For some people, true passion comes naturally. They find it with ease during childhood or adolescence, eventually devoting their life’s work to the area they love. For others, it can be much more of a struggle — nothing seems to fit perfectly. However, Caleb Deason of Texas notes that volunteering may be the ticket to finally finding one’s true passion.
Community service allows people to explore their skills, develop new ones, and discover the areas they genuinely believe in. Ultimately, this enables them to forge a career path they’re proud of and wholly fulfilled by.
Test Driving Careers to Find the Perfect Fit
Volunteering can be considered a career “test drive.” The brilliant minds at SEEK Volunteer use the surprisingly apt flight simulator analogy — if it isn’t quite right, there’s no risk of crashing.
Participating in community service programs allows individuals to road test their desired careers. And if it isn’t what they expected, they can easily transition to something else with no trouble.
Naturally, this approach to finding one’s passion doesn’t work for those already deep into a career. Brett Wilkinson, the chief executive of Volunteering Australia, notes that volunteering can also serve as a way to do something completely different in order to obtain a desirable work-life balance.
Volunteering: Helping People Find Their Passions
Volunteering is beneficial for everyone involved; those in-need receive assistance while those providing the assistance foster relationship skills, combat depression, increase self-confidence, and, of course, find their purpose.
A surprising number of people take on a variety of volunteer roles that don’t directly relate to their careers. However, each project brings them one step closer to identifying their true passions in life. From combating deforestation to rescuing animals from dire circumstances to understanding people from various cultural backgrounds, volunteering unlocks the heart’s passion padlock.
The former Oxfam executive director, Rachael Le Mesurier, told SEEK Volunteer that many volunteers are actually individuals who are reassessing their present career path. They join organizations to explore what it means to work for an entity focused on long-term positive development and social change.
Le Mesurier went on to state that community service efforts provide people with an opporunity to test assumptions and expectations before jumping straight into an all-new working world. In fact, Oxfam’s volunteers have purportedly said that taking on volunteering roles has been life changing for all the right reasons.
Getting the Most Out of Community Service
To find true passion through volunteering, experts encourage people to step outside their comfort zones and try something they’ve never done before.
After the experience, reflecting on the time spent in the role is advantageous, allowing individuals to figure out what actually drives them and elicits happiness.
Micro Volunteering Could Be the Best Way to Start Passion Searching
Despite what it may seem, volunteering to find personal passion doesn’t need to be six-month stints halfway across the globe. Those who aren’t sure where to start can try out micro volunteering.
These short-term roles are flexible and can even be done from the comfort of the home, ensuring that anybody can find their true passion through all manner of community service projects.
