Consistently, the most successful people report that they love what they do and can’t wait to get up every morning to work on it. Research bears this out: “people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests” (97). Performance also improves when work is aligned with a person’s interests. A recent Gallup poll, however, shows that two-thirds of American workers are “not engaged” with their work, and that figure is worse nearly everywhere else in the world.

This epidemic of disengagement would be cured if people pursued their passions as careers. But how do we discover our passion? The myth is that a person learns of it in a blazing moment of insight. For most grittily successful people, though, the process takes much longer. Award-winning chef Marc Vetri pursued music and stumbled onto cooking as a career. Rowdy Gaines tried many sports before settling on swimming. Julia Child was in her 40s before she discovered a love for delicious food, and it took years more before she truly loved to cook. Most young people, though, have “unrealistic expectations” and hold out for a ready-made perfect job—or the perfect mate, for that matter—not realizing that great careers, like great relationships, are grown and nurtured over time.