I was getting ready to head out the door and my son, who was two at the time, said to me, “Daddy, where you going?”

“To work,” I replied.

“Why?”

I stopped and thought about it for a moment, trying to come up with an explanation a two year old could understand.

Trying to think of all the possible responses I could come up with, I said, “to help people.”

Now, my two year old asked the question of why to just about everything, but this time his question really got me thinking.

Why do we work?

Certainly, at its most basic form, we work to bring in income.

But don’t we work for more than that?

Maybe we also work to feel productive, contribute to society, feel like our lives matter, or express our talents and gifts.

Maybe all of the above.

While paying our bills is a legitimate reason to work, there is often a deeper reason we want to work.

The Big Mistake

The biggest mistake we make in our careers is to believe our work is about us.

When our work is only serving our own needs it becomes selfish, shallow, and boring.

Our work can often be a wonderful place to use and exhibit our talents and gifts, yet there is a condition.

Our talents and gifts weren’t given to us for admiration or self-actualization, they were given to serve others.

When we switch the focus of our work to serving the needs of others, it takes our work to another level – a more sublime level.

So if you’ve struggled with finding work you like, maybe try looking at your work from another angle.

Who do you want to serve?

Your answer to that question will tell you why you work.

Question: Who do you want to serve with your talents and gifts?

In high school Gary was always in the auto shop classroom and never in the library. He was that guy.

Yasser Alghofily via Compfight

However, when the time came he thought he needed to go to college in order to get a good job.

He went through college hating every minute of it, wishing he could spend more time refurbishing the 1969 Chevy pickup waiting in the garage at home.

After graduating from college with a low GPA and a headache, Gary went looking for a job.

With no real direction, Gary took the first job he could get because he knew somebody who worked there and they got him the job.

Gary was pretty miserable most days. Working in a cubicle, sitting in front of a computer screen, and doing work that he was not designed to do well.

The trouble was Gary couldn’t see a way out. He thought he was on a career path for life and there were no exit doors.

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, this is an all too common way to choose the type of work we do.

For those who don’t like what they do I’ve noticed three typical factors in how they chose their work.

• They chose work that just pays the bills and didn’t think about whether or not they liked it.  
• They chose work they thought they might be good at or other people told them they were good at doing. 
• They chose work based on the kinds of work models and industries they were exposed to and were easily available to them (i.e. corporate employee, government, manufacturing, agricultural, self-employment, etc.) 

The problem is we often choose a career based on short term needs and overlook our ability to be intentional about our careers. Trust me, I know supporting ourselves and/or a family are absolutely important needs – short term or not.

However, when it’s time to make decisions about the type of work we want, we have the pressure of short term needs combined with the lack of personal insight needed to be intentional about our career.

Like Gary, we can feel stuck in a job or career path with no hope of something better. So what do we do?

If you’re in this situation I encourage you to look at your current work as a stepping stone to something greater.

The work you hate now could be planting a seed that will blossom into enjoyable work in the future.

Take this time to look inward at who you are and pay attention to what you’ve learned about yourself with your current work situation.

You may have only discovered what you don’t like, but that is part of the process of finding your passion and ultimately finding work you love.

Gary’s now working toward moving into a career he will love. He’s grown a lot and he is more sure of what he wants to do every day. And yes you guessed it, he’ll be working with cars.

Question: How do you think most people choose their careers?

[box type=”shadow”] If You Feel Like Gary Try This Exercise: 

Write down ten things you’ve learned about yourself as a result of doing the work you’re doing now? Then go through your career history and do this for each job you’ve held.

• What types of activities energized you?
• Which activities drained you?
• What is something you’re really proud of accomplishing in your work thus far?
• Was there a time when you failed in your work? What lessons did you learn from that? [/box]

Receive my free ebook 5 Essential Steps to Landing Your Dream Job when you join the Work You Enjoy newsletter list. Sign up here.

Ultimately, choosing a career direction comes down to one thing.

