You Don't Need a Passion to Change Careers

Episode 33: Have you been told that the key to changing careers is to find your passion? And have you then tried to locate said passion and come up more or less blank? In this episode, Career Change coach Dana Stevens dismantles the follow your passion narrative and explains why it is one of the most unhelpful ideas in the career change conversation. If you have been holding back from making a move because you cannot identify your passion, this episode will change how you think about where to start.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why pragmatic reasons for changing careers are completely valid and lead to real and meaningful change
• The full story of Dana's own career change from BBC radio producer to online content and social media, and why passion had nothing to do with it
• What you can use instead of passion to figure out what you want, including the Life-First Criteria

Connect with Dana:

Website: https://www.danastevens.com/workwithme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_stevens_coach/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danastevens1/
Free Coaching Consultation: https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

If this episode resonated, follow The Career Change Studio and share it with someone who’s feeling stuck in their career.

And if you’re ready to design a working life that truly fits your needs and lifestyle, book a free clarity call at https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Special thanks to @Lou_Greenaway_Music for the piano composition and performance.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello. So today let's talk about passion. Not in the way you might expect, but I want you to think about whether if you've been considering changing careers, someone's maybe told you that the key, the secret, is going to be all about finding your passion. All you need to do is work out what you love and identify this huge life purpose for yourself. Then everything else is just going to fall into place. And maybe you've then tried to find that purpose or passion, tried to locate it, and come up with, well, maybe are not quite sure, or maybe feeling a bit blank. Maybe you're worried that you're the only person out there who doesn't seem to have this obvious burning thing that they're desperate to do with their working life. If so, if that's you, I want you to know two things. Firstly, you're not alone if you've experienced that. And secondly, the whole narrative around passion being a catalyst for career change is just simply wrong. This idea that you have to follow your passion so that you can change careers is this really pervasive and I think a really unhelpful story in this whole career change conversation. Because the reality is for a huge number of people, it just does not work that way. And then if it doesn't work that way for you, the risk is that you start thinking something's wrong with you rather than something being wrong with this whole cultural story, this whole cultural narrative. So today I want to dismantle that cultural idea, that cultural narrative, because I don't think it's helpful. And I'm also going to tell you a bit about my own story because my own career changes didn't come from following a passion. That's not where they started. And I want to offer you something more useful than this, like just go find your passion starting point, right? Because it doesn't really help most people figure out what comes next. So, like I said, you might have heard loads of people or just seen or read it, you know, culturally around, out and about, that you just need to find your passion, right? But this idea suggests that somewhere inside everyone is this clear, burning, obvious thing that you love doing, and that if you can just simply identify that thing and find a way to get paid for it, your career problems will all be solved. Simple, right? And look, for some people, that is how it works, but it's much fewer people than you would imagine. And there are people who do have this clear, undeniable pull towards something specific. Maybe they've always loved gardening and they want to turn it into a career, or they develop a love of fitness later in life and want to retrain as a personal trainer. And for those people, career change really is about just finding the courage to go and pursue that path. But those people are not the majority. Really, like I work with so many people, and that's not even close to how the majority experience career change. For most people, the truth is that working out what they want from their career is a much messier, like this much more gradual, much more pragmatic process than this narrative around finding your passion suggests. It really involves trying things, noticing what works, it involves making moves for practical reasons that then lead you somewhere unexpected. It involves changing what you want as you change as a person and as your life changes. And it almost never involves a single clear passion arriving like this light bulb moment and solving everything. And the problem with telling everyone to just follow their passions is that the people who don't have an obvious one, which again is most people, they're left with nowhere to go. They can't follow the advice, and because the advice is really widely given, you'll hear people say it all the time, and kind of culturally accepted, people then start to wonder if not having a passion means there's something wrong with them, a personal failing, rather than a completely normal human experience. So I just want to make this clear: if you don't have an obvious passion, it's not a sign that there's something wrong with you. It's not a sign that you can't change careers, it's just a sign that you're one of the people that is gonna come up with a different reason or different criteria for how you make changes. And there are plenty of other paths that you can take to change careers. Before I go any further, maybe it would be useful for me to just explain that you might be in a different place in relation to having a passion or not, to somebody else that's listened to this podcast, right? There's different types of people, and people have different types of relationships with a passion. So you might be someone who genuinely does not have a strong passion, and maybe you never have really. Maybe you enjoy things, maybe you have interests, you have things that you prefer over other things, but there's no single burning thing that feels like your life calling, or something that you would call a passion with a capital P. And that is completely fine. You're not broken, there's nothing wrong with you. You might just be someone for whom a career is not like a vehicle for a big grand passion. And you need something that works well for you and your life rather than something that sets your soul on fire, and that is a legitimate thing to want, and it's absolutely achievable. Or maybe for you, you did have a passion once, or something that felt like a passion once, but somewhere along the way it got buried and lost. Maybe you had children and have spent the last few years focused almost entirely on them, or maybe you've been caring for someone else, or maybe