#passion development

A great post yesterday by Jessica Hagy, a FORBES Contributor, included twenty tips to find your calling. Honestly, anything you do to maintain a commitment to your passion is a step in keep yourself connected to what you love. But how do you integrate that passion with your profession. We've made a few notes on each of her points for additional food for thought.

20 Ways to Find Your Calling

1. Ignore the future, deal with the present.   The question, “What should I be when I grow up?” is wrong. Ask instead, “What is next today?” People become fat one bite at a time, and we become adults one hour at a time, so what we do today matters.

2. Shop around.   Unless you try on the outfit, you’ll never know if it fits. Do the same with vocations, avocations, hobbies and skills. You’ll need to sample every flavor to know your true favorite taste.

3. Say yes to odd opportunities. Say yes to the things that intrigue you, instead of the ones that bore you.

4. Find a problem to solve. Being the solution makes your work feel meaningful. Having an issue to work against also gives you a villain to play against—and makes you a hero.

5. Burn your plans. Your life will not go according to plan. Nobody’s ever has. So don’t worry if you get off track. The track was imaginary anyway.

6. Do not follow someone else’s dream. Your parents want you to be A. Your boss wants you to be B. Your friends want you to be C. And society is clamoring for you to be D. You can’t please everyone, but if you do what YOU think you should, at least you’ll be able to sleep at night.

7. Blend your talents. Instead of doing something that only takes advantage of one skill, create a mash-up of several things you do well. You’ll set yourself apart and feel more satisfied with what you’re doing.

8. Seek out people you actually like.  It’s more satisfying to dig a ditch with friends than to design a skyscraper with a team of sociopaths.

9. Give yourself permission to change your mind. Most of us choose our paths around 18. As time passes, you might find new things to do and places to be and people to know, and a few calls you made at 18 will probably need to be overturned.

10. Ask the elderly for advice. They’ve been there, done that, got the AARP card. You’ll find that happiness and satisfaction have more to do with love and purpose than dollars and cents.

11. Roam a library. You never know which book, author, or topic will speak to you from the shelves. You might just find what you didn’t even know you were looking for.

12. Seek support, not tolerance. You’re going to need help with anything and everything. Make sure you have people in your corner who do more than just nod and say, “that’s nice,” when you tell them your dreams.

13. Spend time before you spend money. Invest in reading and talking and finding out before you plunk down a ton of money on a degree or a certification or a relocation. You might find that you don’t have to write a check to compose your future.

14. Don’t confuse a job with a purpose. If you are working to support your family, they are your real bosses. If you are working to further a goal or idea, don’t let your paycheck (however plump it is) become an obstacle to it.

15. Consider your epitaph, not your resume. Thinking long term can help you see both what’s vitally important and what’s certainly silly.

16. There’s no need to be THE best. Very few people are the very best in the world at anything. Doing your best doesn’t mean you have to be THE best. Your best is more than enough.

17. Don’t keep score. No one will be at the top or bottom of their game forever, and who you perceive as your competition is a constantly changing cast of characters. Keeping score can become a full-time job if you let it, and that’s an awful way to spend a day, much less a lifetime.

18. Change course if you find yourself coasting.   It’s possible to get stuck on a very easy and vaguely rewarding path, like a cushy or undemanding job. If you feel yourself simply rolling along, it’s time to switch gears, because coasting can atrophy your dreams.

19. Be authentically uncool. Stick with what you love, even if others sneer at it. This is also referred to as integrity.

An excellent post by Lara Galinsky about helping young adults find their passion! via @HarvardBiz

"I want to be a social entrepreneur." I hear it nearly every day. Not just from those applying for Echoing Green's social entrepreneurship fellowship, but from high school students, college students, and young professionals. They excitedly tell me that they want to launch organizations to improve education in Africa, to better the livelihood of women in inner city Chicago, or solve any number of other big problems. It's clear that this field has captured the imagination of the Millennial generation. From Babson to Berkeley, students today can take a variety of courses on social entrepreneurship, minor in the subject, and will soon be able to major in it. Today, more than 30 business schools offer substantive programs at the graduate level, when just a few years ago such a thing was unheard of.

