5 myths about a ‘dream job’ that you need to stop believing

When we were children, most of us might have unnumerable encounters with adults who had an unyielding curiosity about our future, especially about the career we wanted to pursue.

Therefore, it’s not strange to find a grown-up man, or for that matter, a woman, kneel down in front of a child and ask, “Beta, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

The importance of making the right career choice is taught to us from our school days itself and no wonder, a lot of children grew up writing essays on “My Aim in Life” as a part of class assignments in school.

The idea of a ‘dream job’ is sold to us with innumerable promises like how your life will miraculously become beautiful once you find a dream job or how you would fall in love with what you do.

Sadly, there are a lot of myths surrounding the idea of a dream job. Let’s look at a few such myths that we need to stop believing in.

Wrong. No matter how much you love your job or like doing what you do, it will never stop feeling like work. A lot of people build their careers around their passion. For example, in case you love writing, you can turn into an author or if you love travelling, you can choose travel blogging as your career. You might love your job but there will always be deadlines to stick to, competition and the pressure to perform. So, it’s better to stop believing in the myth that says, “when you love what you do, it would not feel like work/job.”

A lot of us grow up believing a ‘dream job’ to be a constant entity, something that will never change. For example, if your dream job is to become a doctor and cure people or to become an astronaut and explore space, this is only one aspect of the job or profession you are thinking about. When you think about a dream job, most people do not take into consideration the other people he would be working with or the goals, deadlines and office politics. Even if you succeed in getting a dream job and work with people you always wanted to associate with, there are chances that things, colleagues, boss or the work demands would change. So, what might seem like an ideal situation, in the beginning, may not be the same then. So, this belief that once you have a dream job you would not want to another job is totally misleading.

A lot of people believe that money may not matter if you have job satisfaction. This means if you find your dream job, you would be happy compromising with your salary. But let’s not forget our passion cannot pay our bills. It’s true that money cannot buy happiness but we surely need money to buy things that make us happy, right? You might be happy working for the underprivileged or travelling the world if that’s what your job demands and you are passionate about it. You might be happy and satisfied initially but once you realise how difficult it is to run a home with limited money, then perhaps you would want to do something that will pay your bills.

First, this statement is misleading because our happiness does not merely depend on our professional life. It’s true that when you have a stable job that meets all your expectations, it surely would have a positive impact on your life. But a ‘dream’ job alone cannot be accountable for a happy life, right? Everyone has his own definition of happiness and surely, it is not just defined by a ‘dream’ job as most children are made to believe in.

It’s believed that once you fulfill your childhood dream of bagging the job you have always dreamt of, everything will fall into place. It will make you feel powerful and satisfied because that’s what you have been working so hard for, right? You have studied hard to pass examinations, completed degrees so that it brings you closer to your professional goals, etc. Most people work hard for the first two decades of their life hoping it will fulfill their dreams and once they start working, they will have the power to shape their lives as they want. But it’s far from the truth. Every job, including your dream job, comes with its own set of challenges and hurdles, and as a professional, you will have to work hard to overcome those. A job cannot magically make you powerful, you will need to work hard to achieve that.