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If someone were to ask me what is the most important question you could ask about your career this would be it: Is it what you want to be doing or what you feel you "should" be doing? The answer to this question is extremely telling and often determines the level of success, enjoyment, and fulfillment you can attain in your professional life. Think about it. Compare it to your personal life. If you have an event to go to that you truly want to attend you are excited, have a positive frame of mind, and get the most out of it. If you have some obligation you need to attend because you "should" or your family will disown you if you don't, are you nearly as enthusiastic? In the end do you enjoy the experience or simply endure it?
I could certainly take a spiritual angle and assert that your experience is what you make it and that even in situations that stretch you that you could adopt a chop wood, carry water mindset:
What that means is that the tasks are the same, but who you are being as you do the tasks is totally different. While I am certainly not claiming enlightenment, I can say that I am so much better at being clear, open, and present with a task than I ever was before. Even tasks that are exhausting and not quite my cup of tea. Instead I did my best to approach it with the bigger picture in mind - serving families in need of decent housing and with the mindset that anything you do can be a meditation if you choose to allow it to be. And, when you do that a whole new world opens up to you.
I totally believe this mindset is crucial to living fully. Engaging in experiences that stretch you are enriching. However from a day in and day out perspective would you rather spend your time doing something that works for you or suffering like a martyr attemping to fulfill someone else's expectations of you?
How do you know what that something you most want to be doing is? You discover it by looking inside yourself. Penelope Trunk writes in "Why you already know what you should be doing next"
Do you want to know what you should do right now? Do you want to know what your best bet is for your next career? Look at what you were doing when you were a kid. Nothing changes when you grow up except that you get clouded vision from thinking about what you SHOULD do -- to be rich, or successful, or to please your parents or peers... the possibilities for should are endless.
Our childhood really does hold clues. It is not just a New Age inner child thing. The essence of who we are and what makes us tick is formed early. That doesn't mean we don't evolve or change, just the opposite. However, I know if I look back on what interested me as a child and how I liked to be in the world, I see a much purer reflection of what my soul most yearns for even now. I may have better taste in wine, but I still love to explore, learn, be outside in nature, and laugh hysterically. I hated being confined by rules of the classroom then and I still thrive outside the corporate cube now as a business owner. Why? Because I discovered early on as I was being coached that I have a core need to be unrestricted, otherwise I rebel. Hmmmm, corporate cubes cause brain damage and are restricting... and I thrive outside of them...maybe there is a connection, eh?
The idea of "Shoulds" and expectations seem to be even more crushing to the generation younger than I. The Office Newb tells it like it is from the Twenty-Something perspective in "Success Is Relative (Especially When Relatives Determine Your Success)":
What made these well-educated, high-achieving women desperate enough to risk their reputations for 15-minutes of fame?
Could it be a constant pressure to succeed from parents, professors, bosses and popular media?
A query into the Merriam-Webster dictionary shows the definition of success to be: The attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.
What troubles me about this definition is that it defines success through a third-party point of view. Gaining favor? Having superiority? These are all
