Do you love what you do or do what you love

This is a very interesting phrase and compelled me to think, how in life we slowly and steadily carve a path for ourselves. We juggle between doing what we love and loving what we do.

I was always a hyper active kid, so to channelize my energy my mom decided a sport - Table Tennis for me. During those days, I enjoyed cycling but then the rigorous training didn’t leave me with much time or energy to enjoy other sports. I found myself in a group that played professionally, unlike the others who played for fun – in a different league that “separates the men from the boys”

I soon started enjoying the game and put my heart & soul into it. I played my first nationals when I was at age 10 and went on to play and enjoy the game till 10th standard – which happens to be the first milestone of our academics in India. I had to briefly leave the game due to academic pressures. And boy did I study hard and even scored well. Burning the mid-night oil left me with no energy and time to play so my priorities gradually changed, and the next 2 years were all about studies. And suddenly all that mattered was studies and the game that I had invested for nearly a decade, was not a priority anymore.

During these many years I realized how many bifurcations I had witnessed from the group I started my life with - be it because of the choices in subjects that we made or the choice of colleges or the places that we relocated. Slowly the people I started schooling with were lost due to my interest in my game, then when was the choice of subjects I wanted to study and then the specialization I chose in my post-graduation.

At the time of placement few of us were selected. All of us were naive to the corporate world and were just excited to be hired. We relied completely on the discretion of our seniors to select a job based on our skills sets. Although all of us had studied similar subjects but each of us brought something unique to the table and thus were selected for different roles in the same function of HR.

I started as a generalist in my career and loved the role. I finally found my calling and am elated to be doing something that I am good at (or so I feel). Today after 6 years in my career I questioned myself, was this something I wanted to do all this while? I would not have been sure of the answer few years back. But now after I have been given something to do, I invested myself in it and loving every bit of this journey.

The crux is that life is a combination of choices that you make in terms of things that you ‘wanted’ to and things that you ‘have’ to do (because of the choices you make). Some are lucky, but mostly all of us go through the path of making choices of loving what we do and doing what we love. I believe, give everything your best shot and it will gradually become something you will love to do.

And in the end, just to add a small bit of information-nothing goes waste!

I have started playing Table Tennis again and have represented my organization. So keep learning and enjoying everything you do.

Wish you all the best with you careers.

I would like to hear from you on this interesting topic, please write to me or feel free to share your thoughts here.

Cheers.