Turn Your Profession Into Your Passion

Surely you have heard hundreds of times the idea that you should turn your passion into your profession. The idea is very simple: you have to find something you would do for free, something that makes you spend hours without realizing it, and put it at the service of others. That something in which you consider yourself good, in which you have some special ability.

Do Not Become Obsessed with Finding Your Purpose in Life

Many people will tell you that we all come to this world with a single purpose and that we must find and develop it. Some people get frustrated because they do not find what makes them special and differentiates them from others, and they spend their lives with an existential void that they are not able to fill.

In my opinion, we all have more than one significant quality, and we can do more than one good thing. So if you think like that more than once, you will find yourself wondering if you are really dedicating your time to what you have come to do or just wasting it on another passing hobby. Do not give too many laps, if what you do makes you happy, go ahead and do it.

This doesn’t mean that you are not fulfilling your destiny or that you have to start looking for a radical change in your profession, it is simply that the conditions are not being met for you to enjoy it. And instead of complaining and putting up your boss, or doing the minimum so that they don't throw you out without adding any value to your company, what you have to do is take action and change everything you don't like.

The first thing you have to do is to change your impression of what you do. If you think you don't like software development, then you won't find enough strength to change everything else. So you have to start there. I’ll give you some tips to start transforming your idea about what this career means:

Get used to leaving your comfort zone. At first, everything will seem like a world, and you will put thousands of excuses to avoid taking a step. The first thing will be what I said before, you will think that you are wasting your life by dedicating your free time "to work things out". Once you start researching, reading, training, you will see that you want to spend your free time because you enjoy it.

But then the fears of exposing yourself to others will begin to flourish: how are you going to give your opinion in a forum? How are you going to talk to people you don't know if they all know much more than you? 

There will always be people of all levels, but even if that is true at the beginning, little by little you will get at their level. Being the one who knows least on a site is one of the best tactics to evolve rapidly. Little by little you will be less afraid to ask and interact with other people.

Then the fears will come to expose you publicly, for example in a blog or a talk at an event. For me, giving a talk has been one of the most complicated things I've ever done. I am a very introverted person, and I get mentally blocked when I am with people I don't know. The best part of the whole process is not to reach the goal, but whom you become along the way.

If I have learned something from all this, it is that taking your beliefs to the limit, leaving your comfort zone, transforming your profession into your passion, sharing or meeting people with the same concerns - transforms you inside and makes you know yourself much better. This is the real success, to discover yourself: what are your limiting beliefs and how can I destroy them? What are the things that scare you and dare you? How much further can you go that you thought was impossible?

And in the end, it is simply a matter of daring. To stop giving importance to things that you don’t have and take action without thinking about the consequences. Normally we think it can be a drama for someone to give us a bad answer, not to like someone, or to go blank in a talk. But that doesn’t change the life of any person. However, meeting great people, receiving comments from people you have helped, or finishing a talk and people come to tell you that they loved it is truly fulfilling. 

The biggest recommendation I can give you is that, if you stop doing something, it is because you don't feel like doing it at all and you think it won't bring you anything, not because of fear or because you think you're not capable. If thousands of people have done it before, you can too. Putting yourself challenges and fighting to overcome them is one of the wisest and most exciting attitudes in life.