you've just been so consumed by a demanding job that anything outside of work just quietly dropped off the list. And now, when you try to remember what used to light you up, it feels distant and hard to access. That is not the passion being gone, that's just what happens when you have no time or space to tend to it. Maybe it's still there and we just need to find it again. Or maybe you fall in this other camp, right? Maybe you might be someone that's really worried that something is wrong with you because everyone else around you seems to know what they want and you don't. But honestly, if I tell you that most people do not know what they want as clearly as they appear to be, and comparison, comparing yourself to others is really not a fair game to engage in because you're seeing other people's external presentation, what they want you to see, not their internal reality. And you might be comparing yourself to someone who spent months or years figuring out what they want, comparing the end of their journey with the beginning of yours. Or maybe you fall into this other group, right? Maybe you do have something, maybe there is something that excites you, something you've always been drawn to, something that's been maybe at the back of your mind for a long time, but you've already decided it's not realistic, not practical, not something you can actually make work financially, and so you've dismissed it before you've properly examined whether that is true or whether that is fear doing what fear does, which is dressing itself up as common sense. And if you're in that last group, I want you to know that working out whether something is genuinely not viable for you, or whether it just feels scary, is exactly the kind of thing that coaching can help you with. The answer might be that it really isn't the right time or the right fit, or the answer might be that it's far more possible than you've been allowing yourself to believe, and you deserve to find that out rather than have fear make the decision for you. So wherever you fall on that spectrum, just know that this episode is for you and will be helpful for you because none of these starting points, none of where you are, is the wrong place to be. And so it might be useful to talk about the reasons that people actually change careers because they're so much more varied and so much more ordinary, really, than this whole like passion narrative suggests. And ordinary doesn't mean less than, it means real. You might want to change careers because you want to earn more money, and that is a completely valid reason. Might not be glamorous, might not be purpose-driven, just honest, because for most people money actually matters. Financial security matters. Wanting to be paid properly for your skills and experience is a legitimate thing to want from your working life. Or for you, maybe you want to change because you want less stress, because the level of pressure you're currently under isn't sustainable and you know it. Because your health, mental or physical, is telling you that something has to change. Because you want to sleep properly and feel like yourself again. Or you might want to change because you need more flexibility to care for children or parents or your own well-being. You want to have a life outside of work you can actually enjoy rather than just collapse into. You might want to change because you want to feel excited again, to learn new things, to grow, to be somewhere that stretches you in ways that feel good rather than just exhausting. Or you might simply want better delineation between work and the rest of your life, not a passion-led career, just a job that is good enough, but that you don't hate, that you don't dread going to work for, that pays you properly, that lets you go home at a reasonable hour and enjoy the things you love in your own time. Those are perfectly reasonable things to want. And building a working life around them is not settling, it's being honest about what actually matters to you. And I've had clients who've made career changes for all of these reasons, and they're living better lives for it. Not because they suddenly found their passion, but because they found something that works for them right now, something that fits the season of life they're in, and that is what this is always about. You do not need a big life purpose, you do not need a passion with a capital P. You need to be honest about what actually matters to you at this point of your life, and that's something we can absolutely work with. So I thought it might be useful to share my own story here. Now, you might have heard this before if you've been in my community for a while, and I think the very first episode of this podcast I went into it as well. But it's really useful to share here, and you'll understand why in a minute, because coaching is actually my second career. Before this, I worked as head of strategy in an advertising agency, but before working in strategy, I had a whole other career as a radio producer at the BBC. And it's important to say that that job, my first job, was one that I was genuinely passionate about. Radio, music, that was my passion. I did work experience, hospital radio, worked about four part-time jobs just so I could pick up freelance shifts and get the experience I needed so I could work my way up to becoming a radio producer. And I was making music and culture programs for the World Service and I loved it. It was creative, it was interesting, I got to travel, I got to meet people, I got to meet musicians from all over, I got to have quite a lot of creative freedom over the artists that I booked. But here's the thing: because it was such a brilliant job, people tended never to leave, right? If you got a great job doing that kind of radio production at the BBC, you don't leave. And that meant that the opportunities for progression were genuinely limited. The kind of speech-based programming I worked on really existed at the World Service and BBC Radio 4, and there weren't enough roles to move into. It was that simple. And I was living in London and I wanted to buy a flat at some point, and I knew I was ambitious, and I wanted to grow and learn and be promoted and earn more money. And I had to accept that that was never going to happen in a radio career. And it was genuinely heartbreaking in one sense, right? Because I really loved what I did, but I made a pragmatic decision, a practical decision, that I wasn't going to follow my passion and continue following my passion. I was going to follow opportunities. And the world of online content and social media was just starting to take off at that point. And I knew someone who was working in that space and he could see that that industry was growing. And so after talking to her, I made a calculated decision that that's what I was going to move towards. Not because I was passionate about it, but because it made practical sense. And I didn't jump straight there. I, you know, used my contacts and my existing role to start working on online content where I could within the BBC. I was working on a gradual transition more into the online space so that I could eventually leave the BBC. So I moved into the online part of the organization, working on