Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do.

Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. – Virgil

There are plenty of songs, poems, and stories of the passion in the love of a sailor for the sea. Your job, is it just a paycheck or your passion?

What does that mean?
This time, instead of ancient Greek, we have something translated from ancient Latin.  It appears to be a fairly modern translation (paycheck and all).  Other than sounding a little clunky, it does fairly well.  I probably would have used a semi-colon between the second and third sentences, as the third appears to be a dependent clause, but what do I know?

To me, it says that your profession should be something you are passionate about.  Your profession should be about more than just grabbing a paycheck and watching the clock.  It should move you, it should be an intense desire to do your profession.  Even to the point of it becoming a spiritual calling.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t quite feel that way about my job.  Don’t get me wrong, I like it a lot and enjoy doing it so much that I do it some more at home (software development), but I don’t think it’s ever going to be a religious experience.

I also enjoy writing the blog in the quiet time after the kids are in bed, but it’s not going to cause me to hear angels singing anytime soon.  In fact, I don’t really think I have had such a feeling of passion, which is probably why I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

Why is passion in your profession important?
Imagine the most dreary job possible.  For some, that might be filing papers all day, for others it might be flipping burgers or moping floors.  How much passion do you think you could manage to muster for such a profession?  Very little, I would guess.

You often see movies made about people who’s work is their passion.  The first two I can think of are Dr ‘Patch’ Adams and Dr Jane Goodall.  There are many others who have yet to have a movie made about them, including Tony Robbins and Opra.

Even “the Donald” Donald Trump falls into this category.  Love him or hate him, he most definitely is passionate about the things he does, whether it’s Real Estate or TV.  I’m going to stay out of mixing passion and politics, as that often leads to babies, headlines or both.

Passion is a fuel the fire that drives people to do their best, or to do their worst.  Passion for a virtue can lead mankind forward, and passion for vice can lead the individual and those who follow, downward instead.  The person must already have that spark, a small fire going, but passion is the gasoline poured over it, to make it bigger and un-ignorable.

Where can I apply this in my life?
So, what do YOU want to be when you grow up?  Or are you already in your place of passion, the ultimate job.  Not an easy paycheck, do nothing, no effort required kind of “dream job”, but a profession that actually moves you.  Something you really want to do.  Something that gets you up before your alarm clock goes off.

As I’m still looking, this won’t be the average post.  Most of the things I have blogged about are things I have actually done before, and have some clue how to do.  This one is different, as I’m still not sure.  I do enjoy what I do (software) and get to play with some really neat equipment and solve some pretty serious problems, but that’s not quite the same feeling, is it?

Some of this will be similar to a recent post on exceptionalism, however this post is mostly about finding a profession you are passionate about.  For some, it may be a very narrow field (finding a cure for a specific disease), but for most, it will probably be a broader field.  Once we have a broader field of passion, the post on finding something exceptional to do will be used, focusing this time on possible fields to work in.

Let’s begin, shall we?  Let’s start by strolling through our memory banks for times when you did something that you really got a charge out of?  Not the adrenalin rush of skydiving (unless you can make it work as a profession, haven’t really looked at that, but I guess some people do), but something that gives off a healthy, productive sense of pleasure.

The closest I have come to being passionate about a job has been helping out at my kids’ school.  I also feel something like it when I am working as a Rider Coach for the MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation), teaching basic safety to new and returning riders.  So teaching has something to do with it.

Once you have two or three ideas (like my two about volunteer work at the school and teaching with the MSF), see if there is a common thread or two to look into.  In my case, it is teaching, or passing information, skills and/or knowledge on to others.  I suppose this blog also fits that mold, in it’s own way.

What ties your passionate moments together?  Perhaps you’re having trouble seeing any connection.  That’s fine for now.  Come up with something, however poor the fit may be, and let’s move forward.  With a very broad brush, what kind of job or job field would fit?

In my case, education would be it.  Despite being fairly specific, it truly is a broad field.  I’ve done some teaching of programming languages to college age kids, taught motorcycle safety to teens thru retirees, and I’ve worked with kids from Kindergarten thru 8th grade, as well as my own kids from birth.

So I already have a fairly broad range of experiences of age and subject matter.  Education is a broad category, what category or categories might your list imply?  remember, you can always come back later if you decide you don’t like the first result, so worry less on getting it perfect and get moving!

The next step is to take that basic category to the prior post on exceptionalism, and use this broad category as a basis to try to narrow down your passion.  With the passion (now discovered and refined) and the aptitudes found in relation to the search for a profession, finish the exercise with brainstorming combinations of aptitudes with your passion and see if you can’t find a cluster or group of possible professions you would be passionate in pursuing.  (Am I alliterate or what!)

The penultimate step is to determine what you would have to do to qualify for the profession.  If you ended up with masonry as a passionate profession, you would need to look into an apprenticeship with a master mason.  If you ended up with teaching elementary school, you’d need to look into requirements for that (which will vary by state).  If you ended up with bank teller, you’d have to look into training requirements, bonding and whatever else might be required.

Finally, with a list of possible passionate professions in front of you, each with the cost in time and money listed with it, determine what path you wish to pursue, and choose with the costs in mind.  Possible ways to deal with costs would be student loans, possible ways to deal with the time (presuming you continue with your present job) might include night school, or weekend training.

As Tony Robbins says, “live your life with passion!”

From: Twitter, undocumented feed (my bad)
confirmed at: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/your_profession_is_not_what_brings_home_your/149903.html
Photo by Luz Adriana Villa A.