficient.

So you are always going to be routed to the easiest, most practical decision.

When you apply this to your career – you may have wanted to say be a pro basketball player as a child but then your brain and the beliefs and experiences, influences of others got into your head and you decided that wasn’t practical. So you went to college and went the management route. You liked the team element, leading others, and having influence.  These characteristics are also found in a basketball player but your choice was more practical for you.

Now when you find yourself not feeling passionate about your career, it’s because you settled.

You gave yourself some of what makes you happy but not enough.

So that is why asking yourself what you wanted to be as a child can be really insightful.

It’s not as simple as quitting your management job and stalking the pro basketball players waiting for your shot. Oh look, I put a little pun in there and didn’t realize it.

It’s a piece of information. It’s like a puzzle piece. So how many puzzle pieces can you find that make up you.  Once you put all of these pieces together, you get your picture, the picture of what you’re passionate about and what would be your ideal career.

When you think what is my passion? How can I get passionate in my career?

The answer is to get to know you.

To be who you are and integrate who you are into your work.

This is exactly what I do with my clients in coaching.

Once you know that, we can work on a plan to make it a reality.  This can be difficult to do on your own because what you come up with, your brain still may try to tell you is not realistic and you can’t do it.

That is where I guide you to understand your thinking and overcome any beliefs you have that are holding you back and help you take action toward what you want.

I help you build the inner and outer skills to figure out what you want, get happier, and live the life you want – that is connected to you, the real you, the one you may have lost touch with.

So you might be thinking – ok that sounds great but what else can I do to find my passion?

I have some resources to take this work deeper!

The first is I have a Get Unstuck in Your Career Workbook you can download for free right now. It is filled with over 30 questions that help you reflect on what you enjoy, what changes you want to make, and get on the path to discovering your passion. You can download it through my website at www.melissamlawrence.com I will put a link in the show notes.

Now, if you’re ready to dig deep on this – to identify your ideal career and learn the tools to overcome any obstacle to making it a reality, I invite you to apply for my new group coaching program – The Career Passion Project.

The Career Passion project is like nothing you’ve experienced.

This program is for you if

Traditional training programs and the DIY approach isn’t working

You are ready to create change in your life and willing to do the work to get the results you want

Your career isn’t fulfilling.  You don’t think it matches your personality, your skills, interests, and/or your passion

You want to be challenged, grow personally and professionally, and accountability from your peers and Coach

You want to wake up and be happy to go to work and when you come home, feel energized and present with your family

You know there is more for you but you’re not exactly sure what it is or how to get there. You know you may have some blind spots and want to discover them

If you’re not new to my podcast you know that both in my career as a leader of Talent & Development in pharma/biotech and in my private coaching practice, I have helped countless people uncover their ideal career, think about themselves and their lives differently, and achieve a happier life in the process.

I’ve designed the Career Passion Project to be the only development program you’ll need to know your ideal career and have the tools to make it a reality. 

So what is the program exactly.

This is a 6 month small group coaching experience.  Why group coaching?

I have gone through coaching 1-1 and in groups and I have experienced so much growth in a group coaching container.  When you are with a small group of people working toward the same goals, you build relationships you wouldn’t otherwise, you see how similar your struggles are to others, and the group reaches new heights they may not reach individually. You have greater accountability because it isn’t just me and you, it’s also a handful of your peers.

How is coaching different? With group coaching, you attend a call with your cohort at the same time every week, but the call is also recorded if you cannot make it. You can raise your hand to get coached and you also see your peers get coached. What is so amazing about this, is when you see others get coached, it not only creates comfort in you to dig deeper and get more vulnerable but since so many of our struggles are the same, you are still getting coaching indirectly.  It is an incredible way to grow and you leave the cohort with new contacts and connections you didn’t have before.

So Here is what is included:

Access to my signature “Career Passion to Success” course where I teach you how to discover your ideal career, understand your thinking, learn the tools to create any result you want, and communicate with influence. 

A private online community connected to the course for you to get 24/7 support, post your wins and questions, and network with your cohort.

Weekly group coaching call with your small cohort where we’ll go over any questions you have and you’ll get live coaching via Zoom.

Bonus 1 – (2) 1:1 Coaching sessions with me to use at any time during the 6 month program.

Bonus 2 – A live custom Communication & Emotional Intelligence Workshop to learn your unique communication and emotional needs and preferences and how to communicate and work effectively with others.

Bonus 3 – A welcome box filled with hard copy materials, career assessments, and tools to help you achieve your goals.

You will not only discover your ideal career using the tools and processes that are proven to work, based in neuroscience and positive psychology, but you are going to really get to know yourself better so you can design what you want now and for the long term.

You’re going to learn the tools to understand your thinking, uncover any emotional or psychological beliefs that are holding you have and break through them, you’re going to learn how to communicate effectively with anyone at work and in your personal life, how to advocate for yourself and so much more.

And, you get lifetime access for the life of the program to the course.

So even after the 6 months, you can go back and refresh on any of the content, including any new content I add! I’m already planning to add several bonus modules and you’ll get access to those, for life of the program.

It’s really a no brainer if you’re feeling stuck in your career.

So how do you get in?

The program launches in May.

This is going to be an intimate, safe space to come together and work on your goals so to ensure the integrity of the program and that you get your results, there will be an application process. 

At the end of March I am going to open an application for 2 weeks. You will apply through my website.  I will be notifying you the following week of the result of your application and then those that are in the May cohort will get access to the course right away.

We will have a kick-off event the week of May 24^th and get to work with the opening of the community and weekly coaching.

It is going to be incredible and I can’t wait to help you reach your career goals.

To learn more go to my website www.melissamlawrence.com. I will put a link to the Career Passion Project page in the show notes.

Alright, that is all for this week’s episode. I will talk to you next week!