Your Career - The Most Passionate Relationship You May Ever Have

For most of us romance comes and romance goes. One day you are blissfully in love, gazing into each other eyes and wondering what your future children will look like. Another day, you are on the razzle-dazzle with your friends, drinking and happy to be free.

But your career is almost like your family, for better or worse it is always there. Sometimes it drives you crazy but you ultimately know that as long as you make the right choices, build good relationships and work really hard, everything will eventually come together as planned.

Investment equals passion
These days, people are absolutely passionate about their career. Right from a very early age we start to think about and plan what we are going to do in our career. Throughout school and university we plan our future, work hard to get the best grades, we get our resumes professionally written, hire interview coaches. Once we get on the job we work very hard to prove ourselves and develop good relationships with our boss and colleagues, hire career coaches to keep us upping the ante. Then there is the investment of work hours. Most of our waking lives are spent in the office working hard to develop our careers. Work colleagues become more familiar that friends and family and even lovers.

The rewards equal increased enthusiasm
Some might argue but these days our bosses are getting very good at rewarding us for a job well done. Put simply we get told when we have done something good and why it was good. Sometimes we even get gifts but mostly we get a feeling of satisfaction from the knowledge that we have done has been appreciated that increases our positive feeling towards work and our passion for our career grows.

Hot Date or Hot Project
You have a hot date planned with your partner but your boss announces a really important project that is about to start. It is crucial to the organisation and will be a great opportunity for you to show what you are capable of. Hmm… you have been working at your career for many years, since school if you consider the planning phase. You have known your “Hot Date” for a little while so why not make the date wait, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.

Think about it: given the choice would you give up an exciting new project for a hot date?

How to balance the passion
Being passionate about anything is part of the key to success and definitely to enjoying that success. As a career coach I help people to feel passionate about their careers and use this to help them to harness even greater success. It is very important though to balance your passion. What I mean by that is to be passionate about your career, but also be passionate about other aspects of your life, be it your partner, children, friends or interests. It is about managing your time and prioritising. The work/life/health balance. Truly passionate people can be passionate in a number of areas.


By Lisa O'Brien (lisa@careerscoach.com.au)

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