Only Doing What You Love

Why Not?

A conversation with business professionals the other day reminded me about spending time on the activities you really love.

One woman commented that she didn’t enjoy one of the specific activities her job entailed, and that wouldn’t it be nice if you could get into a position where you loved everything that you did…

And I couldn’t help but think that of course you want to get into a position where you loved everything (or most everything) that you did – and why wasn’t she looking to create that position?!?

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At a young age

Yes, one of our earliest lessons is that when faced with some task that is onerous and not-so-nice, we have to learn to buck up, put out the effort, and get through it.

While this is one of those lessons everyone needs to understand, I think we sometimes take it too far, or forget that the reason we do something we dislike is because it gets us closer to something we do like…

The need to get things done

This is really the lesson we want to teach – that everyone needs to be able to push themselves to get things done. When you want a garden in the back yard, nobody else is going to get it in there exactly like you have in mind – so you’ve got to exert yourself and get it done.

Later in life when you have dreams, you may have to push yourself to complete them – and you may not love every step of the way, even if you would love looking back at the completed project.

But not forever

But sometimes we forget – just because you have to do some things, and even if you’re pretty good at them, you don’t have to spend the rest of your life doing things you hate!

And that’s the part that some people go overboard on – they spend all of their time doing things they not only don’t love, but they come to dislike.

Strategy vs Tactics

Strategy is a goal, and tactics are specific measures to achieve that goal.

Tactics are not a strategy.

If you haven’t thought about a strategy for your life, it’s possible that you’re simply stringing one tactic after the other and only vaguely wondering why you aren’t getting anywhere.

Complaint-less

So let’s combine a couple thoughts.

You don’t get to complain about your own life – it is exactly what you have created, so you’d be complaining about yourself, and there’s no successful bridge out of that sinkhole.

You do get to create tomorrow – based on where you picture yourself.

So if today isn’t going to be the day you wanted to experience, figure out what would be, stop your complaining, and make it happen. And if you have to endure some not-so-pleasant days to reach that goal, then you can say to yourself that the tactic was necessary to fulfill the plan, not just some arbitrary suffering because you had no choice.

Looking back

To reinforce this point, I took a peek back at the Timely Insights archives to find some other material. (The archive is in the column off to the right) Not only did I find a good article, I discovered that this seems to be a seasonal topic for me – I also put this article out on May 4th: Connecting with Life

And that advice seems just as relevant today as when I wrote it.

Doing what you love

So take the time to figure out what you have a great deal of passion for – and then shift your life.

My eldest son had a great outlook on dreams back when he was in grade school.  He said to me one time “Dad, I don’t worry about scary dreams. If it’s something that I don’t like, I just change the channel and get a new one.”

Think about how much easier it is to move forward knowing that you can change tomorrow;-)