“The irony of life is that you can perform at a high level doing things you don’t necessarily love to do.”
– Jonathon Kovacheff, Organizational Psychologist
It is not uncommon to meet and talk to people working for over ten years, even twenty, on a job that they don’t necessarily love to do.
“This is what I know and I’m being paid well for doing it. Besides, I don’t put in a lot of effort because it had become a routine for me.”
“I can’t afford to leave my work and venture to do what I really love to do because I have a mortgage and bills to pay. I can’t take the risk”
“I want to get into another field but nobody would want to interview with me because my current work is all I have done for the past ten years.”
It is no wonder that “75% of the global workforce is not engaged” (Kevin Sheridan, September 2009) and thereby not performing up to their potentials. So does this mean that everyone is just wading through and getting from one payroll to the next? What happens when one day you wake up realizing that the job that you are doing did not fulfill you? What happens when you are looking to do something that is meaningful and that actually makes a difference in the lives of others? It happens to many people and this is as common an occurrence as some would believe. In fact, the need for meaningful work would sometimes trump the need for high pay.