Don’t build your career around your passion. Build it around your coping mechanism.
Many people want to build their career around their passion.
And then they immediately get confused because they don’t know what their passion is.
A ✨passion✨ seems so lofty and noble and purposeful.
And people are like, “Uh…I don’t know if I love anything enough to call it a capital-P Passion and then build my whole career around it…”
So let me give you a different to think about it.
Don’t build your career around your passion.
Build your career around your coping mechanism.
Here’s what I mean :)
A passion is something that brings you from baseline to blissful 🙂 ➡️ 🤩
Here are some things that bring me from baseline to blissful…
Getting absorbed in a murder mystery, fantasy, or sci-fi story
Eating delicious food
Looking at before-and-after’s of home renovations
And if I was trying to build my career around my passion…
I might think that I should be a fiction writer, or a chef, or an interior designer.
But should I? (The answer is at the end of this article.)
A coping mechanism is something that brings you from bothered to baseline 😣 ➡️ 🙂
These are things that bring you from stressed, confused, stuck, overwhelmed…to “okay, I’m good again.”
Now of course, there are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
And we usually tend to talk about unhealthy coping mechanisms — over-drinking, overeating, overworking, procrastination, etc.
But you have healthy coping mechanisms too.
You just probably don’t call them “coping mechanisms.”
You probably call them “my working style” or “how I tend to problem-solve.”
Think about the last few problems that you figured out — big or small.
Maybe it was a tricky project at work. Or planning an outing with friends. Or just answering someone’s question.
HOW did you go from question to answer? From unsolved state to solved state? From unknown to figured out?
Chances are, there are consistent patterns in HOW you take that journey again and again in every area your life.
(Because life is basically just solving problems, one after the other, in every area of your life.)
And those consistent patterns of HOW you like to solve problems, answer questions, and go from confusion to clarity are your (healthy) coping mechanisms.
This is mine! Whenever I’m faced with a problem or question — big or small, personal or professional — I tend to take the same path.
I gather lots of information.
I organize that information in some way. I find patterns. I make frameworks. I see themes. I notice connections. I create a clear, neat, coherent understanding of what I’ve learned in my brain.
I communicate my findings to someone else.
This process calms me down.
This process brings me from the tension and overload of the unsolved state to the calm and settled feeling of the solved state.
I don’t have a “passion” for doing this. It doesn’t bring me from baseline to bliss.
I simply MUST do this. It brings me from bothered to baseline.
This is my way of solving problems and answering questions and making sense of the world.
You can’t stop me if you try.
*I* can’t even stop me.
This is just how I operate.
And THIS is the coping mechanism I’ve built my career around.
So what’s YOUR coping mechanism?
Maybe you solve problems by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the people around you and assembling a team that can tackle it together.
Or by having empathy for all the parties involved and creating space for everyone to talk and come to a consensus.
Or by digging into the numbers and quantifying everything that’s fuzzy and doing a mathematical analysis to come to an answer.
Or by tapping your network and back-channeling and using your connections to get what you want.
What are the things you do — the things you can’t STOP yourself from doing — that bring you from bothered to baseline? 😣 ➡️ 🙂
Comb through examples of problems you’ve solved in the past and find the common themes.
Or dig up any career or personality assessments you’ve taken and see what the results tell you.
(I found a CliftonStrengths assessment I took years ago, and my results aligned exactly with my healthy coping mechanism.)
However you do it, put some precise language around what your (healthy) coping mechanism is.
You’re already doing it all the time.
You just need to notice it and be able to describe it.
And by the way, this doesn’t mean you have to throw your passions away!
Here’s how you can evaluate whether your passions are a good fit for your career.
Let’s take my passions — absorbing stories, good food, and pretty interior design.
So should I “follow my passions” and be a fiction writer, or a chef, or an interior designer?
I know I like consuming stories and food and pretty designs.
But the key question is: Do I like creating stories and food and pretty designs?
Can I use my “healthy coping mechanism” process to generate good stories, good food, or good interior designs?
Honestly, my “healthy coping mechanism” process isn’t THAT good of a fit for fiction writing, cooking, or designing.
As much as I like reading fiction, writing it annoys me. I don’t want to convey my point through plot and character. Let me just tell you the insights directly!!
Vs. someone whose coping mechanism is writing fiction would say…
“Writing stories is how I make sense of the world.
When I’m going through a difficult time or trying to figure something out, I HAVE to create characters and write a story about them.
There’s nothing more painful than having an untold story inside me.
And once I’ve gotten it out, I feel settled again.”
Notice: Writing fiction isn’t bringing them from baseline to bliss. It’s bringing them from bothered to baseline.
As much as I like eating food, cooking is pretty boring to me. It’s a lot of working with your hands, tasting and adjusting on the fly, and (if you’re cooking a big menu) extensive logistical planning. Not really aligned with my healthy coping mechanism.
Vs. someone whose coping mechanism is cooking would say…
”After a long week at work, I relax and unwind by planning a menu, going grocery shopping, and spending all day in the kitchen.
If I don’t spend time working with my hands, I get agitated and grumpy.
But if I can cook, I relax and forget about my troubles.”
Notice: Cooking isn’t bringing them from baseline to bliss. It’s bringing them from bothered to baseline.
And as much as I like looking at well-designed homes, designing confuses me. I see an empty room and I just go blank. I can’t picture how furniture or paint or curtains would look. I can’t imagine different layouts. I just don’t see it.
Vs. someone whose coping mechanism is interior design would say…
“If I walk into someone’s house and see a badly designed room, I get so grumpy.
I have to hold myself back from rearranging things and telling them what colors are clashing and giving them all my ideas on how to make it better.
It’s so annoying to see a space that’s being under-utilized! I can SEE the potential and I want it to be realized!!
Just give me free rein and let me design it up, and I’ll be happy again.”
Notice: Designing isn’t bringing them from baseline to bliss. It’s bringing them from bothered to baseline.
So stop trying to build your career around your passions.
And start building it around your coping mechanisms.
Because going from baseline to blissful is great…🙂 ➡️ 🤩
But going from grumpy, annoyed, agitated, confused to calm, settled, and certain? 😣 ➡️ 🙂
That pathway is reliable as hell.
Taylor Swift did it.
Taylor makes sense of her emotions and her experiences by writing songs about them. That’s her coping mechanism. And she built her career around it.
Conan O’Brien did it.
Conan is a naturally anxious person who finds levity and joy and presence through silliness and making jokes. That’s his coping mechanism. And he built his career around it.
You can do it too.
You can bet your career on it :)
And if all these concepts have you intrigued…
And you want my support in articulating exactly what YOUR coping mechanism is…
And my help in developing the career strategy based around it…
There are two ways you can work with me.
You can become my private coaching client.
Book a free consult call to come talk to me about what that could look like.
Or you can join my course & coaching program.
Join the waitlist to be the first to hear when it’s open.
What my clients have to say…
“Pooja strikes a really strong balance between troubleshooting immediate problems but at the same time, really tying in that there are tools I need to solve all my problems.
And that even though a problem I run into this week is different from a problem I run into next week, you can use the same frameworks to work your way out of it.
Now, I feel like I have a nice tool chest of frameworks and habits that I can rely on that not just change my work life, but also my personal life too.”
—Client | VP at Major Financial Institution
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