What should I do for a living? between what I am good at and I really like.
Are you doing your job because you really like it?
I know this is a very serious question that can arouse very uncomfortable sentiments for the most people including myself. yet still that is a very significant question that every single person on the earth must think about at least once. I have thrown the same question to myself as many times as other people do.
So, what is your answer to the question?
Unfortunately NO. Honestly, I didn’t like my job in the beginning. I have barely seen people totally satisfied with their job anyway.
So, what do you do for a living?
I do the Software Engineer in IT company in South Korea, but the thing is that I am not doing the job because I am good at it or fond of it. Actually I didn’t want to accept the fact that I am doing the job in the reality because I had never expected anywhere anytime in the near future back then to have that kind of job since I wasn’t even majoring in computer science or any majors that have at least a little relevance to the Information Technology industry.
Then, what is wrong about the question about what you are good at and what you like to do?
Throughout the times that I struggled to catch up with other colleagues who at least have basic understanding of computer science ever since I got admitted to work in IT company, the question that tortured me every time I felt depressed and tired of learning new things in a short span of time, competing with programming genius, forced me to think this way
“I am not good at it. Even I don’t know I can even make it either. What am I doing here? Is it what you really wanted? pictured?”
But one day at some point, I realized that what I am good at and what I really like to do, in fact, does not really matter. What really matters is Choice.
It had been difficult times for me to go through all the tech training sessions for 6 months to get ready for the actual project engagement because I had to start from the scratch. And naturally, I came to feel weak, vulnerable and unsure about the choice that I made to challenge myself in the new field. Then, I just kept saying “I am not good at it, I don’t like it either. I can’t possibly be doing this. I have spent whole times on Vietnamese Studies and English Literature in university. This is wrong.”
And one moment, It has dawned on me that I was evading the truth, the responsibility deriving from the choice made by myself.
Then, how did you take the responsibility for the choice?
Foremost and first, I redefined the meaning of What you are good at.
What does it mean by that? the thing you are good at. I thoroughly meditated the meaning of it. Then, it came down to that how on earth people can possibly be good at something at the very beginning of something? it doesn’t work out like that, people don’t get themselves good at something in the blink of an eye. They invest pretty huge amount of time and effort as much as needed. After all those years of learning curve, they could reach some point they may have expected one day. That is exactly how it works out.
Then, I defined What you really like.
Simply, what I liked isn’t what I really like. You can like anything you want, but how much you really like it is a complicated problem that you can’t just simply measure. Furthermore, you can’t like it even if you decided to like it.
The true action of “like” comes from entertainment that gives you inner motivation to try it again and again over times. But how can you possibly like something hard, difficult, complicated?
The answer is simple. Be good at it.
The bottom line is “Invest your time to be good at it till you like it no matter what you did before, no matter how difficult it is as of now. All depend on you choice to face it.”
I’d love to share my thought, story, and life with anyone interested. I am one of the most ordinary guys who try to overcome myself in my own way. I want to call it a life-engineering. Anyone interested in the life-engineering, feel free to come to me and communicate. Thanks!
