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Guest post by: Alvah Parker Become an Author

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Are you happy at work? Do you have passion for the work that you do? The notion of passion was something that mystified me early on in my career. I was usually happy at work but the feeling of passion eluded me. In fact up until I retired from AT&T, I only got brief glimpses of what got my juices flowing. What exactly was my calling?

Because my style is low key I often have difficulty identifying and displaying the emotion I feel about something. It is one reason I have taken Improv classes. The emotion is there inside but never got exposed. Improv has helped me to display my feelings more easily and in a bigger way.

Since the passion was there all the time, it was more about labeling and allowing myself to really experience it. Unfortunately during my career I was usually too busy making a living and focusing on job success to take the time to think about this. That was my loss.

Now I can see that for the most part I was lucky to find jobs that were meaningful and important to me. Only once in my career was I placed in a job that I had no passion for and I did feel stuck!! That is not a place you want to be or a feeling you want to experience. Feeling stuck is a signal that you need to reenergize yourself in that job or find a new job!

In an article I read in a magazine the author, an attorney, talks about missing her calling which she says might have been to be a librarian or bookstore owner. She loves the look, feel and smell of books. She talks about how she has learned to integrate that passion into her work and her life. She believes that knowing her passion has made her a better lawyer.

Finding your passion and then using that energy in your work means you will have meaningful work which will increase the possibility of job success. The attorney who wrote the article has found ways outside of her law practice to do what she is passionate about and the energy that she gets outside her practice spills over into her law practice. That is one way to use your passion. There are others.

I've had a client create a side business so that he could put his passion to work. For my client the side business remained a side line but for others it could take over as the main source of income. Either way can lead to meaningful work and a satisfying and fulfilling career and life.

Other people have found ways to use their passion in the marketing of the practice. Their passion might be in the area of sports for example. Since the purpose of marketing is to build relationships with prospects, an attorney might share his/her enthusiasm for the local team with a prospect or a client, he/she might invite a client to a sporting event, or he/she could play the sport with the client.

Of course ideally you have a passion for the work that you do. One attorney I worked with said her strongest value was justice. She felt the judicial system was unfair to the disadvantaged person whom she saw as primarily the elderly and women. Her passion was to use the law as a tool to prevent future difficult situations for her clients. She is an Elder Law attorney who is enjoying great job success.

As a career coach I work with attorneys (and others) to connect or reconnect to their passion in a way that gives them a whole new perspective on themselves and their work. Finding your passion can lead to a more profitable and fulfilling practice along with having meaningful work and more job success.

The author of the article says that rediscovering your passion will take some thought. I agree. It isn't something you can do overnight. But you will gain a lot of self knowledge along the way as you take the steps necessary to get there. If you want to be happy at work and enjoy job success it definitely worth doing!

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