MYNIPPON

Kelly writes, “I am a fairly successful professional and admired by my colleagues for the quality of my work and professionalism.  I bring good money home and am on a fairly fast track for promotions.  Despite this, I am not sure that this is what I like to do (drug development).  I know my work may cure diseases, possibly save lives, but I am not sure I truly enjoy this.  I have gone to college for years, spent sleepless nights in laboratories, poured over hundreds of books, so I cannot simply walk away from what I was trained to do, but this is not my passion.  Is it too late already?  Oh, I also don’t know yet what my passion is because I have never cared to find out.  Please help.”

When we are young, our parents have a lot of expectations from us, all the way from being good-looking, well-mannered, and academically bright to eventually getting a great job, and raising an awesome family, that many of us forget what we truly want.  I wouldn’t be surprised that something like that happened to you.  Everyone around has expectations from us and in trying to meet all of those, we end up killing our souls.  We do those things because that is what good kids do: excel at school, play sports, go to university, get a job, make money, raise kids, and then, save for retirement.

Let me ask you this: if I gave you a billion dollars so that you would never need to work, could do as much as philanthropic work as you wanted, and hire very smart people to develop a drug while you gave them strategic advice from time to time, what would you do?  If you don’t know the answer, it is fine, because from now on you will be more careful doing new things.  As you try new things, you might have an aha moment, and shout, “Wow, I really like this and could do it rest of my life even if I got paid nothing to do it and brought me no honors.”  Trust me, it might be as simple as exploring French culture or existentialism or as challenging as rock climbing or writing poetry or making movies or something else that both you and I cannot even think of.  Once you get that aha moment, do it again and see if your pleasure goes up or down.  If it keeps going up, you may have found your lifelong passion.