By High Impact Leadership Development Trainer, Jamie Mason Cohen
Follow your passion or put others first?
I think it’s a combination of both – focusing on just utility or passion alone is oversimplified. There is much discussion about being a giver and being as helpful as possible to the world.
I’m generalizing but it seems that some are deceiving themselves into believing that a person’s emotions and self-interest are not as important to them, at least on a subconscious level, as being of service.
That’s why we need to take both into account in ourselves and others when it comes to career choices.
Many people would be miserable if there wasn’t a part of their contribution to the world that was purely based on an internalized, intuitive passion that makes them want to jump out of bed in the morning to create in the world.
Passion is a powerful emotion that has helped me get through rejection, setbacks and emotional pain in multiple careers in which I put others before myself (a decade of high school teaching for example).
Human beings need both: emotionally satisfying ways to make a living matched with a skillset that we can develop through discipline, humility and time to solve problems the world needs solved. This last point is where I am now in my life.
