Success is attaining happiness and comfort, whereas failure is ceasing to try. Many Americans achieve the long sought after dream of landing a steady career and living a stable lifestyle. The constant paycheck is an obvious stress reliever, and is sufficient for maintaining comfort and support, yet even with this luxury people are still unhappy with their careers.
According to Gallup, an American research group, 70 percent of Americans dislike their jobs. I strongly believe this is due to the fact that Americans are failing at finding jobs that align with their interests, passions, and goals, therefore creating an unhappy society of workers. So who makes up the 30 percent of people that enjoy their careers?
Passion is possibly the one word antidote to relieve the common worker of their woes. When viewing successful people, whether they created an amazing product, or simply love their job, most often their “success” stems from their passions. Obviously the definition of “success” is dependent on the individual, but when relating success to general happiness in the workplace, passion seems to be the leading cause.
I am a person who falls in love with the world, and obsesses over my interests. When I become passionate about something, I cannot imagine doing anything else. It is all that I can focus on. Contradictory to my obsessive nature, I become easily passive and bored with subjects or ideas that do not interest me. I am not original in this habit, I believe this is how all humans work.
We seem to be able to find the time for what we love and procrastinate on the “nastier” things in life. I believe it is because of this idea that we end up with far more than half of American workers disliking their careers. They simply end up doing things they don’t want to be doing.
Just because you enjoy your job doesn’t mean that it will be easy or comfortable. Of the 30 percent of American workers who take pleasure in their work, a majority of them likely experienced great failure, and took major risks. It is hard to wait a long amount of time to start a job, especially with the strong current of societal expectations. I also think that those who love their careers, probably give up other things in life such as a family, or a steady lifestyle.
Ultimately though, it comes down to individual values of whether or not you desire a dream job, or an awesome personal life, it seems that you must make a constant compromise with yourself. The dream would be the job that you’re passionate about with the perfect personal life, but how realistic is that?
Life is all about choices, and picking your career is a major decision. Even though I am only 16 it is an idea that keeps me up at night. I think that I am afraid of slipping into the 70 percent.
Although this is one of my current greatest fears, I do not think I will, because I am very stubborn, and I follow my heart (even if it is not the smartest decision). But with the decision to follow my dreams, will I lose something else in life? Only time will tell, but I think it is our human duty to do what we love. Whether we follow our passions in our personal life, or work tirelessly at a job that we love, we should all do something we enjoy daily, and hopefully we can all one day be a part of the happy 30 percent.
