The question is not,”What do you want to do when you grow up?”
It’s, “Who do you want to be?”
How do you want to contribute?
What legacy do you want to leave when you’re gone?
It might be part of what you do for a living. It might not. More likely, it will be a whole-person approach to living.
Ask the right question and you’ll get a better answer.
That dream job you think about.
That perfect business you think of starting.
What if you couldn’t charge for it? What if you had to make your living doing something else?
Would you still want to do it?
If so, that’s a good definition of a calling in life.
Many of the greatest business and self-help books of all time are woefully outdated.
And I don’t mean the examples used in the books. The working world has changed so much that the underlying assumptions on which the books are based no long apply.
Work hard and get promoted. You’ll make more money.
Move up the ladder for more responsibility, greater impact, and a nicer life.
Specialize in a certain field or department. That’s how you win.
The problem is the ladder is gone. There’s nothing to climb anymore.
Middle managers on are the way out. You’re either a doer or a leader (and often both at the same time).
Specialists are getting replaced by AI. We don’t need as many of them anymore.
Hard work doesn’t really matter much anymore. A computer can work harder, faster, and cheaper than you.
What matters now are remarkable results, unforgettable impact, and connection with other people. And being able to use AI and all the other technology available to us as tools to achieve those three things.
It’s the rare person who stays with one company and gets promoted over and over, making more money each time.
More likely, you’ll bounce around to 15 different companies over your working life, becoming a generalist that can synthesize tons of different fields.
And before you know it, you’re making your own field, your own specialty job that combines everything you’ve learned into something new.
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One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from James Michener:
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion.
He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.
To him he’s always doing both.”
“What do I want to do when I grow up?”
We have all asked, or been asked, this question.
But it’s the the wrong one—it has multiple answers that change much too often.
Instead, ask yourself : “who do I want to be?”
How do I want to contribute?
What legacy do I want to leave when I am gone?
It might be part of what you do for a living, but it might not.
More likely, you will approach everything you do in life—your job and your personal relationships—with a new sense of wholeness and possibility.
If we start by asking the wrong question, we will never get the right answer.
But if you ask the right question, you’ll at least be on the path to the right answer.
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My mentor Dan Miller said something profound which I would like to share today:
(I’m paraphrasing) It is better to grow dandelions if that is what you are truly passionate about than it is to learn software development.
What does he mean? Instead of looking out there–into the world and the job market to see what jobs are there–look inward and find what you are both truly passionate about and skilled at doing. Then find a way to generate income with that passion and talent.
If you hate working with computers or can’t stand plugging in thousands of lines of code everyday, why would you spend time and money learning those skills? Simply to make a lot of money?
If you spend 1/3 of your day (and remember you also sleep 1/3) doing something you hate, will money really compensate you for your misery?
It is better to do something simple or common at an uncommonly high level of excellence, and find a way to generate income doing it, than it is to try to fit yourself into something you hate simply for money.
“For 95% of people out there, finding something they pretty much like to do most of the time would be a 100% improvement. Shoot for that, and from there, fine-tune toward the ideal.”
–Peter Bowerman, The Well-Fed Writer
Each of us wants to find that dream job that hits every single point on our “ideal career cheat sheet.” So we read, listen, take tests, research, and obsess over and over again without actually ever stepping foot into a field or career to test it out for ourselves, especially if that career is freelancing, entrepreneurship, or any sort of work where you are your own boss.
I’m learning each day what I want more than anything else is freedom and a better, more balanced lifestyle over some ideal dream job I can’t seem to figure out. That is why I’m exploring this freelance writing field. I’m a good writer (good enough), and I enjoy it well enough, and it would give me time and money to explore the other things I love in life–something my current situation doesn’t allow. I can’t say that I absolutely love every second of writing, every article I write, or every item I write about, but what I do love is the freedom.
My mentor, Dan Miller, has a saying: “passion is more developed than discovered.” Try something out and see if a passion for it, or some aspect of it, develops rather than waiting around for some ideal career to magically drop into your lap.
I’m not saying “what the hell–just pick something,” but perhaps I am saying “MERELY pick something.” Take something you think you might enjoy well enough, try it out, and see if it gets you closer to your ideal situation. You won’t know until you actually experience it. Then it becomes a step on the ladder to your ideal “dream career.” It’s a process of discovery and exploration.
I don’t think this quest for dream work is a true-false test, and neither is life. Everything we do is more of an open-ended essay question you get to write yourself.
