Work you love

I’d love to get my hands on the very first commercial version of What Color is Your Parachute, published in 1972.

I was given the 2021 version, and I was honestly excited to read this particular edition of the book deemed “essential” to anyone contemplating a career change today. My reason? The pandemic. I wanted to know if the 2021 edition had anything to say taking COVID-19 and our new #WFH culture into consideration.

So, why do I want the 1972 version? The 1972 version was considered “radical” to readers of the time. (I’d love to find copies of the actual reviews which allude to the radical nature of Richard Bolles’ ideas.)

It was this book, coupled with the work of Joseph Campbell in the ’80s, that led to the development of a novel and intriguing idea in the career space: that the key to career happiness was to follow your passion.

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Within my role as a career coach, I’ve had many sessions begin with the question, “Gabby, how do I find my passion?” We can have an incredibly productive session from this starting point. I believe there’s nothing wrong with contemplating questions like this.

Roughly seven years ago, I discovered Scott Dinsmore’s impactful TEDx Talk, “How to find work you love,” through an email sent to me by a coworker. His talk, combined with his Live Your Legend philosophy, propelled me down the path that brought me here today.

Had I not allowed myself to fall into the romanticism of “following one’s passion is key to doing work that you love,” I’m certain that I never would’ve left the pharmaceutical industry. Within continuous disappointment, disbelief, resignation, and then deep depression, I clung to the last scrap of hope that I could find: that I hadn’t made a terrible mistake and that I wasn’t trapped in this profession. I just hadn’t found my passion. Once I knew what my passion was, I could figure out what work I needed to be doing in order to be happy. Then I could get a plan together and begin the process of starting over with a brand new career.

You’re seeing me write about a few unquestioned assumptions in the career space. One of those assumptions is that a career change is hard. Another way to think about it: we rarely hear that a career change is “easy.”

I’m writing about this, because I believe it’s very healthy, and very important, to consider these assumptions as plainly as possible. A study into the origins of modern careers feels like the right starting point for this topic. Understanding the history of the “career” and its foundation, systems, and pathways will, I believe, be instrumental in us shaping our careers to be what we need them to be.

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