Wednesday 9 December 2015

Trying to make a living off your passion when you are passed your thirties

I often read articles of highly successful people that they have demonstrated with big determination that a passion can evolve to a successful career. The case number of these people being relatively young outnumbers of those making it at an older age.

I have also noticed that in my field of expertise, which is travel and hospitality, the word entrepreneur has started becoming a very familiar term, especially for those travelers that have accumulated certain experience in a short period of time and they possess enough pro activity and creativity to build and sell a product or service out of a passion.


In both case scenarios, the common factor is their young age. Unsurprisingly, the advance in technology and social media makes easier to younger generations to study, travel and build professional profiles. Any person with access to the Internet can get into the professional world and, nowadays, age does not seem to be an issue to grow and succeed in a career. At a young age, that is.

Instagram profiles are full of pro activity; the word entrepreneur is almost starting to become a hashtag on its own right. What is most surprising is that most of these people are building their own businesses and brands out of something that they have a genuine interest towards to; it is something that they feel really passionate about it. Once this passion is recognized, then other skills are clearly necessary to build the cements of something big and profitable.

Companies, investors and older well established entrepreneurs get excited and interested when a young person possesses potential good ideas that can become brilliant. A clear example of this, are several articles written on successful people where their age is a powerful remark.

I love reading these articles because they motivate me in several ways, especially when the person and I share the same passion, I get excited recognizing common traits and I can easily picture myself succeeding equally. However, at the same time, these same articles leave me with a feeling of unease.

I’m older that most of these people that are succeeding in their life at a young age. When I looked back to my professional life and personal achievements, I recognize very humbly that I have done a lot, learnt a lot, I have made wise choices and some awful ones and achieved childhood dreams like travelling the world.


All of these things; each job, position, company, country and trips have helped me to build a strong personality and a willingness to succeed and achieve. I made some bad choices and in the meantime, while I sometimes got it wrong and some others right, the years passed quickly. It wasn’t until a later stage in life that I could enjoy fully my passion for travelling, my most important trip just recently happened.

And I’m back to where I was, out of work but excited because it is at my current age that I am for the first time aware that I want to build a life around my passion for travelling. But I feel that I, somehow, need to explain myself over and over again and almost apologize because it has taken me my whole life to understand what I should do.

This society is cruel, because I feel there is a subtle discrimination regarding age and sometimes society makes you feel that you are too late knocking on people’s door.

Society is wrong because I am fortunate to know what I’m good at and feel passionate about it before I die. My age doesn’t determine my ability to work hard and ultimately, succeed. If anything, the fact that I’m older makes me wiser and with a better understanding of the world.

I believe we should all be praised based on who we truly are and not so much focusing the attention of how much a person has achieved based on the age they are. Some people are lucky to find their passion and pursuing their dreams at an early age and some of us, we do it a bit later. 

I think we need to simply recognize that where there is passion; there is a willingness to succeed.





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