If you do what you love, you’ll love what you do. And you’ll feel so much better, even though you may not make as much money. Surveys and studies show across the board that daily going to a job you hate creates stress.

Doing what you love doesn’t necessarily mean throwing in the towel and moving to France so you can paint for the rest of your life. It means exploring what you’re good at (and/or enjoy doing) to see if there’s a way you can earn an income from it. For example, can you take courses that would allow you to enter a field you prefer? The promise of a more satisfying future achieved with the right credentials often reduces chronic stress arising from the prospect of the same old same old. Although expanding your educa tion or training may involve some short-term stress from the added responsibilities, in the long term it gives you a more hopeful future, which in turn will reduce stress. Sometimes doing what you love means accepting that you’re not very good at management and would prefer a nonmanagerial position. For many people, the solution is to work in the store instead of running it. On the flip side, you may find that doing what you love means facing the fact that you are a leader and find it stressful to be in a subordinate position. In this case, perhaps starting your own company (where you have control) may be less stressful, even though it involves far more responsibility. Although many have failed, there are still some who have found success starting Internet businesses and home-based businesses, taking advantage of new technologies and access to a global market through the Internet. Another way to satisfy a craving for control or leadership is to move to positions in large companies that allow you to start a new venture as an “intrapreneur,” or a manager with an entrepreneur’s authority. Millions of other independent-minded employees work as traveling salespeople, who receive a gas or car allowance and work mostly on commission with a small base salary. These positions offer the flexibility and the control oflifestyle that can enable employees to feel autonomous. Some people can’t support themselves by doing what they love, so they downshift by moving to a simple side job with flexible hours. The side job pays the bills, and the flexible schedule allows time for art or another main interest. Couriers, postal workers, restaurant servers, and so forth frequently have more artistic lifestyles. If a job simply supports your art, it is less important than a job that is part of your career. A side job is less stressful because it doesn’t consume your life. If you lose one side job, it’s easy to get another. In other words, side jobs involve detachment, while career-jobs involve attachment and far more emotional investment. Sometimes doing what you love means facing up to the fact that your dream job or profession has become a living nightmare. This is not an easy thing to admit, because it often demands a major change. For example, imagine an overworked medical resident in a busy university teaching hospital. When she admits she spends most of her time filling out insurance paperwork, she decides that she’s packing up and becoming a country doctor in an underserviced rural area. She won’t become the brilliant heart surgeon her family dreamed of; she won’t earn $350,000 per year, not including the conference perks. Instead, she’ll settle for a third of that salary in a rural setting where the housing is affordable and people say hello to her.

Pursuing what you love involves four steps:

1. Ask yourself whether you’re happy with your choice of job or career. Being happy is not the same thing as feeling stable or not miserable. If you’re not happy, persisting in a state of unhappiness is unhealthy.

2. Make a list of dream jobs or careers, no matter how silly you think you’re being. Always wanted to be a dancer, but are making a living in marketing? Maybe you can pursue administrative or marketing jobs with a dance company or dance theater. Maybe you can write about dance or start a children’s dance school. Always wanted to be a farmer? Why not? Organic farming is booming! Dream jobs can also mean parenting. If being a stay-at-home parent is your dream, it’s worth pursuing, too.

3. Assess whether you hate your profession, or just your job or locale. How portable is your profession? If you have a job that’s in demand everywhere, like Webmaster, writer, or teacher, find a more suitable city or town to live in, and just start working. The Internet can make many careers portable. Are you a burned-out secretary? Start your own secretarial services company on the Web. (If there isn’t a “secretary. com” yet, someone should start one!)

4. Talk to your family members, and seek their support to pursue something else. If your family members are not behind you, pursuing what you love may be more difficult and may make you face deep questions about your emotional support system. Pursuing your dreams sometimes requires leaving relationships or marriage. In assessing what you want, you may discover that all these years, you’ve been living behind a mask or simply going through the motions of your existence.