I really enjoy being a career coach and helping others find their passions and fulfill their career goals. Part of the reason I became a career coach in the first place was because I was seeing so many people in unfulfilling, mind-numbing, and soul-killing jobs (me included) and thought I could do some good to help turn that around. And fortunately, I’ve been successful at doing that with those I’ve coached.
Dating back to childhood, I’ve always been interested in geography. I used to (and still do) get wrapped up in looking at road maps and atlases, not for any specific reason or school assignment, but just for the fun of it. I would do things like design make-believe subway systems on paper, and draw plans of make-believe cities, plotting out where everything should be located. OK, I’ll be the first to admit that I was a bit of a geography geek…but proud of it!
When I started college, I took several Geography courses and for the most part enjoyed them very much. When it came time to select a major, however, I opted for Economics. I concluded that it was smarter to major in something more practical that would help me land a job more easily after graduation, without having to get a more advanced degree. (At the time, I didn’t imagine myself going on to grad school.) I found Economics generally interesting and got good grades in my courses. Did it help me land a job after graduation? I believe it did. Was it my passion? Not really. Looking back, I would have double-majored in Geography and Economics.
In any event, my career has taken numerous twists and turns along the way and I’ve gained experience in a variety of fields and industries. And again, being a career coach is very fulfilling and makes good use of a lot of my strengths. It’s interesting, though, that recently and seemingly out of the blue, feelings of “what-if” have been creeping into my head. What if I had stayed true to my career passions and pursued Geography as a major, and something Geography-related as a career? Who knows? The odds are I would be loving it, but there are no guarantees, and I could very well be looking for a new career now.
The point here, though, is that career passions never die. But many times, for one reason or another, they get tucked away and forgotten about for a period of time, sometimes even years.
But as experience has shown, they reappear when we least expect them and will continue to tap us on the shoulder until we pay attention to them. What if we’re in mid or even late career? Is it too late? No. That’s the good news. It’s never too late to somehow incorporate our innate career passions into our lives, whether that means going back to school for formal training and making a career shift, auditing a course at a local university, or merely reading books on the subject. The key thing is that we’re nurturing ourselves by doing what we love, in some capacity. I plan to start by catching up on geography topics through books and online resources.
Hopefully you’re already living your true career passions on a daily basis, or at least part of the time, to one degree or another. If however you’re not, or even worse, you find yourself in one of those unfulfilling, mind-numbing, soul-killing careers, then it’s time to consider taking steps to change that. Otherwise, that tap on the shoulder will most likely keep tapping. And in my work now as a career coach, I feel that going through this experience will help me be even more tuned in to those who are in search of their true calling.
