Making Way For Passion
A guest post from Hayley Dawson PhD
I love what
’s doing with , so I was thrilled when she agreed to a Substack swap (a Subswap? A swapstack?). You can see my end of the swap at the bottom - but not before you’ve read her brilliant words! I definitely have a lot of questions about the Google search history, on top of a lot of agreement with her view on passion…
I’ve always admired people who decided what they wanted to do at the age of eight and never wavered.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” brings so much pressure, doesn’t it? The only thing I can really remember of my childhood and teenage years is trying to work out how to answer that oh-so-loaded question.
I went through a phase where I wanted to teach anything I was remotely interested in. A swimming teacher, a karate teacher, a music teacher – they all did the rounds. When it came to choosing what to study at university I was going through a Spanish phase, so nobody was surprised when I chose a Spanish degree and planned to teach it.
Other people’s opinions on the teaching versus translation debate threw a spanner in the works. Translation and interpreting were always presented as the big sister to teaching – the fancier, richer, travel-the-world type. I forgot about teaching and trained as a translator.
I’d translate Spanish films, series and documentaries for popular streaming services, train other translators, research translation, and present my work at conferences. I’d spend my days racking up a bizarre Google search history as I looked up the topics, vocab, and nuances of what I was working on. What is the biggest robbery in Spain’s history? Synonyms for “murder”. Poison for quick elimination. My work was fun and, for a long time, I believed I was working on my passion.
Over time, the decade-long career I had built became less fulfilling. An uncontrollable urge to knock everything down and rebuild replaced the energy I once had. Why was I opting to start from scratch? Wasn't I doing something I loved? I thought I had found my passion?
Reluctant to put myself “behind” where I thought I should be in work and life, I continued to blast down the path I had worked so hard to carve. It reminded me of my younger years as I’d sit in front of the PlayStation and make Crash Bandicoot whizz around collecting gold coins – winning didn’t bother me. But now, as an adult, I wanted to tick all the career boxes, reach the milestones expected of me, and cross the finish line with pockets full of gold coins.
Still, I couldn’t shake the urge to rebuild it all. Something deep inside me was battling to escape.
In his book, Mastery1, Robert Greene shares that a seed is planted in us at a young age – an inner force that guides us towards our calling. The seed was clear to us as children as it drew us to things that fit our natural inclinations. As we grow up, the seed fades away.
My seed was teaching, and it had been buried under the responsibilities of life, expectations of others, sacrifices, trauma, and the shiny objects that caught my eye. I had let them pile up and squash my seed down.
Despite having worked hard to reach that point in my career, I felt flat and unbothered. I wanted to retract from my work and run towards what was calling me – whatever that was. I needed to unearth my seed from the stuff I had chucked on top of it.
You see, what we liked doing as a child is what we really want to do. Our passions and interests sprout from the seed and lead us down the most fulfilling paths, but only if we allow them.
We all have a childhood story that tells us who we were before the world got in the way and started dictating what we should do and who we should be. It’s the story that shows what we’re passionate about.
Giving in to the urge to rebuild helped me make way for my passion. I became interested in the way we build our lives, our careers, our confidence, and our ambitions, so quite naturally I wanted to teach it. I found myself creating workshops based on the questions we can ask ourselves to build different areas of our lives. And I’ve never been happier.
It’s safe to say that our passions never really leave us. We just need to make space for them to grow and take shape as we do.
Hayley Dawson is the founder of The Blocks Academy. She created the business to encourage people to develop the self-understanding and confidence needed to build their self, career and dream. Named in Small Business Britain’s 2023 campaign as one of the UK’s top 100 inspiring entrepreneurs, Hayley delivers workshops and talks to organisations and universities. She has a decade of experience as a speaker and educator, and previously carved her own career path as a teacher, Spanish translator and subtitler, lecturer, trainer, PhD scholar and researcher. Hayley’s work is now a fun mixture of helping people to squash their self-doubt, craft their career, and find their feel-good ambition.
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