The Danger Of The “Follow Your Passion” Advice

As a career coach, I excel at helping people design and craft careers they enjoy, as well as them redefine the role that work plays in their life. But I don’t think that it is healthy to rely solely on work as the vehicle for expressing your passion.

In fact, it can be dangerous.

When you view work as your sole source of fulfilment and purpose, it creates unrealistic expectations for your career.

It leads you to searching constantly for the job in utopia that does not actually exist.

You keep looking for something better, something that makes you feel amazing, wondering what you are doing wrong, why you haven’t found it yet. It undue pressures on you to find your ‘one true calling’. This is a recipe for disaster. There IS no ‘one true calling’ for you to do for the rest of your life.

Because you are going to change.

What you want out of work, the interests that you have, tasks that you enjoy — these all change with time.

Using work as the sole source of fulfilling your passion can also lead to burnout. You may feel guilty about not being passionate about the work that you are doing. After all, maybe you had some success. You got promoted, got a nice pay…