Sometimes the pressure at work gets to be too much. You find you’re not as happy to get up early in the morning, as quick to answer emails, or as enthusiastic about your daily tasks as you used to be. What’s going on with you then, where are you heading to? What’s the answer to the professional doubts we all experience at some point or another in our lives? I dare say passion is the key we should all find, time and over again, whenever we disconnect from work. Easier said than done.
When we’ve reached a point where things don’t make sense for us anymore, when we feel exhausted and just wish we had a “pause” button for everything happening around us, then it’s high time we realised what it is that makes us turn our back on things. Reflecting on exactly what’s blocking us at such moments could be approached like process management, by which we try to become aware of what we can change and where to make changes.
There is a very interesting concept in some cultures: “sabbatical year.” It means taking a year off; people say “stop” and take a holiday and time for reflection and relaxation. This is such a beautiful, simple exercise in meditation for balance and renewed self-discovery, that our search stops pressing us and starts being natural and useful to each of us. We tend to be afraid and back off, to feel threatened and remember our fears of the new and unknown. If we just simply let ourselves carried by and drawn to our passion, we might not be so scared of changing our lifestyle or even our career.
On the other hand, I believe we’re coming closer to the kind of world where we all have the jobs we want and are passionate about. People are a lot freer now than in the past – we see professions and jobs which were unimaginable a few years ago, and this is because things have evolved in a way that’s different to what we were familiar with at one point: right now, it’s the passion that creates the job, rather than the other way round. Just looking at people who create computer games, we realise how much progress we’ve made in embracing our passions and turning them into ways of making a living.
More and more often I meet executives and professionals who’ve stopped thinking how they’re going to live off what they’re doing, and decide they want to do one particular thing because that’s what they like doing. Their liveliness, energy, vitality and passion show up in their faces. Passionate professionals are tomorrow’s leaders even though they may seem today’s dreamers. They are in fact those who’ve become aware that if they didn’t get paid for what they’re doing, they would be willing to pay their employers to let them do it.
Passion is the most straightforward path. The easiest way to innovate is by doing what you like doing. Fears vanish around people who dare to turn their passion into the most beautiful job.