Reawakening Your Passion for Work.

In every person’s life, the time comes to take stock. The process is almost always painful and messy–but five practical strategies can help guide you and give your life new direction and meaning.

When to Say When: When asked, most business people say that passion – to lead, to serve the customer, to support a cause or a product –is what drives them. When that passion fades, they begin to question the meaning of their work. How can you reawaken the passion and reconnect with what’s meaningful for you? The first step is acknowledging the signal that it’s time to take stock. Let’s look at the various feelings that let you know the time has come.

•  I feel trapped – when a job becomes less meaningful i.e. eroding your enthusiasm and this can lead to restlessness or feeling of being trapped.
• I am bored – when day-to-day business goals can become boring vs. performing truly satisfying work.
• I am not the person I want to be – when people gradually adjust to work over a period of time so much so that they lose self-awareness of who they really are or what they want to be.
• I won’t compromise my ethics – when you realize that an experience is in conflict with your values.
• I can’t ignore the call – when you want to make a full U-turn from what you are doing in life / career thus far i.e. like a mid-life crisis.

Many people confuse achieving day-to-day business goals with performing truly satisfying work.

Strategies for Renewal: There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for restoring meaning and passion to your life. However, there are strategies for assessing your life and making corrections if you’ve gotten off course. Most people pursue not a single strategy but a combination, and some seek outside help while others prefer a more solitary journey. Regardless of which path you choose, you need time for reflection – a chance to consider where you are, where you’re going, and where you really want to be. Let’s look at five approaches.

•  Call a time-out – taking time off can be the best way for some to figure out what they want to do. i.e. soul searching to reconnect with life.
• Find a program – a leadership / executive development program can guide people in a more structured approach back to opening new doors.
• Create reflective structures – time and space for self-examination or some other outlet for reflection such as prayer.
• Work with a coach – our own biases / experiences make it impossible for us to find a way out of a situation, so an outside perspective is needed.
• Find new meaning in familiar territory – it’s not always possible to change everything in a big way, however, change what you can.

Tools for Reflection

Once you’ve lost touch with your passion and dreams, the very routine of work and the habits of your mind can make it difficult to reconnect. Here are some tools that can help people break from those routines and allow their dreams to come to the surface again.

Reflecting on the Past. Alone and with trusted friends and advisers, periodically do a reality check. Take an hour or two and draw your “lifeline.” Beginning with childhood, plot the high points and the low points –the events that caused you great joy and great sorrow. Note the times you were most proud, most excited, and most strong and clear. Point out for yourself the transitions–times when things fundamentally changed for you. Now, look at the whole and ask these questions to yourself. Do my values still fit with what I need to do at work and with what my company is doing? Have my dreams changed? Do I still believe in my vision of my future?

 Defining Your Principles for Life. Think about the different aspects of your life that are important, such as family, relationships, work, spirituality, and physical health. What are your core values in each of those areas? List five or six principles that guide you in life and think about whether they are values that you truly live by or simply talk about.

 Extending the Horizon. Try to figure out what you would like to do with the rest of your life. This exercise is harder than it seems because it’s human nature to think more in terms of what we have to do– by tomorrow, next week, or next month. But with such a short horizon, we can focus only on what’s urgent, not on what’s important. When we think in terms of the extended horizon, such as what we might do before we die, we open up a new range of possibilities.

 Envisioning the Future. Think about where you would be sitting after 10 or 15 years? What kinds of people would be around you? What might you be doing during a typical day or week?Don’t worry about the feasibility of creating this life; rather, let the image develop and place yourself in the picture.

Many people report that, when doing this exercise, they experience a release of positive energy and feel more optimistic than they had even moments earlier. Envisioning an ideal future can be a powerful way to connect with the possibilities for change in our lives. 

Source: Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee, and Daniel Goleman, Harvard Business Review, 2002.