loving what you do
I remember this quote from Stan Lee, Do what you love. Or love what you do.
This is the best advice if you are looking for a happy life.
- Doing what you love:
The first part in this comes really pretty easy across intuitively - doing what you love. But if you really really think about that, it comes with its baggage.
Because there is a high chance than a lot of other people also love the same thing. Because we often fall in love with things that excite us (chemically). This is often music, movies, sports etc. Suddenly supply-demand equation is under pressure.
Doing what you love may not necessarily bring you money. Because money was never about if you are something good - it is always a supply-demand equation.
And when a lot of people go for the same thing, you have to be the best of the best to make a living out of it.
Now let’s imagine, you did what you loved and got bigger in your industry. This also means pressure can come in. Now that it has become your income source, you would need to do it under external sources of pressure also. Or just by the virtue that you have become big enough and lot of people know you, you may loose the freedom to do it in your own way.
These are chances. So for most people on this planet doing what they love is not an easy choice. It comes at a cost. But you will bear the cost if it is worth it. A choice to be made.
- Now let’s go down the second option. Loving what you do:
Ideally to make it easy you should try to start with something you don’t hate and at least some capability in.
Now how do you actually love what you do. I have loved most things I did in my life. But that was never for what I did.
It was always for the how I did it.
Process of asking questions, answering and learning. The drive of curiosity was giving me the kick. Any journey I was put into, I could, to an extend, make it my own journey.
So may be the answer is in actually getting to the root of what is that gives you kick at a value level and then finding that in whatever you are doing. It can be recognition or it can be people around - I don’t know. It is your way within any way.
Then another key is simply to learn more about the thing you are involved in. The more you learn and understand the nuances, the more you will like doing it. You may be a person who really don’t have special love toward music production or table tennis. Pick up the basics from YouTube, listen to the stars in each of these, try decoding some music or games… The more you learn about the rules, the intricacies and the details of these - you will start loving it more. Because fundamentally, everything is a game. And as monkeys we like games.
Having the right people around can also make the process of liking what you do easy - because it simply gives you the comfort of company and a safe space as a back drop to whatever you are doing.
Now if you really think the second option is also not easy. You need to put in effort and luckily some stuff around you also should align.
You can see this as a bad vs bad. Complexity vs complexity. You should pick.
But you can also see this as good vs good.