Isn’t this what we’re all longing for? Isn’t this what we call success? Doing what you love and loving what you do? Being passionate about all the parts that make your life. About your personal life as well as your career.

Some might argue that doing work that you don’t feel as ‘work’ is not necessarily the best thing that could happen to you. They point out that it is good for you to do stuff that you don’t like and that you do because you have to. This is supposed to teach discipline, humility and self-control. These same people might also say that it’s not that bad to do work that you’re not passionate about, after all none of our ancestors really had a choice, and they all ended up loving the work that was imposed to them by family traditions and other circumstances.

But, let’s be serious do you really have to continue in these patterns even if you do have a choice. For you could hardly say that in today’s world opportunities are missing (I’m talking about the privileged part of the world). Even if there might be little market demand for your dream job, passionate people have such an extraordinary way to create their own market and to reshape the world. So, in theory, we are free and have the means to pursue our interests and lead a passionate life. Why then, are there so few of us who truly find accomplishment in the work they do each day?

One of the reason that I’m going to talk about here is the fact that we are programmed out of this freedom.

What are you being taught when going to kindergarten and told you have to draw even if you would rather listen to a story, or that you have to play when you would much rather draw? This starts small but continues to gain importance as the years go by. After, for the past 12 years or more of your life, you have been told you should better do some math than dance, or chemistry when you’d rather read a novel, you find yourself in front of a choice, the only one allowed to you in such a long time. Choose a career! You remember all the things that you were passionate about at one moment or another but your interest in them has been crushed. They don’t seem that important anymore. What’s important is where the high paying jobs are, and that is all you can hear around you.

So you choose, and choose the same thing each and every day, until you get sick of it or so used to it that it doesn’t matter any more.

You lay try hard to become passionate about what you do, and you might succeed. Or you might one day choose to let yourself go and let your interests lead you. Who know where they may take you?