These People Who Followed Their Passions Share How And Why They Did It
Want to build a life and career around something you’re passionate about? Great! Now how do you feel about intense struggle, repeated failure, and constant change?
To be sure, those are things pretty much all of us are bound to face in our careers, but it’s far more likely you’ll have a tougher go of it if you’re dead set on following your passion. That’s why so many advise different approaches to finding work, suggest ways to turn your ho-hum gig into your “dream job”, or counsel giving up an a passion career altogether.
But the fact is that some people do follow their passions and find it actually works out. One reason they’re a small minority, though, is because we live in a world that glorifies words like “passion” and “purpose” when it comes to life and career choices, but almost completely ignores the pain, failure, and even chaos that tends to precede achieving that. That’s a recipe for widespread disappointment.
So we asked five professionals across a range of fields to share the raw, unfiltered truth about struggles they experienced as they set out to follow their passions and, ultimately, pulled it off.
Read my and Danielle Harlan’s article in Fast Company to find out what they said.
Special thank you to Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of the New York Times bestseller How to Raise an Adult; Elizabeth Meyer, funeral director and author of the upcoming book Good Mourning; Casey Gerald, founder and CEO of MBAsXAmerica and TED speaker; Adam Braun, founder of Pencils of Promise; and Aspen Institute fellow Cathy Casserly for sharing their stories.
