Do what you love… When I talk to successful people, and consider my own career path, I realized that success is not a destination, it’s a journey. Success is doing what you love and making a living at it. Success is doing the right thing for yourself, your family and for others along a long journey. When we are very young and think about what we will do for a career or an occupation we sometimes have fantasies about who we are and what we can be. Some of those fantasy can become real, but only if we are honest and know ourselves. Know not just what you are good at, but what you love. If you love what you are doing, if you are passionate about what you will spend as much as 80,000 hours thinking about and doing over a 40 plus year career then you will be happy. Sure money is a factor, who doesn’t want to make money! But its my experience that sometimes making the shorter term decision to forgo money, to make sure others are paid before you even, that it will pay off in the long run. Imagine that your career decision, is like planning then embarking on a long trek instead of short sprint. Enjoy the scenery along the way, it’s the joy of the journey and the friends you make along the way that matter. Money will come to people that are good at what they do; people that are good at what they do are that way because they enjoy all of it. The journey will not always be easy, in fact it will be rocky and difficult along the way, but if it’s a labor, a toil of love then you can persevere, you may change route along the way. That is not to be viewed as a failure, its to be understood, learned from, and maybe it was just part of the journey all along but you couldn’t see far enough up the trail. When it does get hard, and there are difficult summits (decisions) to be reached, then its your journey partner that matters, it’s the person that will encourage you when no one else will, when you have to make a particularly difficult climb then you will look to the people around you, and I hope you have a life journey partner like I have had to make those decisions with. My wife and family have supported some very risky decisions along this journey, many others may have lost faith in me, but I was fortunate to have someone that never stopped rooting for me to make it up the next hill, or kick me in the behind if I needed it :-), thank you Yvonne!
Along the way the friends and co-hikers also made a great difference in providing a multiplier of effort and productivity. Taking care of each other along the way makes for camaraderie of a sort, that only those that have been in a fight can know. When you are on your journey, and you look back at the progress you’ve made, you’ll find yourself counting the people you’ve helped, and the ones that helped you. You’ll find yourself thinking of the monstrous hills you’ve climbed, you’ll find that you enjoy the greener pastures and the sunshine a little more, because of the desert and storms that you’ve overcome. And yes, financial rewards will come, but they are only there because of all the help of so many others as you’ve enjoyed your journey. Do what you love, all the rest will work out.
Mike