Are You Satisfied with Your Career?

Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. ~Confucius

What can we do to ensure a source of happiness and fulfillment throughout our careers?

At graduation, each of us has visions of what we’ll accomplish. Years later, even the best and brightest from the most prestigious universities aren’t immune to feelings of failure and disappointment.

Many people who maintain a veneer of professional success report feeling dissatisfied and doubt they’re in the right job. They often find themselves trapped in meaningless work.

The cliché holds true: You have only one life, and it’s not a dress rehearsal. Outside forces and bad decisions can derail you at any time. How can you protect yourself from making the wrong career moves — the ones that thwart your quest for happiness and meaning?

Clayton Christensen, author of How Will You Measure Your Life? (with coauthors James Allworth and Karen Dillon), writes:

We pick our jobs for the wrong reasons and then we settle for them. We begin to accept that it’s not realistic to do something we truly love for a living.

He proposes three questions to guide career and major life decisions:

How can I be sure that:

• I will be successful and happy in my career?
• My relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends become an enduring source of happiness?
• I live a life of integrity —and stay out of jail?

How many times have you made important life decisions without considering — and even intentionally ignoring — these critical issues?

In our quest for immediate gains, we conveniently forget to weigh potential consequences.

Over the years, in the work I do, I’ve had the privilege of working with some outstanding people who are able to evaluate their career decisions with wisdom – in retrospect. My goal is to help them – and others – make those decisions right the next time, beforehand. What about you? Are you choosing wisely for your future?