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.
