Prioritize This Over Passion To Find Meaning In Your Work

Photo by Tim Eiden from Pexels

What do Cody Bellinger, center fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and a low-level cleric with the propensity for healing have in common? Both are positions I would hold today if I had held out and pursued my “passions” as a youth.

All our lives, we are told to focus on activities or ideals that bring passion to our work, with the idea that passion is at the root of a successful career or profession. That is all fine, but the problem for me was that I could never effectively hit a curve ball and seating up with a table full of D&D characters hardly paid my bills.

So how do we square our passions with finding meaningful work that still provides a means of sustenance?

Recently, I had the opportunity to be part of a leadership institute that promotes a strengths finding program called CliftonStrengths. It is a practice of identifying core strengths and understanding how to apply them to find a career for which we are best suited.

CliftonStrengths is an assessment developed by Don Clifton, the former chairman of Gallup, an organization that uses data and insights to help organizations better understand and utilize their human resources. After conducting a survey and collecting data on millions of professionals, the assessment ranks strengths on 34 themes of talent, which…