When you think about the fact that all of my blogs are written to help job seekers find their ideal job, you're probably wondering why on earth I would write a blog about Patrick Swayze. The answer is simple. Rather than mulling over his death this week, I found myself thinking about all that we can learn from his career as he spent a short 57 years of life with us.

Why, you might ask, would someone want to spend his last few years as an actor rather than fulfilling other personal dreams? Patrick Swayze answered it best when he said, "'How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you're a dead man? You go to work.'' Simply put, Swayze loved his job as an actor and could think of nothing better to do as he lived out the remainder of his life.

You might say that he was a gifted actor… yet his greatest gift was not his ability to act. His gift was that he was one of a minority of people who had found his passion and was able to fully integrate it into his life. It's probably the same reason that my grandmother worked until she was 95 serving meals to elderly people. It was who she was, not what she did.

Dirty Dancing still remains one of my all time favorite movies. True... I have an affinity for musicals, but this one was different. It taught us the important lesson that as long as you are determined to do something, you can do it, regardless of whether you are currently qualified for it. Swayze's character Johnny turned a young woman with no dance experience into a successful dancer. In the final dance number, she surpassed her own expectations and everyone else's in the audience. I still get chills thinking about Patrick's famous phrase, "No one puts Baby in the corner".