When it comes to work-life and career, there are two big ideas that have always bothered me and that I try to tackle in career counseling sessions:<\/p>\n
1) The first is related to this terrible insistence on the theme of the professional calling as being the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n
2) The second, closely related to the first, is based on the premise that when you do what you love, you won’t feel like you’re working even for a day in your life.<\/p>\n
Both are harmful myths, not just because they represent meaningless commonplaces, but because they set reference points with no basis in reality.<\/p>\n
Yes, it is wonderful to find your calling and there is a group of such lucky people. However, they are a minority (not all professions are vocational) and even they must face various difficulties (including loss of motivation or burn-out). Most of us, however, are not driven by a supreme vocation, but have regular jobs that we try to do as good as possible. Is this a drama? I do not think so.<\/p>\n
Then, even if you love your job, that doesn’t mean you don’t put in the effort. It is a logical fallacy to think that if we like something, that thing is also easy. Does a performance swimmer like David Popovici like to swim? Is everything easy for him, does he not feel that he is working? Work is work, not play. What’s more, most people work harder the more passionate they are about their job.<\/p>\n
I don’t think work is something we have to love. Not implicit and not necessary – let’s not forget, voluntarily choosing a job is a late 20th century paradigm (there is a tradition hundreds of years before when people did whatever they could to make ends meet).<\/p>\n
A job we love is the ideal situation. But otherwise, I think a less hypocritical and more human standard is where we try to do our jobs as well as we can. And let’s expect it to be both difficult and rewarding.<\/p>\n
I do not in any way encourage anyone to stay long-term in a job that brings them unhappiness or endangers their mental balance; however, I will not encourage anyone to look for the ideal job – there is no such thing. There may be more suitable or less suitable jobs, some that bring us satisfaction, fulfillment or meaning, but all will also have unpleasant, difficult, frustrating aspects.<\/p>\n
Be realistic about your job and see what you can do to make your working life a better experience: you can make small changes, you can direct your attention to certain aspects, you can learn something, or you can leave. Anything is ok, if you keep your expectations anchored in reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to work-life and career, there are two big ideas that have always bothered me and that I try to tackle in career counseling sessions: 1) The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsletter-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n