Love What You Do

Love, love me do
You know I love you
I’ll always be true
So please, love me do
Whoa-oh, love me do -The Beatles, song “Love Me Do”

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” -Arthur Ashe

Instead of “do what you love” as Confucius once supposedly advised, instead “love what you do.”

As this HBR article points out, most people don’t know what they’re passionate about. Yet so much advice is about finding what you truly love and then going all out towards pursuing that passion. This results in a disconnect and unhappiness because people feel like they’re not doing what they “should be doing” in life. Furthermore, they have no idea what they should be doing. They feel stuck and stagnant.

The good news as the article also points out, is that passion can be developed over time. And it starts with where you are right now. For whatever work you’re doing, whatever you have to do, fully invest yourself in it. Be grateful that you have an opportunity to learn, to serve, to be productive. Continually ask yourself, how you can do things better and make things better for everyone around you.

Trust that you’re not settling either. Have faith that one of two things will happen as a result of your constancy of effort.

You’ll discover you’re actually doing what you love. It was just hiding in plain sight all along and required an attitude shift.

Or.

You’ll get discovered as a linchpin. Linchpins are invaluable. As such, they’re usually the ones who get to do the work they love.