WHY?

What was your criteria for taking on your job or career?

Did you follow a romance or spouse to a new city and take whatever you could find?
Did you set out to fulfill the path you chose when you declared your college major?
Did life lead you to something unexpected?

Knowing what got you where you are has its merits. However, if you are asking yourself, “Now What?” and are ready for something else, it’s important to revisit your motivation. If you’ve always gone with the flow or even if you’ve been highly ambitious, it’s a worthwhile inquiry to examine why you do what you do.

Why are you in this job? What brought you here?

One of the key factors in figuring out next steps is understanding your motivation. Being satisfied in your work requires that the motivation be tethered to something authentic to you versus something that is an expectation of you. Even the desire to provide for yourself and your family, although based in a genuine internal drive, may not be enough to sustain satisfaction. In today’s world of work, people want more meaning than that.

The meaning will come from connecting your day to day work activities with a pleasing vision about how you are contributing. If you sell plastics and it pays well, but you are feeling antsy, you’re experiencing a lack of connection to something that matters to you.

How do you find that ‘thing? ’ It’s a process.

First, you have to decide you want it. Do you really want to do something that matters to you more than merely have the convenience it provides? It seems obvious to say yes, but think about this. It could mean changing your life. It also requires believing that a change would make a difference to your sense of wholeness.

It’s an entire operating system for life. If you only buy into the operating system of making a living and saving as much as you can for retirement, it will be tough to find new motivation.

If you grew up motivated to not repeat a parent’s trajectory or to prove your worth or value, you may find that motivation is no longer enough to fuel you now. It’s like running on fumes that can’t take you very far. It doesn’t suit you anymore and provides no juice.

So, what might take its place? That’s for you to decide. Why do you want to work? Besides the money, what do you want to accomplish? What impact do you want to have? What calls to you or galls you to the point of needing to take action? What do you see in the world that needs your skill and attention?

There is more to this process of discovering what that ‘THING’ is that you could do, but take my word for it: the ‘why’ has to come first. If you don’t know WHY you want to work, it’s harder to name WHAT you’d like to do.

Take this first journey. Pick up Now What?: 90 Days to a New Life Direction to know how or watch my TEDx Talk. on finding a dream job.

Let me know how we can help.