I think it fascinating and providential that exactly one day after I wrote my last blog about loving what you do, rather than doing what you love, in the Harvard Business Review, there was this blaring headline, "Don't do what you love, do what you do." Charlotte Lieberman wrote a serious piece of real life, and very much along the lines of what I reported the day before.
She found herself one year out of undergrad at Harvard, with lots and lots ideas and potential plans about what she loved doing, but instead working at a job/jobs she had never considered really. She quotes Miya Tokumitsu who remarked that DWYL (Do what you love) is the "the unofficial work mantra of our times." And that it is completely elitist and that only those in the upper echelons of society have the possibility of doing this as a general rule. They are the only ones in society that have the economic freedom to choose employment based on criteria other than opportunity and money.
As I read Lieberman's article, I have to admit that there was a part of me (a bigger part than I am comfortable admitting!) that wanted to reject her premise as wrong, that she was too young to make such assertions and that she was simply too inexperienced in life to make such bold statements of reality. But I was wanting the fantasy . . . she had already made the jump to most people's reality and real life. She argues convincingly and with a great deal of maturity that belies her years, that you can make most jobs meaningful if you are mindful of what you are about.
She nails the underlying issues with this statement, "But instead of trying to find complete congruence between our passions and our livelihoods, it is perhaps more productive simply to believe in the possibility of finding opportunities for growth and satisfaction at work, even in the midst of difficulties – a controlling boss, demanding clients, competition with your colleagues, insufficient boundaries between your work life and personal life." This is a person who is facing the real real, not a pampered debutante who expects financial compensation for that which she would likely do for free given the right circumstances.
Honestly I cringe at my unwillingness to let the fantasy go, that I should both automatically get paid for doing what I love the most, that these two should ALWAYS go together. Part of what has fostered this in me, is reading. It seems that every single book I have read in the last 15 years has assumed that this is not only the ideal, but the destiny of every single person who can count to 100. My own very real experience and that of my clients should have clarified this much more for me, before now. You can read the article that Lieberman wrote here "http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/06/dont-do-what-you-love-do-what-you-do/"
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