Tips to find fulfillment at work and in your career

I want to talk about something I saw over the weekend. Someone sent me a picture. You probably have seen this or a version of this. It’s a Venn diagram with three circles. One of them is what the world needs, meaning what you could get paid for.

So I just wanted to talk about it. I mean, share my two cents with you, just based on my career so far and going forward. So let’s see if you’re doing something that intersects all of them, meaning you’re getting paid for doing it, you absolutely enjoy doing it and you’re very good at doing it as well, then you’re in that sweet little spot.

So that’s what a lot of us are working towards. But if you’re only there, congratulations. For the rest of us who are not, good luck because we’re just doing our best to get there. But I just want to talk about the other combinations as well. Today in this video, let’s say you’re very good at doing something and you enjoy doing it then.

But if the world doesn’t necessarily need it or it doesn’t need it to the point that it’s going to pay you for doing it, then it becomes your hobby. So my wife shares a lot of stuff with me on Pinterest, folks who are fantastically creative. Creative, to the extent I probably don’t even understand that level of creativity.

I saw a video with someone made a cake with some shavings that made it look like a tree and stuff. I’m not sure if she was a professional, if she’s just doing it because she’s good at it and she enjoys doing it regardless. Unless you’re a professional. In a lot of these cases where it’s art related, as awesome as it is, it’s my at least my understanding as somebody who doesn’t have those artistic skills that it’s not going to be super easy to get paid for it just because the market needs and the dynamics may be different.

So that becomes your hobby. But let’s take the other two combinations where you, the world needs something and you’re good at doing it, but you don’t enjoy doing it. That’s the trickiest of the three that I’ve seen.

So I want to come back to it in a second. I’m just trying this new selfie stick, my hand starting to hurt, Sorry. So the next combination, let me go to the third one and then come back to the second one, right? The third one is what the world needs, what you enjoy doing.

But you’re not particularly good at it or not great at it, right? Which is totally fine because a lot of us start a career trying to do something that we enjoy. The world has a need for it, but we’re not particularly very good at it. So you know, we learn to do more of it. We continue to do it. We work harder and smarter, so we get better and better doing it. That’s a lot of our careers generally, right? So that’s not a bad place to be in. And that’s actually a combination that a lot of us start out our career with right here.

The world needs it, You enjoy doing it, but you’re just not good at that point. But you just can’t get better and better by doing more of it and challenging yourself. But the third combination to me is it’s the tricky, scary and interesting one, which is the world needs it.

You are also good at doing it, or you’ve gotten good at doing it over the years, but you don’t enjoy doing it. I know a lot of people who are in that space. I try my best not to be there. I don’t try to sign up for something that I don’t think I’ll enjoy because I personally I cannot do it.

So I reject something that I don’t think my heart where my heart’s not there, where I don’t feel absolutely passionate about. But I’ve actually, during the course of my career and personal life, I’ve seen people doing things because, you know, you have to do it because we all have to pay our bills.

But that’s okay. But not looking to find something that they would also enjoy doing right? The world is a big place. There’s a lot of opportunities. And if you’re living in the US, you know, you have access to a lot more of these opportunities than perhaps somebody else living someplace else, right?

I mean, every country has a lot of opportunities, but I think America has maybe a bit more. At least that’s what I want to believe. So you want, you certainly want to, you know, obviously you want to keep your job because you want to pay your bills and whatnot. But I think when I see people who I feel like may have given up on trying to find the one thing that they would really enjoy doing and can get paid for it just because they are on this boat.

And if you keep sailing and you just don’t know how to get off of it, it’s it’s a scary place to be in, right? We’ve all been there, right? We all approach that differently. But I just want to say that, you know, you are going to be a whole lot better at doing whatever it is that you’re good at if you end up doing that as for your career.

So, you know, a hobby is great and needing to pay the bills is obviously mandatory, right. I mean, not all of us are super wealthy, but I think it’s important not to give up hope. I mean keep trying, you know, do what it what it takes to to get to the point where you actually find a way to get paid through doing what you absolutely enjoy that your heart pumps for.

Because, you know, then I think, you know, when I’m doing something that I’m, I’m really enjoying, I mean, you almost don’t want to stop doing it, right? We have to be careful in what we sign up for because, you know, life is short, as Caribou says, you know, you want to stay awake for it, but you also want to enjoy the moments where you’re staying awake, right?

So let’s all hope that this year and the years after we’ve we all find something that we really, really enjoy doing and also get paid for doing that. Hope you enjoyed the video. Thank you.

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