Work motivation should come from one’s love towards the job itself. Many people still think that we can only love our job if it goes in accordance with our passion. In fact, the statement was not entirely true. This subject was discussed during Career Talk UPH under the topic “How to Love Your Life and Job” which was held on February 3, 2020, in UPH Lippo Village, Tangerang.

“Having and knowing your passion as early as possible is a good thing. But it’s not everything and we should not let the problem about passion limits and traps us. We should be very careful of the word “passion” because a misconception of it can lead us to have false hope,” said Henry Manampiring, Author of Filosofi Teras.

Aside from Henry, Vancelia Wiradjaja – Director of Xing Fu Tang Indonesia, and Priscilla Pangemanan – Co-Founder of SASC were also present at the event.

For Vancelia, one way to love our job is by practicing the work-life balance. This way, we can manage our stress and direct it to positive activities.

“I think that enjoying our work is important; even as we are facing lots of problems, we can always channel those obstacles for our growth,” she added.

On the other hand, Henry said that loving our work is more than just about being happy.

“We don’t work to be happy. Happiness is the side effect that we obtained from doing something according to our value and strength. The love for our work can disappear when we feel stuck, or when we don’t grow bigger than we already are,” said Henry.

However, Priscilla said something a little bit different about being an entrepreneur. According to her, we can measure the amount of love we have for our work starting from the time we wake up in the morning. If we have this high spirit, if we look forward to the things we are going to do every single day, then we can be sure that we do love our work.

“For example, when I wake up everyday I am really happy to have meeting schedules with A, B, and C. I can’t wait to do all of my schedule. Oddly, when I am on my day off, I want to go back to work as soon as possible because I miss my work. I can feel like this because I see SASC not just as my passion, but my mission, “ she stated.

Priscilla believes that in both the professional and entrepreneur world, stress and boredom are very common. It can come from many sources such as negative comments from customers or clients. Priscilla think that in order to get over these two negative emotions, one should learn to listen, to say sorry, and to try fix any mistakes they might have made.

Vancelia, who has experienced similar things, also added that negative comments are actually useful to let the company know what they are lacking, and thus learn to become better in the future. Whereas for Henry, he believes that each negative comment has a value of its own.

Through the program held by Student Executive Board (BEM) in collaboration with Career Center UPH, hopefully, students are motivated to dive into the professional world as they will be graduating soon. This year, Career Talk becomes the closing event of Career Expo which presents 45 companies on February 14-15, 2020.