We’ve all heard it: “Follow your passion. Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” It sounds great on a motivational poster, but in real life it’s not that simple. Somewhere along the way, we started believing every job should feel like a calling, that our work should always be an expression of our gifts and passions.
I think that’s a gigantic myth.
You should always follow your heart and expect to find purpose at work. We’ve been told work should be an expression of our passion and our gifts. It’s advice that’s been around forever, but I especially see it with younger generations who were raised on mantras like “listen to your heart,” “find your why,” and “make your job your mission.”
Here’s why I think that’s a myth and what I believe is true instead. It’s great if you find purpose at work, but it’s not a reliable measure of whether you’re in the right job. Every job has tasks you don’t enjoy, responsibilities you’re not excited about and situations you’d never choose. Work is always a mix of fun, hard, boring and unexpected.
I’ll give you an example. I speak for a living and write books, which means I do a lot of book tours. Sometimes, because I’ve spoken at events for an essential oil company in Nashville, fans will show up at my signings and gift me little bottles of oil. It’s kind, thoughtful and usually harmless.
But one night in Chattanooga, I was signing books at a Books-A-Million when a woman handed me a vial of oil. I thanked her, assuming she’d left. A few minutes later, while I was signing another book, I suddenly felt an oily hand on my bare neck and oil being poured on my head.
“I’m anointing you,” she said.
They don’t cover that in author school. Everyone in line stared, probably wondering if I was the kind of guy who traveled with a personal anointer. Later that night I called my wife and said, “Well, it was different. It was one of those oil ones.”
If I only worked when I felt passionate or inspired, I would have quit that night.
Your job will always involve highs and lows, boring parts and bizarre surprises. That’s why it’s a mistake to demand your job be your sole source of purpose.
I hear from so many college students stressed about picking the perfect major. The truth is, I couldn’t have chosen what I do now back when I was in school—my job literally didn’t exist. Social media wasn’t a career option. The thing you’ll end up doing might not even exist yet. You could be designing driverless cars or creating hologram scents. Who knows? Putting pressure on yourself to land the “perfect” job right away often leads to disappointment when reality doesn’t match the expectation.
Even Chris Rock has joked about this. He once said schools tell kids, “You can be anything you want,” but he disagreed. He could have trained all day, eaten all the protein in the world, and he still wasn’t going to the NFL. His point: you can do anything you’re good at if people are hiring. And it helps to know somebody.
Dream big, yes. But keep a healthy grip on reality. Your calling may not always line up perfectly with your job, and that’s OK.
