Loving What You Do

"Passion" is one of those words that is thrown around in every motivational business book. It’s a big word, and most simply don’t have it. 

If you have ever read a book on what the best and brightest have done to become as successful as they are, one of the core underlying themes is that they were either pursuing their passion or were simply so perfect at what they were shooting for that it comes off to the rest of us as passion. The counter to that thought is that if you are driven by the almighty dollar, you can’t be passionate as well.

Why?

In a past life, I was a music journalist. My job was to interview many of the more popular rock bands, write reviews, concert critiques, etc… On a few instances I was able to interview Gene Simmons from the rock band KISS (full disclosure: I was a huge fan of the band growing up… and I’m still a proud member of the KISS Army). With the thousands of interviews I conducted over the decade-plus of my life in the music industry, it was one thing that Simmons said that always stuck with me. When asking him about how he feels about the business side of KISS, he stated simply: "I’m pissed at a nickel because it isn’t a dime."

Clearly, you can be passionate about money and love what you do as well.

The sad reality is that well over 90% of our society doesn’t have that passion for the work they do (I made that percentage up, it is probably higher). Forget passion, the majority of people probably don’t even like what they do for a living. It’s important to remember this. You and I have passion. If people are reading industry Blogs on their own time, listening to Podcasts and trying to engage in these channels – even when the company that employs them questions on the online world, there has to be some kind of passion. It’s much easier to just go home, plop yourself on the couch, turn on the tube (not the YouTube), crack open a beer and forget the day that just passed while not focusing on the days that will follow.

Those people – and they may even be your superior at work – will always try to bring you down.

That’s a lie. They’re not trying to bring you down. They’re trying to get you to feel as miserable as they feel, so that they can commiserate with you. The ones that break free are the ones who don’t utter sentences like, "I’m just doing my job," "I’m new here," "because that’s the way it has always been," and "let’s leave everything as is and let my successor rock the boat." Without sounding like a motivation Blog post, it’s your job to keep at it. It’s your job to push forward. It’s your job to "do the right thing," and it’s your job to make sure that you go to bed every night filled with energy and chomping to get at the days ahead.

You’re going to spend more than half of your life working if you add up all of those hours.

Your job isn’t to get paid to do work. Your job is to constantly work at loving what you do more and more. Those who embrace that type of mindset (regardless of position, stature, industry and compensation) are the ones who not only get ahead, but the ones who are happy – at work, home and in their community.

Do you really love what you do? Are you working at loving it more and more everyday?