Dear Advisor,

You hear it all the time, do what you love and you'll never work a day in
Your life. Plus you'll achieve success.

So my question is how to you find do what something that you truly love?
What's the analytical process one should go through in order to figure out?
This simple, yet complex question?

Answer: This is a very good and true statement. It’s also true, people who do what they love doing typically achieve a higher level of success doing what they like. Contrast this to a person in the same work environment who does not particularly like or enjoy what they are doing and it would make sense that their results , as far as success is concerned, would more than likely not be the same as the person who enjoys their work.

Is this to say, however, that the person who really enjoys their work likes it everyday? The answer is no. We have all heard the person who has said there has never been a day that they did not enjoy going to work. Over the course of one’s career, when averaged out, this may be true. So the more correct statement might be “on average I liked what I did so much, I usually enjoyed going to work”

So now we know two things: people who enjoy what they do are typically more successful in that field than people, who don’t, and no matter how much you enjoy your work, it will become work at times. But this is ok, because we are talking about enjoying it over the long-term not the short term.

Take the person who decides that they are tired of their current position with a company that they have worked for a number of years. They never really disliked the job, but never got really excited about it either. It was a way of paying the bills. Then one day this person decides that they have been considering the prospects of breaking away from their present job and starting their own company. At first they love what they do, and then as time goes on they lose ambition, and the will to make it work wanes. They eventually shut the doors, and return to what they do best: work for someone else. What has happened here is that they loved what they did initially (short-term) but did not love it over the longer-term. In other words it became work. And once it becomes work, you may not be doing what you love and once you are not doing what you love the chances for success fade.

So the third part of the question is how do you know what you truly love to do. This can be a tough question to answer because we are always being persuaded and pulled in different directions by things that look appealing to us. In other words, we are being marketed to 24 hours a day seven days a week. You see this all of the time in infomercials that offer you the opportunity to gain success, wealth and independence in your life. These are simply marketers trying to give you a passion by selling you control, wealth and achieving it over a short period of time. In other words they are telling you that they have a way of letting you “love what you do, and never work another day in your life” This approach seldom works. However, before all of these outside influences entered our lives we have one internal, mechanism that actually helps us find what we truly love to do. That is passion. We all have it. If you find yourself focusing on something you enjoy, and then go away from it only to return again to the same topic, you have probably found your passion. Once you have identified what it is you truly like to do, work will no longer be work and your chances of success with increase, but remember you came back to the same area due to your passion for the subject, you are achieving the averaging effect I mentioned earlier. In other words you may have left for a while because it did become work, but you returned because it is what you have a passion for. You enjoy doing it. So there is really no analytical method or scientific approach to take to finding what you like to do. It comes from within. You have to identify your passion and then pursue it, no matter how many set-backs occur. Passion is the fuel that will turn the short-term work into long-term success.

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