In the past decade or so, I have been invited to a number of interviews for accounting position – which opportunities I sincerely appreciated. While the questions posted during interviews are generally predictable, there is one question that all interviewers have never failed to ask, i.e. why I decided to convert from Engineering to Accountancy. The answer to that is actually quite simple – Talent and Passion. The concept of talent and passion may sound logical and easy to understand, however many choose not to pursue them for one reason or another.

In this article, I will elaborate on how decision making process which incorporates the assessment of talent and passion has provided me with more (and better) business and professional opportunities. If you are just starting out in your career, you should seriously consider pursuing opportunities that are aligned to both your talent and passion. 

Do what you LOVE and you’ll never work a day in your LIFE!

Ah-ha! So you are now convinced that understanding the concept of talent and passion is paramount in achieving success in professional or business life? However, before implementing this key concept in life, there are 3 fundamental issues that we have to understand. 

• What is talent and passion?
• Why pursue your talent and passion?
• How can you discover your talent and passion?

What is talent and passion? 

Let us look at passion first. In simplest terms, passion is something that you love doing. Generally, each person is passionate about more than one activity. Someone may love to cook, play piano and watch movies. Another probably loves to read, travels and plays basketball. 

Passion generally develops through life experience and is not something that you are born with. For example, someone may develop her passion in playing piano because she has seen someone playing piano and therefore develops an deep interest in it. It simply makes no sense to say that she was born with a deep interest in playing piano. 

The second success factor that we need to understand is talent. Talent is not simply something that you can do very well, but it is something that you can perform better than others with relatively lesser amount of effort. 

Unlike passion, talent is something you are born with and unfortunately is not something that you can learn or develop over time. Well, you can be very good at doing certain activity by doing it over the years, but without talent you will be taking significantly more time to master that activity as compared to someone who is born with a talent for that particular activity. 

While I can’t prove this scientifically, I believe that each and every single person in the world was born with at least one talent. It is a matter of finding it, which unfortunately there are many who never find it in a life time. 

Personally, the reason that I left Engineering is due to the lack of talent which eventually resulted in the loss of passion.

I used to love science and mathematics subjects back then in secondary and JC school days. Being a ‘slightly more than average’ science student, I eventually decided to pursue an Engineering Degree in NTU. To my horror surprise, there was a large number of talented Engineers-to-be in NTU. I spent countless of hours studying for my year 1 Engineering exams and the results were far from what they should be. On the other hand, my friends who were talented in engineering spent much lesser time studying and obtained the grades which were beyond imagination. I could easily prove that they were not studying secretly as we were all living in the same hall of residence. While I was desperately studying for exams to the early hours of the day , they were happily playing online games in their rooms with the door wide open. 

It is hard to keep your passion in something if you can’t do well in it despite putting in maximum amount of effort. Acknowledging that I was not born to be an Engineer, I ‘gave up’ on Engineering and began signing up for business modules under Nanyang Business School in the expense of my own core Engineering subjects. I did not quite quit Engineering, I was just pursuing so called ‘Double Degree’ unofficially. It was a risky bet, but I knew life could not go on that way. I was clueless about Finance, Marketing, HR and even Accountancy. But, I loved them! The more I read about them, the more excited I was. Surprisingly, it did not take long for me to understand what the writers were trying to convey! 

Unfortunately, no one told me that I have to pursue something that not only I am passionate in, but it has to be something which I was born to do as well. If you are still in University or Polytechnic and found yourself struggling in your course of study, I understand how you feel as I have been there before. I believe the best course of action is for you to start looking for your talent and passion and align all your activities towards them. A decade from now, you will find yourself tap dancing to work as how Warren Buffett calls it. 

Why pursue your talent and passion? 

These are the Top 3 benefits of pursuing your talent and passion. I hope that they can keep you motivated if you are currently going through the phase I was going through in the past decade. 

• Lead a more fulfilling and happier life. 
• Enjoy a better standard of living. 
• Build a wider social network. 

Lead a more fulfilling and happier life

I can still vividly remember the days when I was doing professional attachment at the end of the third year of my study in NTU Engineering. Due to the lack of talent in Engineering, I could only manage to secure a position in a local firm with around 5 employees – 2 of them were my school mate from NTU and the other one being myself. 

By then, I have already been in the midst of transitioning my skill sets to business and … have also completely lost my passion in Engineering. It was a nightmare that lasted for 6 months. I hated what I was doing, dragging my feet to work and extremely demoralized all day long doing something that I completely was not interested in. Unfortunately, the sense of hopelessness did not end on Friday! The emotional torture continued through the weekend and hit the peak on Sunday evening to the point that it affected the people around me. 

While I knew it was only a professional attachment and it would be all over after 6 months, however I told myself that this is not the kind of lifestyle I would want to lead for the next 40 or 50 years of my professional life! I decided to escalate the intensity and accelerate the transition process to the business world. 