BBC homepages and website content, and I got involved in helping the TV channel, BBC3, set up their social media channels and advising different programs on their social media strategy. And it was that experience that eventually gave me what I needed to move into the private sector, into creative agencies, where I knew I could earn considerably more money and have the growth and opportunities I was looking for. I made a plan and it took me a couple of years to make that move, but it was a calculated and deliberate move and entirely pragmatic, and it worked, right? It gave me the financial stability to save up and buy my first flat with my partner, which I never would have been able to do if I carried on working in radio. And it also gave me money to fund some really interesting travel, which has always been one of my passion points outside of work, and I knew that was important to me. Now, did I eventually become interested in online content social media? Yeah, I did. It was genuinely an interesting area and it was growing and it was exciting. So I just want you to know that interest and passion can follow a decision. It doesn't have to precede it. But my move didn't start from passion, it started from practicality, and I want you to know that that's a completely legitimate place to start. And I stayed in that world, working my way up in advertising. I became a strategist until eventually that stopped working for me too. And I knew I needed to change again. Because I had a young family and the hours were insane and the stress was insane. But do you know what? Having changed careers once before made it so much easier the second time. Because I knew it was possible. I knew I could navigate it. I knew that a career move could be right for a season, even if it wasn't forever. And I wasn't nearly as scared. And the second time, I found coaching. And now coaching really is a genuine passion for me. But I just want you to know I didn't start there. I didn't change careers the second time because I was passionate about coaching. I started with knowing that I needed to make a change because my current job wasn't working. The hours were long, I had young kids, the stress was too much, it wasn't working with family life. And then I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. And I happened to be using coaching tools and working with a coach to help me do that, and then I fell in love with what they could do and how life-changing those tools were. But the passion came from inside the process, not before it. So please don't think you have to know what your passion is before you start. You really don't. So if you don't need passion, if that doesn't have to be the starting point, then what? What do you actually use to figure out what you want if there's no obvious burning thing pulling you in a direction? Now this is exactly what I help people with. And the starting point is not a passion, it's actually much more prosaic than that. It's a set of criteria. What I work with every client to build at the very start of our process is what I call their life first criteria, a personal filter that's built around their actual life, their actual values, their actual needs and priorities now. Not what they think they should want, not what would look impressive to other people, but what genuinely matters to them at this point. And that might include things like salary requirements, hours, flexibility, the kind of environment they thrive in, the type of work that gives them energy rather than taking it, how much autonomy they want, whether they want to work with people or alone or both, how much they care about the impact or purpose of the work, whether status or progression matters to them right now, or whether something steadier is what this season really needs. None of those things require a passion. They just require honesty. And when you're honest about what actually matters to you, you have something really useful to measure your options against. You have a way of evaluating directions that's grounded in your real life rather than a cultural narrative about what career change is supposed to look like. And sometimes when you start exploring options through that lens, something does start to feel more exciting than you expected. Sometimes a direction that starts as a pragmatic choice becomes something you genuinely care about. Not always, but sometimes, and when it does, that's a bonus, but it's not a requirement. And one more thing I want to say, which you may have heard me say many times, but I'm gonna keep saying it, is that whatever you decide to do next doesn't have to be what you do forever. This simple way of looking at this career change for you can change everything about how the decision feels. You're not choosing your life's work, you're choosing what is right for this season of your life, and seasons change, and when they do, you can change with them. I changed careers more than once. The first time was pragmatic, and the second time led me to something I genuinely love, but that was pragmatic too, really. I needed less stress in my life, I wanted more time with my children before they grew up, and having done it once made doing it again so much less frightening because I had the evidence, I knew it could work, I knew that a career could be right for a period, even if it wasn't right for forever. And I knew that I had the capacity to navigate the change and come out the other side. And you will have that evidence too, once you've done it, and that knowledge that I can do this, that this is possible, that I've navigated significant change before and it worked out, that is one of the most valuable things you can give yourself. So if you're holding back from making a move because you're not sure it's the right one forever, I want to offer that forever might not be the right framing. The right question is not is this my life's passion, but is this right for me now? Does it fit what I actually need in this season? And could I see myself doing it and growing in it for a meaningful period of time? And if the answer to those questions is yes, that is enough. You do not need more certainty than that to take a step forward. So, just before I finish, I'm just gonna say it one more time. You do not need a passion to change careers, you do not need a grand life purpose, you do not need to have some life's work calling you, and if you do not have any of those things, nothing is wrong with you. What you do need is honesty about what actually matters to you right now, what you want your working life to give you, what you are no longer willing to put up with, what would make a genuine difference to how you feel about going to work and what this season of your life actually calls for. That's discoverable, even without a passion, even if you have no idea what direction to move in, even if you've spent years focused on everyone else and have lost touch with what you actually want. It's findable and I can help you find it. So come and have a free consultation with me if you want to, if you're at that stage, I'm very friendly because that's exactly where we can start. You can find a link in the show notes, and that's all for this week. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.