Photo Credit: hobvias sudoneighm

What do you want to do?

That’s it.

You can take all the personality assessments in the world, go through tons of exercises, and work with coaches.

However, when all is said and done you have to make a choice and move toward a goal.

You may say, “but I still don’t know what I want to do”.

That may be, however, my hunch is you actually have some ideas but you’re talking yourself out of them.

These are what Howard Figlar calls your “yes, buts”.

Yes, I’d really like to do X but you see I can’t because…

The challenge is your “yes, buts” may be very legitamate.

You may have some major obstacles in your path to doing what you love to do.

Yet at some point, you need to take your “yes, buts” out, dust them off, look at them, set them on the shelf, and make a decision to find solutions to overcome them..

Sometimes your “yes, buts” have been so scary you never wanted to look at them.

I would encourage you to not only look at them but examine them to their fullest extent.

Feel the fear.

Then start doing two things.

1) Get more information on your problem. Let’s say you want to be a dentist but you don’t know how you’ll feed your family while you spend years in dental school and not go into a mountain of debt. You’re not the first person to ever face this dilemma. Find a dentist who had the same problem but overcame it. They are out there. It may take some work, but you’ll find someone you can talk to and ask how they did it. This goes for pretty much every type of career and situation you can think of.

2) Create solutions and implement them. In the previous example you may have found someone who was in the exact same position you are in now. You may discover there are certain dental schools where you can go part-time while you work or schools that offer financial assistance. Maybe you’ll need to move to a cheaper place to live for a time. Maybe you’ll decide to save up for dental school and go in 5 years. I don’t know.

It really boils down to asking yourself how bad you want something, what creative solutions will help you get there, and what cost are you willing to pay?

Nobody said this would be easy.

But you can do this.

We live in a wonderful nation. Full of freedom and opportunities.

The solutions are there if you look hard enough.

Use your creativity and your enthusiasm for a new career in this process.

Can you see it?

You’ll get there and you’ll love it.

Question: Have you ever found a solution to an obstacle in your life you never thought you’d figure out?

Receive my free ebook 5 Essential Steps to Landing Your Dream Job when you join the Work You Enjoy newsletter list. Sign up here.

I mean we spend so much time with ourselves you’d think we would have this down right?

hobvias sudoneighm via Compfight

Yet, it’s not easy. At least it wasn’t for me.

It’s also the number one reason people contact me. They’re stuck in some way.

It can be a complex problem to navigate because we as humans are complex.

The underlying cause for the problem can be a variety of different things:

• Perfectionism
• Difficulty choosing just one idea
• Truly not knowing
• Fear

You may have a different reason, but these tend to be the ones I hear.

Whatever your log jam is try one of these exercises to get you moving in the right direction to the work you love.

1. Three Movie Exercise. Mary DeMuth talks about doing this with groups she works with. I love this idea. Without thinking too much, list three of your favorite movies. Here are three of mine:

• Field of Dreams
• Brave Heart
• The Natural

Now, think about an underlying theme that runs through each of your favorite movies.

The theme that runs through my favorites (besides baseball for two of them) is believing you can achieve your dream or goal when no one else believes you can.

This theme will likely be what you are passionate about. Try it, you’ll have some fun and you’ll be amazed at what you come up with.

I’d love for you to share your three movies and the common theme in the comments below.

2. Have a “Choose Your Career” BBQ. I mention this exercise in my ebook “5 Steps to Landing Your Dream Job”. Essentially, it goes like this:

1. Invite your closest friends over for a BBQ
2. Ask them to tell you what they think it is you might love to do.
3. Brainstorm with them 100 types of careers that might fit what you do well.
4. When your friends leave, sort through their ideas and choose 20 that strike a chord with you.
5. Start researching more information about your top 5 from the 20.

Question: What are your three movies and the common theme?

(Consider adding a comment below.)

Receive my free ebook 5 Essential Steps to Landing Your Dream Job when you join the Work You Enjoy VIP newsletter list. Sign up here.