More than a decade later, I jump out of my bed every morning looking forward to what I will be doing for the day. While I still continue running several projects on the weekend, I do it at my own choice. I have since stopped doing works that I am not passionate in and I am now leading a much more fulfilling and happier life. 

The transition journey has not been an easy one, but if I can do it, you can do it too! 

Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing. 

– Warren Buffett –

Enjoy a better standard of living

Since the collapse of Soviet Union in early 1990s, it is probably clear that capitalist economic system prevails. In capitalist economic system, one of the ways to enhance our standard of living is through increasing our level of income. 

Discovering and pursuing your talent and passion will ignite a chain of events which eventually allows you to raise your level of income. I have illustrated the chain of events through a simple diagram below. 

Talent and Passion –> Positive Impression –> More Opportunities –> Higher Level of Income –> Enhanced Standard of Living 

Let’s see how this chain of events works in more detailed. 

Being passionate about what you are doing provides certain level of comfort to recruiters, employers and clients that you will be performing your tasks to best possible manner. Being talented gives assurance to the employers and clients that you will be able to solve their problems effectively and more efficiently as compared to the next guy. In combination, having both talent and passion creates a positive impression about you. 

I had the privilege of working with 3 of the largest global recruitment firms (Robert Walters, Robert Half and Michael Page) in my last 3 assignments. Having worked with them, I learnt that being prominent recruitment firms, they can be quite influential to their clients – which is your employer-to-be! It is therefore important that that they do form a positive impression about you as they will in turn convince their clients that you are their top candidate for the position. In addition, I also learnt that as long as I can create the initial positive impression with them, they will be more willing to share the opportunities that they have at hand. 

Ability is nothing without opportunity

– Napoleon Bonaparte – 

Obviously, having more opportunities means that you have a higher chance to land yourself a position which provides a higher level of income, which in turn enhancing your standard of living. However, if you are still in the first decade of your professional life, I believe pursuing opportunities which provide you with the highest learning experience will be a wiser option.  

Learning opportunity provides you with better skills set which will then lead to a higher level of income, but unfortunately the equation does not work the other way round. Position offering higher level of income does not guarantee that you will be able to improve your skills set – which can prove to be quite risky into the future. 

Build a wider social network 

Whether your future aspiration is to climb corporate ladder or build your own business, the importance of having a wide social network cannot be under-emphasized. Should you choose to progress in the corporate environment, there will be a point of time when you will have to lead a team in your chosen field. It is crucial that you start building a network of highly competence professionals so that one day you can consolidate them together as a single strong team. The significance of having a strong social network is self-explanatory if you decide to build your own business. You simply have no business if you do not know people and people do not know you. Nevertheless, thanks to Google, Facebook and other digital marketing firms, building a business network has never been easier than ever before!   

It is human nature that we enjoy being with people who are confident, optimistic and see their life as an exciting journey. Pursuing your talent and having passion for what you are doing will give you a purpose of existence in life and sense of satisfaction which will in turn, motivates others to live their life to the fullest too.  

While there is no doubt being passionate about professional or business life attracts like-minded individuals and expands your social network widely, it is also important to balance your personal network. I am personally still trying to find the secret formula that can allow me to balance professional / business network and keep up with as many as personal friendships possible.  

I will edit this section when I discover the magic trick.

How can you discover your talent and passion? 

Congratulations! If you manage to read the article up to this point, that means you are serious about having a better quality of life. In my opinion, discovering your talent and passion should be done at the earliest possible time, ideally while you are still in school (Polytechnic or University) or in the first decade of your professional life. The longer you procrastinate, the harder it is for you to align your life to what it should be. 

So, how can you discover your talent and passion? This question is probably best answered through sharing of my own personal experience in discovering the amazing world of business – there is no other place I would rather be. 

I am rolling up my sleeves as I try to begin writing this section. It is not going to be an easy journey, but it can definitely be achieved and no words can described the satisfaction when you finally accomplish it. 

First of all, it is important to accept the fact that each person can have many activities that he or she is passionate about. However, each person would probably has only one or at best few talents. That is the reason why in discovering your talent, you should begin by looking for those activities that you are passionate about. 

Personally, I had been trying numerous activities that I enjoyed when I was younger. I played basketball. While I was regularly selected into school team, I did not make it to NBA eventually. I learnt piano. While my piano teacher felt that I had all the passion for it, she had serious doubt that I would ever be the next Beethoven. I even tried to learn ballroom dancing! Obviously, with the lack of talent, I did not go very far. The list goes on. 

You see, I did try out many things before I eventually discovered the world of business. It actually took me more than 25 years to discover it. 

If you serious about discovering something where your talent and passion are aligned, you should try out as many activities as possible. Your talent is likely to be hidden in one of those activities that you are passionate about. 

It takes many after-work nights to write and share this article. If you have not been tap dancing to work each day, I sincerely hope that this article can provide some forms of motivation and guidance on how you can eventually lead a more exciting professional and life journey. 

See you at the next article!