Harris Interactive recently polled 1,215 full and part-time workers and asked an interesting question: “If your job were a living, breathing person, would you marry it?” The results were quite telling:
Only 9% of respondents said “yes.”
34% agreed they liked their job enough to “date it seriously.”
43% stated they’d “date it casually.”
9% said the relationship “won’t last long.”
5% said they “want to break up immediately.”
This doesn’t exactly scream job satisfaction, and there’s little wonder why. The average annual salary of full-time employees in the United States is $30,000 and nearly 87% of college graduates don’t work in their field of study within five years. Couple this disconnect with ill-suited career choices and an average student loan debt of $20,000 and it becomes apparent something’s amiss.
Jim Rohn, the author and motivational speaker largely credited with launching the careers of Tony Robbins, Mark Victor Hansen, and others gurus said, “A formal education will make you a living. A self-education will make you a fortune.”
Far too many people end up as wage slaves, stuck in the vicious cycle of needing to work in jobs they loathe to pay off debt related to education they don’t use. If this applies to you, it may be time to seek viable alternatives and create a career that cultivates satisfaction, fulfillment, and contentment as opposed to having a job that perpetuates your living at the juncture of bankruptcy.
To achieve your ideal career, you must identify and pursue the sweet spot where something you love to do, are good at, and will be paid for all overlap. Like the legs of a tripod, each component is necessary to establish a solid foundation.
For example, if there’s something you love to do and are good at, but hardly anyone will pay you for it, basing a career on this activity or skill inevitably leads straight to the poor house.
Conversely, if there’s something you’re good at and others will pay for it, but you have no love for the activity or skill, you’ll always be operating with one foot out the door.
There is a tremendous difference between being good at something and achieving fulfillment doing it. You could spend 20 years piling stacks of paper in alphabetic, numeric, and subject order while blindfolded and become expert at it. However, this reflects an acquired ability not something you’re necessarily compelled to do. When societal expectations or financial pressures lead you to continue serving others via performing a skill or service that fails to resonate, you’re living from an inauthentic frame of mind.
The secret your personal sweet spot where the concentric circles in the diagram overlap. I call this your WHAT – that is, the ONE thing you were born to do.
Once you can answer the key question, “What Is My WHAT,” everything will take on new meaning. You’ll greet each morning with vigor, there won’t be enough hours in the day to accomplish all that you want to, and things that used to worry you no longer will.
To make a real difference in our world, tap the inherent blueprint that exists within and pursue your calling with reckless abandon. Doing so will empower you to not only have an inordinate impact on those who share this lifetime with you, but also on those of lifetimes to come.
Remember, you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. The world is waiting for you!
Steve Olsher is America’s Reinvention Expert. A successful entrepreneur who has applied his business acumen and communication skills to a wide range of endeavors, he is the co-star of the groundbreaking film The Keeper of the Keys with Jack Canfield, John Gray and Marci Shimoff; founder of the Reinvention Workshop; Author of USA Book News’ Self Help Book of the Year, Journey To You: A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming Who You Were Born to Be; Author of Internet Prophets: The World’s Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online; and an in-demand media guest who has appeared on ABC TV, FOX TV, and more than 200 radio shows worldwide.
For more information, please visit www.SteveOlsher.com and for a free copy of Steve Olsher’s award winning book Journey To You: A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming Who You Were Born to Be, which will teach you how to discover your WHAT, please visit www.JourneyToYou.com
