Your Career and You: "Passion...Recognized"

I received an email recently from a colleague commenting on a Curry College alum (a Communication major...Public Relations Concentration, I hasten to add) who he had recently met. With permission of my colleague, here’s what he said:

“…I had the most delightful lunch with Bob Nolet. He is now the Director of Communications for the Plymouth Chamber and is right in the thick of everything social and project oriented. He is such a wonderful advocate for Curry College. From Plymouth Rock Studios right out of school, to The Plymouth Radisson and now the Chamber. This is a story worth telling of a young professional making his way with the tools he learned at Curry College.”

This a testament to passion and the joy that it can bring.

The colleague who wrote this didn’t know that “Bobby,” as I still call him, is a good friend/former student who found his calling and has excelled. There have been some “bumps” in the road, but he has confronted them, dealt with them, and moved onward and upward.

I write often about passion...for a simple reason.

To me, that’s what makes the difference between simply having a “job” and being engrossed in one’s life’s calling.

Passion is what makes you smile in the morning as you’re preparing to go to work.

It’s what keeps you at your desk a “little longer” at the end of the day because you are so excited about the project you’re working on.

And it shows in your face and your actions when you’re having lunch with someone!

Not everyone “buys” this seemingly over-the-top optimism, but I do…and it’s reinforced again and again by feedback I get from others, like my colleague above (who wasn’t aware of my connection to Bobby and, therefore, wasn’t “embellishing” his comments to make me feel good).

I’m not suggesting that a job that you’re passionate about is going to be perfect. I’ve learned over the years that there’s no such thing.

But it can be personally and professionally rewarding, and you will do everything in your power to make it as close to perfect as possible in the process.

The idea is to focus on those aspects of the job that really get you excited and throw yourself 100 percent into them. The other “stuff” you will simply have to deal with…that, for me, is the “professionalism” aspect.

Don’t spend valuable time fretting about the “warts.”

The result of this approach is going to be a level of personal satisfaction that will reveal itself to others…and will be recognized…as was the case with my friend Bobby.

“The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world’s need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this – with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need – this life is hell.” – William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, “To His Newborn Great-Grandson; address on his ninetieth birthday” [1958]