Passion cannot be bottled up
My son is fascinated with explosions. Go figure, he is a 6 year old boy. From a young age, when dad asked him to go fetch the coke, he would shake it along the way and watch with sheer glee and great anticipation as the liquid rushed to the top. The flow was unstoppable. You just had to let it pour out. It was too late by then to bottle it back up and it was not going to be a gentle pour.
This is exactly what my client reminded me of. She was talking about the job she wanted to get. My client knew exactly what she wanted to do and where. She was well read and felt very knowledgeable on her potential new career but the transition was going to be extremely hard. She wanted to work with special needs kids and she felt she had found a school that aligned with the methods and approaches she was passionate about.
In a way, she really didn’t stand a chance. Although she had a masters in teaching, she had never taught a class before. She had taken several volunteer roles that put her in the classroom but had never been in the lead. So she had no direct experience implementing any of the approaches and methods in a classroom. She would be competing with people with hands on experience, in an industry that was plagued with layoffs and uncertainty during a very intense economic downturn.
These are all rational and well thought out reasons why not to do something. We all have our list of reasons why our dreams are unrealistic, our dream job is unattainable and why we should just focus on getting a job, any job. Here is why I took on the challenge to be her transition coach. When she started talking about all the amazing teaching tools and approaches that she wanted to work with, she lit up and could go on for hours. When she talked about teaching and working with children, she overflowed with enthusiasm and excitement at the thought of being in a classroom. You could not, for all your trying, have bottled her up. Following your passion, is just like that coke bottle. Before you shake the coke bottle we can have all the well thought out arguments and reasons, but afterwards, all road blocks and constraints go out the window.
With passion as the starting point, my task was easy, get her an interview and the rest would flow on it’s own. So that’s what we did. We put together a killer resume and cover letter and sent it off to the school she knew she wanted to teach at. I can’t tell you how excited she is to get up every morning and go to her dream job and do her dream work. Confucius said it best, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
So what is your dream job and what are your rational reasons for not going for it?