In my personal life, I’m artistically inclined. Makeup, hair, fashion, music, photography, writing, drawing, interior design… if it involves creative expression, I love it. By profession, however, I’m the complete opposite: I am a banker. The girl who spent a lifetime dodging anything that involves numbers was somehow employed to keep track of other people’s finances.
At surface level, it seems pretty easy to dissect: I’m clearly going through a quarter life crisis. I don’t know what I want to be in life… besides current on my rent and student loan payments. But what if I told you that doing something so out of my element has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life?
I know this is not what any twenty-something (or any-something) with ambition wants to hear, but the best advice I’ve come to understand is “stop following your passion.” Passion has no longevity to it. The things you’re passionate about at 17, 21, or 25 probably won’t hold the same value to you as you mature. I remember being in college and working as a substitute teacher to earn income; whatever I was paying $30,000 to learn about in college suddenly came second to my passion for working with children.
Finally, the moment of truth came, and I became a teacher at a private daycare facility. I had less time to focus on the things about teaching I loved, and spent way too much time feeling frustrated about my shortcomings. I was so decided on my passion and felt like I needed to fit into that box, but I just couldn’t be that ideal and drove myself crazy. Long story short, I made it about a month before I realized… I hated my passion and the stress of trying to live up to its expectations!
I spent months in mourning. What was I going to do? I had invested every part of me into this passion for the last several years. I didn’t know how to do anything else besides teach. I had no hard skills to put on a resume and connect to jobs that paid decent money. Nobody in Corporate America cared that I could get a classroom full of kindergartners to focus for extended periods of time. No Fortune 500 was checking for my talents at breaking up a cafeteria fight between middle school girls. The only thing I was equipped to do, on paper, was be a teacher. And I didn’t want to be that anymore.
But I did what I’ve always been inclined to do: I got creative.
One skill being a substitute teacher taught me was being a chameleon. I would sometimes be in a new location every day, with different children, and I had to blend in seamlessly to ever-changing environments to avoid being taken advantage of. That’s not a skill everyone has; it’s not a skill that can be taught. It’s a soft skill made up of personality and life experience, therefore, it was something that was unique to me. I recognized a few more of these unique soft skills, and I got to hustling.
I sold my story: the girl who barely graduated high school, that came from retail and food service, went to college for Political Science and graduated Magna Cum Laude, started teaching, worked in beauty for a while, and kept a fighting spirit through personal losses, health challenges, and adversity… Nobody had my exact story and perspective. When I found my niche, several companies began aggressively recruiting me. I went from unemployed to 5 job offers in the same month from some major companies in top growing industries. I had insight that most of my peers on the job market didn’t have, but that I was already working to my advantage.
So how have I been sustaining a career in something that’s unnatural to me or that I’m not passionate about? I stopped following my passion and started relying on the skills I was uniquely good at to organically guide me. I have an opportunity to cultivate skills that I am already great at, discover new skills that I could be good at, and determine which skills aren’t for me. I take it one day at a time, focus on the things I do well, and build my self-confidence and reputation.
The most successful people in this world aren’t the jacks of all trades or the masters of one. The most successful people in the world are the ones who have a diverse set of skills and an even more diverse background. These are the people who have a story to tell, an understanding of their worth, and their individuality is respected more in a world that’s oversaturated with people who can learn and do the same things.
These aren’t the people who simply follow passion; these are the people who are driven by purpose.
MOCHA&MOSCATO 