Finding the Job You Were Born to Do
How do you know if the job you want to have is the right job for you? If you have pursued an avocation, say, like swimming because you love the water and you love to swim, then you know that swimming is for you. But, what if you set out to be an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood and you ended up being a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County? Would you consider that to be doing what you love to do?
As we evolve through our lives, many of us experience a variety of challenges that calls into the question for us to change direction in order to do what we love to do and make a living at it. A woman in Texas grew up wanting to be a performer. Her mom had a beauty shop in their home. The hood hair dryers were in the garage. When there were several women with the dryers making those awful hood dryer noises drying their hair and drowning out sounds, this woman, as a girl then, sung and danced for them. She ended up on a New York theater stage telling funny stories as a stand up comedienne.
With the pay being very low and her jokes causing more and more heckling, a friend, who knew her since their childhoods, told her that she might make a good flight attendant because she always wanted to please people by making them laugh and making them happy. This suggestion resonated with her. She researched the pros and cons of being a flight attendant. She became sold on becoming a flight attendant because as she read the research, it triggered her memory about how fulfilled and happy she was, when, as a little girl, she made Kool-Aid and served it to people who passed by her little Kool-Aid stand. She went to flight attendant training in Miami. In a short time, she was on her first flight as a flight attendant.
She said later that part of the training she received taught her how to be kind to people regardless of how annoying and demanding some passengers can be. Ultimately, she experienced a greater sense of accomplishment by interacting with all passengers with a degree of genuine care and sensitivity to passengers’ needs, far greater, she said, than performing on the stage. In the end, she had a new beginning, with the same results as performing on stage, only in a different venue, she never once realized existed for her.
In your quest to find the job you were born to do, take a moment out of your busy day. Ask yourself why you are driven to succeed in a field that you chose to pursue or are working in, if you are uncertain about the direction it is taking you and, more importantly, how you feel about it. Be open-minded. Look at all of your interests. Allow yourself to see the whole picture about what you truly love to do.
Which interest jumps out at you? Many times what you enjoyed the most while growing up is the one that will jump out at you. That certainly happened to the flight attendant. But it wasn’t a “job, job” that she discovered. It was what was inside of her that resonated with her. To entertain people, she realized she wanted to make people happy, and that there were other ways to do that besides being an entertainer.
Make a decision that will seal your objective and go for it with the flexibility that success can come in a corresponding field of endeavor. And, because this is your life with which you’re dealing, take charge and make it precisely the way you want it to be. Don’t settle for anything less, or misery will hover over you until you get it done, or not.
