Bulls**t

I’d like to call BS on whoever said that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. [Google says Confucius, Marc Anthony, Mark Twain, Steve Jobs... hell, maybe it was Michael Scott quoting Wayne Gretzky!]

While I agree that you should chase your passions, and that a job should leave you feeling fulfilled in some way, the mindset that the perfect job exists and will bring you a lifetime of Instagram-worthy bliss is terribly faulty. Not only is it unrealistic and unattainable, but it creates the illusion that labor is a bad thing, that stress is something that should always be avoided, that happiness in your career is given and never created through a positive attitude and hard work. 

Work and the stress that it brings are what help us grow - as employees, as individuals, as teammates, as members of a family. In every aspect of our lives, we are stretching through growing pains to come out stronger on the other side. An athlete who never pushes through the pain of training will never reach the apex of his or her sport, and will never know the pride, joy, and sense of accomplishment the product of that laborious effort brings. 

We were designed to work hard, to experience stress, to make tough decisions, and to rest at the end of it all. God worked for six days creating the entire world, and on the seventh day He rested. We snuck an extra day into our weekend, of course, and we enjoy those weekends and days of. But if our whole lives felt like one big weekend, we would have no sense of what an Olympian feels standing on the podium, reflecting on the tedious, strenuous days, weeks, months, and years that were dedicated to reaching that goal. 

So be encouraged if you’re feeling like your job isn’t the daydream you envisioned. It isn’t supposed to be. Your happiness doesn’t depend on the perfect job. It depends on the right attitude; You get to control it if you’re willing to put in the work.