Career choice: Do what you love!

Earlier this year, my friend, Louise, enrolled in a stage management course at a local theatre school.

She had always loved the arts industry and after years of working in hospitality and retail, she decided she was finally ready to bite the bullet and pursue her passion.

Since starting her course, Louise has become a new person. She used to avoid discussion about her career, whereas now she talks about her career choice non-stop.

There’s real excitement in her voice as she tells you all about her day, the different shows she’s working on and the people she has met..and her enthusiasm is contagious.

Through leaving an industry she has no interest in and following her passion, Louise has shifted from a state of disillusionment and uncertainty to one of happiness and contentment.

According to a study conducted by Professor Charles Birch and Management Consultant David Paul titled Life and Work’, 88% of people are dissatisfied with their job.

Considering the number of hours we work each week, job dissatisfaction can impact heavily on our life, affecting not only ourselves, but also our family and friends.

Want more articles like this? Check out the choosing a career section.

So how do you make a satisfying career choice?

Consider this analogy:

Job dissatisfaction often leads to unhappiness. Unhappiness is like darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. So to find happiness we need to switch on the light.

This involves finding something that lights us up and allows us to connect to our true nature.

Try this activity:

Write down three things that cause you to ‘light up’ when you think about them.

Some examples include people, sport, history, music, art, gardening, clothes, animals, languages, children, buildings, psychology, computer programs, dancing, writing, cooking, performing, medicine, health and fitness, cars, houses, food, antiques and travel.

If you can’t think of anything, try answering these questions:

• What type of books do you enjoy reading?
• What topics of conversation do you enjoy discussing?
• What type of seminars do you attend?
• If you could enrol in any course, which one would it be?
• If money was no obstacle and you could do anything in the world, what would you do?

Now that my friend, Louise, enjoys her work, she no longer looks forward to the weekend. “Every day is the weekend”, she tells me. She doesn’t think twice about working on Saturdays and spending Sundays doing assignments is no longer an effort.

As George Eliot once said, ‘It is never too late to be what you might have been.’