5 Tips to Find Meaningful Work

Everyone wants to find meaningful work. We spend a large portion of our lives anticipating the day when we genuinely enjoy the work we do – when getting out of bed every morning no longer seems like an abysmal task and instead, fills us with a sense of pride and purpose. Unfortunately, a vast majority of Americans never find this inner sense of peace. Instead, they grudgingly live out the rest of their working days in a dead-end, unfulfilling job, counting down the last seconds until retirement. Filled with resent and regret, they never get to experience the true joy of meaningful work.

This post will give you 5 tips for securing that unforgettable slice of career happiness:

1. Think About What You Love Doing: As cliche as this is, people often settle for what they like doing and not what they love. What do you spend the most time doing? Have you ever started writing and completely lost track of time? Have you started playing the guitar on a Saturday afternoon, and before you knew it, the sun was setting? These are the things you love to do. You should pay attention to them and think about how you can incorporate them into your life. You may not be a rockstar, but you could always pursue music management or column writing. Perhaps you have an ear for new artists and would benefit from becoming a talent scout. * Note of caution: Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you love doing it. Think about what you’re willing to work hard at over what comes “naturally”.

2. Completely Rule Out What You Hate Doing: Have you ever had a client meeting and thought to yourself, “I HATE talking to people on the phone all day”? Or what if your job was centered on office administration and you genuinely disliked facilitating office tasks? Again, pay attention to these things and carefully weed out career paths that incorporate a heavy amount of things you absolutely don’t want to do. Of course every job will have pros and cons, but if the core chunk of your workload includes excruciating tasks for you, it’s time to move on. An aspiring juggler would be unhappy in finance.

3. Read Biographies of Successful People: Everyone’s path is different and it’s important to keep that in mind. However, sometimes you can draw inspiration from some of the people you admire by reading their life stories. Were you a fan of Steve Jobs? How about a U.S. President? Read their journey and you may be surprised by how many times they had to fail before they could succeed.

4. Ask For Advice: Asking the right questions to the right people can take you far. Not everyone has the best advice to give or your best interest in mind. But carefully piecing together information from a variety of sources can prove to be a fruitful exercise in coming to the conclusion of which direction you’d ultimately like to steer your career. This stands in alignment with reading biographies. Gaining insight from those around you can create tangible goals, milestones, and network connections.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Fail: A staple of every “how to be successful” list, and yet time and again, people are afraid to truly live with abandon. Taking care of your responsibilities doesn’t have to fetter you to a career choice hate. “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be” – John Wooden.

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Carl Nelson France