Finding your passion isn't a race

By: Roberta Gudiño

Yes, just as you’ve read it. Finding whatever your passionate about and what you want

to do for a living isn’t a race against time. Actually, it can take many years for a person

to realize what they’re really meant to do. Take Charles Duhigg, for example.

Charles Duhigg was born in New Mexico, in 1974. He had a completely normal life there

and he graduated from Yale and got an MBA at Harvard Business School. Everything

was looking up for him until now, huh? Well, after a day of working for private equity for

a day, he realized that he actually wanted to pursue journalism. Many people he knew

thought he was wasting his time and that it was a bad decision because an MBA from

Harvard would’ve opened so many doors for him in the business world, and it would’ve

granted him easy riches. However, he decided to go against the current.

He was rejected from many prestigious jobs, but he argues that those rejections made

him learn that the way to a meaningful life with a satisfactory job and a sense of

accomplishment is through overcoming obstacles because those taught him to build up

persistence. He then landed a job as a staff writer in The Los Angeles Times. He

worked there for a while until he landed a job as a reporter for The New York Times.

Duhigg was one of the reporters of a team that won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for a series

of 10 articles that talked about the practices of Apple and other tech companies. He also

published in 2012 a New York Times’s bestseller book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do

What We Do In Life and Business.

As you can tell, Charles Duhigg is just one of the many success stories from “late

bloomers” or people that realized where their passion was later in life. People don’t

have to know what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives by the age of 18.

Actually, just 27 percent of recent college graduates end up in a job that’s related to

their major! So don’t stress out if you still don’t know what you want to do for the rest of

your life, you’ll realize it soon enough.

Sources:

Livni, E. (2019, February 23). Why late bloomers are happier and more successful.

Retrieved February 2, 2020, from https://qz.com/1556797/why-late-bloomers-are-

happier-and-more-successful/

Duhigg, C. (n.d.). About. Retrieved February 2, 2020, from

https://charlesduhigg.com/about/

PeoplePill. (n.d.). Charles Duhigg: American writer - Biography, Life, Family, Career,

Facts, Information. Retrieved February 2, 2020, from

https://peoplepill.com/people/charles-duhigg/

Plumer, B. (2013, May 20). Analysis | Only 27 percent of college grads have a job

related to their major. Retrieved February 2, 2020, from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/20/only-27-percent-of-college-

grads-have-a-job-related-to-their-major/