I’ve always been fascinated by people who love what they do. How did they know? What if you didn’t know? At what age should you give up? Should you even care that much? I was in my 20’s when I first started considering this. At the time, I didn’t know anyone actually “doing what they love”, so I turned to books in search of answers. They always left me motivated to figure it out, but motivation wasn’t what I needed – I was determined, I was courageous, I was smart, if I just knew what to do, I WOULD DO IT. These books continued to fuel my impatience and frustration well into my 30’s.
Then I read Po Bronson’s, What Should I Do With My Life? After listening to the life stories of more than 900 people, he wasn’t able to produce the magic formula for finding your calling because there is no formula – it was a process as unique as the individual – and, it wasn’t always about the job.
Bronson shifted my perspective from what I “should do”, to what type of person I want to be. This took the pressure off because I knew my calling would look different than everyone else’s. And the reason I wasn’t finding the answers “out there” was because those were other people’s answers, not mine.
His book reminds us that the most important thing is that we’re asking the question, to not feel guilty for taking the quest seriously, even suggesting it’s a moral imperative.
“Most of us are blessed with the ultimate privilege: We get to be to be true to our individual nature. Our economy is so vast that we don’t have to grind it out forever at jobs we hate. For the most part, we get to choose.”
Read more Po Bronson insight in Fast Company magazine articles, What Should I Do With My Life? (Dec 07) and What Should I Do With My Life, Now? (Jan 09)
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