#25 To be successful, first do the things you love.

I just watched this TED talk (at the bottom) and was almost moved to tears. If I had been in the audience, I too would have been on my feet at the end.

My bearhunt is moving on. The bit on the right of this blog about retraining as a designer is happening and I am moving back to London in 4 months to start a masters in Innovation Design Engineering[1]. To my surprise, my effort has captured the imagination of those around me and I have received enormous support from literally everyone.

Something has struck me though, and that is the pedestal people seem to want to put me on[2]. There is a strange all pervading idea that, as they cannot succeed by following their passions, I must be some sort of special person.

I’m not. I’m really REALLY not.

There are two things that I think mark my approach as different. My approach, mark you, not me as a person. I will cover the second in another post, but the first is just to always do the things you enjoy the most: at each potential career fork, I have chosen the option that sounds most fun with very little regard to the practicalities.

I hear so often from the people I talk to that they can’t do the thing they enjoy the most because it doesn’t provide a secure and stable future career. What nonsense! There are any number of secure and stable jobs out there in the field you are interested in, you just haven’t heard about them yet because you aren’t in your chosen field at the moment!

If you think the above applies to you watch this video. She had a plan A for a secure and stable future and it got hijacked by her passion, but she’s not starving because she followed where that path led, it turned out to be a far better way of fulfilling her plan A than her original idea.

You don’t know yet what you don’t know, and unless you take the leap you will never find out.

And if you take the leap and I’m wrong and your passion doesn’t lead to a stable and secure career, all the boring jobs will still be waiting for you at the end and at least you will have had fun trying!

1. I hope. I’ve been offered the place, but there are still a few issues that I can’t talk about here that mean it’s not quite settled yet.

2. Please stop hitting me with that pedestal! It REALLY hurts!