You would think as someone who works in an organization that promotes the social entrepreneurship movement, I would be happy about this explosion in popularity. And I am. But, it is not without its dangers.

There is something alluring about being a social entrepreneur. Echoing Green's fellowship, along with other similar programs, shines a bright light on social entrepreneurs, often making them stars. At Echoing Green, we pull about 20-30 of these stars from 3,500 applications each year.

But social entrepreneurs alone cannot change the world.They need artists, volunteers, development directors, communications specialists, donors, and advocates across all sectors to turn their groundbreaking ideas into reality. They need fundraisers, supporters who can change policies, someone to create a brochure describing their work. If everyone wants to start a new organization, who is going to do all the work?

It's time for those of us in this field to help young people see the variety of ways and venues in which they can have a social impact. This is precisely why Echoing Green, an organization that has been exclusively focused on social entrepreneurs for the past 25 years, is now cutting the spotlight and raising the house lights to expose the entire ecosystem it takes to solve the world's biggest problems.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I want to go back to the not-so-distant past — to eight years ago, the first time I heard someone tell me that they wanted to be a social entrepreneur.

Her name was Ripa. She was a young, energetic college freshman at NYU who knew just what she wanted. She approached me after I spoke on a panel about social enterprise and said those magic words: "I want to be a social entrepreneur."

I was shocked. I had been in the field for nearly a decade, and had never heard social entrepreneurship referred to as an occupation, let alone a desirable one. Even Echoing Green's Fellows resisted the title.

Ripa told me that she had read about social entrepreneurship on NYU's business school's website, and the unique combination of business and social change moved her. Something clicked. She said to herself, This is why I am studying business! This is what I am supposed to do with my life!

I thought Ripa was an anomaly and I took her under my wing. We formed a close relationship. When the NYU Reynolds Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship was launched in 2006, I helped her prepare her application and she became a member of the fellowship's inaugural class. It was a transformative experience for her.

And yet, Ripa isn't a social entrepreneur. At least, not by Echoing Green's definition. She hasn't launched a ground-breaking new social business, nonprofit or hybrid. Instead, she is thinking like a social entrepreneur and applying that lens to everything she does, turning that which moves her most deeply into opportunities to serve others. She is organizing the San Francisco leg of theEkatva tour, a dance drama about Gandhi and King's non-violence ideals that features sixteen children from the slums of India. She is also studying Ayurvedic medicine and yoga, exploring the possibility of launching a program that uses those principles to help children trapped in the juvenile justice system.

Watching Ripa's life unfold, I, too, felt something click. I realized that most members of this generation will not be social entrepreneurs, and they shouldn't be. But if we can channel their altruistic energy and give them the tools, methodologies, and frameworks from the most successful social entrepreneurs, they will be changemakers, champions, and supporters of the work. They will make meaningful contributions to the world not by founding organizations but by bringing their best selves — their heart and head — to their work. And they will do this in all sectors, not just in nonprofit organizations but also in government agencies, family businesses, and major corporations.

What may happen in two or three generations is even brighter. When these employees become employers, they will naturally strengthen the social change axis in the majority of our institutions so community impact is imbedded into their missions.

This may sound idealistic but we are already on the way. According to Net Impact's recent Talent Report: What Workers Want in 2012, the Millennial generation wants, and expects, to do good and do well in their paid work. In fact, a majority of students (65 percent) expect to make a difference in the world through their work, and 53 percent would take a 15 percent pay cut to work for an organization whose values matched their own.

However, in my experience, too few of these students know the kind of difference they want to make, and how to make it. And that is the real opportunity.

In order to harness this generation's desire to create change, we must move away from the antiquated concept of vocation, which emphasizes what's in it for the individual: whether it will sustain their interest or bring them fame or fortune.

Instead, we need to help young people start their professional lives by asking questions. What issues, ideas, people, and projects move them deeply? What problems are theirs to own? How can they combine their heads and hearts to address those problems? What is their unique genius and how can it be of use to the world beyond themselves?