20-Something Life: Your Questions Answered

Dear Christine,
"I am a 25-year-old dental hygienist. I have a great career with an excellent salary. I love what I do but I can't say that I'm 'passionate' about it. In fact, there is nothing that I do in life that I am passionate about. I don't have any activity or subject that excites me beyond a few weeks. Just because I have no passion, does that mean I have no purpose in life? How do I reach my inner passion?" -Purposeless, 25, Chicago

Dear Purposeless,

You are having trouble finding your "inner passion" because you are focusing on the buzzword: passion. This word gets a lot of airtime as the most popular career advice is "find your passion and you will be happy and successful." News flash: most people, whether in their 20s 30s or later in life, don't jump out of bed and run to work everyday. Sometimes, a job is just a job. True, some people really do love what they do for a living, but if you don't feel passionate about it that doesn't mean you have no purpose.

You said that you love what you do and are paid well, why isn't that good enough? It sounds to me like you are simply looking for a little more joy in your life which you can create without changing jobs or having a Eureka! moment of self-discovery. Become passionate about exploring the things that make you joyful - perhaps spending time with friends, doing something artistic, cooking, being outside, and so on. You say you do not have a single activity that interests you more than a week, but consider your expectations of an activity may be too high. Can you enjoy the simple things in life? Being passionate about something comes more from HOW you do things rather than WHAT you are actually doing. Or perhaps your passion is exploration and you are someone who will always try new things. What's wrong with that?

Your life purpose is not determined by the person who signs your paycheck. Your purpose in life is to learn lessons about yourself and your life - smell, taste, touch, see, feel and experience. If you are looking for life's purpose in a career, what do you think life is really about? If it was supposed to be about work, why are we born with the ability to fall in love, laugh, dance, travel, have families, connect with friends, celebrate holidays and birthdays?

Stop looking for your life's purpose in what you do. You absolutely have a purpose in life - and that is to live it! -Christine

Dear Christine,
"I'll be graduating this fall and I'm doing everything on my checklist to prepare me for a career after college, but I'm still a nervous wreck. I have worked relentlessly to maintain my high GPA, take a full load of courses every semester, do internships, and have a part-time job. I'm totally burnt-out, but I continue to tell myself that this is what I'm 'supposed' to do, but what if it doesn't? What if after graduation, I get the job that I think I want, yet face the disappointment of feeling unhappy with my career choice, when I thought I had it all figured out in college? I have these great expectations to be a successful executive in a big city, with the corner office and spectacular view, have great friends, and maybe even a boyfriend. But how do I know what I really want?" - Confused and Anxious, 22, Portland

Dear Confused and Anxious,

Having a checklist for life in your twenties seems to come with an iPod these days - everyone has one. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why these checklists exist: expectations and uncertainty. Checklists give the illusion of having a plan or feeling more secure. But coming from a failed checklister, believe me, a checklist is not the recipe for success. In fact, it is more likely to whip up doubt and worry.

Anxiety (anticipation about something yet to happen) lives in the future; so that's why your nerves are in high gear right now. For the last four years in college (maybe longer if your checklist began as early as High School), you have been consumed with worry about achieving everything on the list to set you up for a future you think you want.

So how do you know what you really want? Well first, get into the present and refuel yourself! Be proud of your accomplishments and have some fun! Go out with your friends, have a social life, and take some of that pressure off yourself. I see too many twenty-something's burn themselves out by the age of 23. You sound like a very ambitious, accountable young woman who can afford to cut yourself some slack.

And it's 100% normal to not know what you want. Life does not come with a crystal ball and no matter how much we prepare for the future, we don't know if something is truly a fit until we actually experience it. If you don't like your first job after college, you'll be a member of a very large club. Did you know that the average tenure at a first full-time job is only about a year and a half and over 50% of college grads leave their first jobs after one to two years? (Experience.com, 8/15/06)

Ditch the checklist and enroll in self-discovery which is a curriculum for life. At 22, what you are "supposed" to be doing is getting to know yourself and learning how to handle "real-world" responsibilities like paying your bills and taking care of yourself. Keep taking steps along your path, stop revving yourself up for giant leaps into your future or you will continue to be exhausted. Allow what you want to be discovered rather than expecting it to appear at the end of a checklist. -Christine

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Please send me your questions by posting them in the comments section below.

Comments

[DouglasEby]

Barbara Sher writes in her book Refuse to Choose! about people who don"t want to, or feel they can"t, settle into one path - people she identifies as Scanners.

She notes that in school "no one objected to their many interests, because every hour of every student"s school day is devoted to a different subject. But at some point in high school or soon after, everyone was expected to make a choice, and that"s when Scanners ran into trouble. While some people happily narrowed down to one subject, Scanners simply couldn"t.

"The conventional wisdom was overwhelming and seemed indisputable: If you"re a jack-of-all-trades, you"ll always be a master of none. You"ll become a dilettante, a dabbler, a superficial person " and you"ll never have a decent career."

But, Sher adds, that is really a myth: "The only thing Scanners needed was to reject conventional wisdom that said they were doing something wrong and claim their true identity."

From her article What is a Scanner?
http://talentdevelop.com/articles/WIAS.html

[goldmine]

I could see how being a agent in hollywood could ruin your outlook! Oh Ya- Your Pretty HOT! I'm just your average 52-something!

[curiousasheck]

Just focus on doing the opposite of what everyone else does and you'll be a truly unique human being.