Passion, Purpose, Profession
By Olivia Foskett
What is a passion? What is a purpose? And which should be your profession?
There is a science to the above, and the end goal is fulfilment. It's generally thought that the ideal recipe is a combination of the two, but the real question is how do we find it?
There are many psychological models developed to avoid the lengthy process of figuring this out. One, for example, claims that to do this you must first identify the answers to four simple questions:
What do you love?
What are your strengths?
What does the world need?
What can you be paid for?
Easy. Now…
What you love + what the world needs = a Mission: A personal goal that you believe in and work toward.
What the world needs + what you can be paid for = a Vocation: Defined as a trade or occupation considered necessary or worthy.
What you can be paid for + what meets your strengths = a Profession: A specific kind of role requiring skill, training, or formal qualification.
What matches your strengths + what you love = a Passion: A strong interest in and devotion to something, including a concept or goal.
One step further…
When you combine a mission and a vocation you get Potential; that's something you could be great at, an area where you have a clear capacity to grow or progress.
A vocation plus a profession makes a Cause; a principle or mission you are committed to.
Your profession together with your passion becomes a Career; a lengthy occupation in which you progress.
Finally, your passion combined with your mission equals a Calling; A strong pull toward a particular kind of work or way of life.
So at the crux of all these necessary elements, we are left with:
Potential + Cause + Career + Calling = Purpose
In other words, when your potential meets your principles, a viable career path, and an instinctive certainty that this is it, you have found the holy grail: Purpose.
You may, like us, have read a lot recently under headlines like 'Follow Your Passion is Terrible Advice' about how Purpose is in fact superior to Passion because the latter is driven by emotional energy while the former is founded in reason. Purpose is neatly positioned as the essence of you as a person, the reason you are alive on this earth, the elusive answer to all your uncertainties... But is it?
The point I think we must factor in at this stage is that yes, you could sit down with journals and Venn diagrams and cross-reference your soul searching against endless job boards to discover this hallowed ‘Purpose’.
But don't they say that the simplest answer is often the correct one?
Let's consider; if such a test could be verified and undertaken in the way of an exam paper by school leavers, generating an ideal career for each, would it prescribe perfect fulfilment?
The reason I seriously doubt this idea is: The journey.
The journey is lost.
The journey from 'School is boring' via 'I think I've chosen the right degree' and 'actually I'm not sure I have' to 'oh god I have to find a graduate job' arriving at 'but is this the right one for me?', on through several rounds of trying different things, learning skills, building life experience, moving on to the next and better-suited job until finally, as if by accident, you find yourself in a satisfying career.
What if we considered our 'Purpose' to be one and the same with the Process? That would mean exploring the world of work with curiosity rather than focusing on the quest for a hidden formula to success.
It would mean having our eyes on our surroundings along the way rather than trained on an unseeable destination.
We need only look at the variety of different career journeys represented within a company, to understand that honestly, there is no such thing as a formula to purpose, or fulfilment for that matter.
It is, rather, something that is defined gradually throughout the professional journey, in the same way as our knowledge, our network and our skills.
The bottom line. You probably don't have to know your purpose. You will make one.