The trick is to start writing.
Note: every now and then, I use affiliate links in my posts which gives me a small commission on anything purchased. This does not cost you a thing, but it does allow you to contribute and support the blog.
I asked myself this question a few days ago and elaborated on it in my journal. Specifically, I was asking myself, “How much money do I need to make to feel like I am making enough?”
Honestly, making more money right now would not bring me any more happiness. It’s not money that my conscience is crying out to gain: it is meaning, purpose, the ability to use my God-given talents and strengths to serve and help other people.
The income I make now is actually more than enough to satisfy my needs at this moment. So why am I not doing something that fills my cup?
Have you ever asked yourself what enough is? If you made $40,000 a year, could you live on that if it meant you were doing something you cared about so much and so thoroughly enjoyed you couldn’t dream of doing anything else?
My answer is yes. Yours may be different. At a certain point, making more money is just making more money. Studies tend to cap the increase in happiness that comes from money at about $75,000.
So what goal, idea, or passion is the quest for more money preventing you from pursuing?
Are you, perhaps, an artist who wants to paint? A musician who wants to play and teach? Or are you, like me, a teacher who simply wants to teach?
Ask yourself this question: could you, honestly, make a living knowing the starting or average income that job in your head receives? Could you survive, or even thrive, if it meant you were doing what you felt passionately called to do?
The irony is most of the time when you quit pursuing money and start pursuing passion in the service of others, more money than you imagined comes into your life.
How much is enough? Could you make it doing what you love?
(These are simply thoughts I needed to work out yesterday. Feel free to skip today’s post, as it is rather selfish. However, if you, for whatever reason, read all the way through this post, think about where all the signs in your life are pointing; ask yourself why you are hesitating going down the road.)
What do you do when all the signs are telling you to go a certain way? Why don’t you just go?
All the aptitude tests, interest assessments, and personal inventories tell you to go do this one thing, but still you hesitate.
Is it because you don’t know the next step to take? No, because you know the next step – get a graduate degree.
Is it because you don’t know the field in which to get the degree? Maybe…you do have trouble choosing between your varied interests.
Is it because of what you read and hear? Perhaps so.
“Professors don’t make a lot of money.”
“Most professors are adjuct, so they have work at multiple schools without receiving benefits from any of them.”
“Colleges are slowly dying – it’s hard to get a job at one, and it isn’t the most secure form of employment anymore. The cost of college is keeping people away, and the student loan crisis is going to cause all of them to fail.”
“You may be teaching in a field you love, but the students might not care about the material.”
“Half of the Ph.Ds out there are working in fields unrelated to their studies.”
Or perhaps it’s internal. Students are borrowing small fortunes without thinking to study things (or party but still somehow get the grade) that won’t guarantee them a stable job and a livable wage. That is something in which I cannot, in good conscience, involve myself.
Is it because you might have to stop working, taking a severe pay cut in order to attend?
Are you afraid you’ll fail? Perhaps you are worried you might get the degree, but you won’t be good enough/smart enough/talented enough/hard-working enough to be the best, which means you might not be sought out by the people who need the expertise you went to obtain.
Life is like a tuning fork: when struck, the tuning fork resonates a true pitch, one that doesn’t alter as long as it rings. Each of us is like a musician in an orchestra: we must strive to tune ourselves to that tuning fork, the true pitch ringing in our lives.
How much effort do we expend trying to create our lives, our careers, our families, based on how others have succeeded? We strive to emulate other families – keeing up with the Joneses next door. We constantly research which careers pay the most or have the most advancement potential, hoping that the next job is the right fit.
It doesn’t work.
Each of us has unique characteristics and traits we were either born with or developed over time. Would not we be better served in trying to find things in the world that matched us, rather than attempting to mold ourselves into something “out there” in the world?
It would be like a musician seeing a tuning fork then creating his own, hoping that it was the right pitch but with no knowledge of the subject (himself). Were he to use it to tune his instrument, he would find that the pitch isn’t correct.
Your mission in life isn’t something you create; neither is wisdom. Victor Frankl said that we detect rather than invent our missions in life. It’s already there: you must simply align yourself with it, not strive to create it.
Wisdom isn’t created – you cannot make yourself wise. You must seek it out, finding it in others who have come before you, in scripture or great writing, and in your own experience of the world.
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life….Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.” – Victor Frankl
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Seek your mission; seek wisdom.
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