Knowing your values and preferences prevents mistakes. A person with the heart of a social worker who ends up as a real-estate agent is unlikely to feel fulfilled by that choice - and vice versa.
Some of the most satisfying career choices emerge when you do for pay what you'd do for play-whatever that might be. Prizefighter Sugar Ray Leonard once told a group of Harvard University students that his greatest talent (and pleasure) came from "beatin' people up." Now who would've thought that drive could be turned into an honest and lucrative career? Former Wall Street trader Laura Pedersen, whose escapades are chronicled in Play Money (1991, New York: Crown), converted a love of games and strategy into an uncanny knack for making money.
By the time she was 12, Pedersen - who admits to a misspent youth at the racetrack-was already well on her way to mastering the art of handicapping. She parlayed this talent into a remarkably successful career as one of the youngest millionaires on Wall Street. But she recognizes that it takes most people longer to find (and convert) their passions into dollars. You may have to experiment with a number of options, she says, before finding the right opportunity. When you try to settle into one path too soon, you may foreclose some of your best options and opportunities.
Rethinking Early Choices
A 29-year-old wine-store manager with aspirations to become CEO has never really questioned his own goals. But because he wants to go faster than the job market will allow, he has become frustrated and discouraged with his path.
Realizing how long it might take to reach the top, he now wonders whether it will really be worth the time and energy. Should he pursue a "looks-good, sounds-good" choice if he hasn't really considered whether the goal is actually right for him? He's asking the right question. Unless this manager has some larger vision of leadership and great ideas for moving his company forward, he won't make much of a CEO, even if he does manage to become one (which is unlikely). He must demonstrate some greater commitment to building an organization, or along the way, he'll lose out to rivals with greater leadership potential and capabilities. Rather than continue with a goal he thinks he wants, he needs to take more time to figure out what he really does want.
His reservations are similar to those of the real-estate agent. What's the point of so much hard work if the goal isn't right? You may not be particularly sympathetic to the career woes of a 32-year-old real-estate agent with a six-figure income or a 29-year-old manager's concern that he's working too hard to a questionable goal. Yet their questions are developmentally appropriate. If they pursue the answers with the same zealousness they give their work, they'll undoubtedly choose highly satisfying career paths.
Career counselor Linda Bougie in Englewood, Colorado, finds this kind of soul-searching common among fast-trackers in their late 20s and early 30s. "They're just beginning to recognize what does and doesn't work for them, and to make new career decisions based on greater self-awareness and more experience with the job market," she says.
This may be a function of having made good money (or the recognition that they'll never be able to make enough money to satisfy all their needs). Whatever the reasons, mature adult choices almost always involve grappling with the issue of where money fits in your career picture.
When David Meyers, a professor of social psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, examined what makes people happy and why in The Pursuit of Happiness (1992, New York: William Morrow), he learned that money meets deficit, rather than growth, needs. Not having money will make you utterly miserable. But beyond a certain point, having more cash won't necessarily make you happier-especially if you're hungering for work that meets a wider range of needs. As Charles Garfield discovered, having a deeper sense of mission is the secret ingredient in the recipe for truly satisfying achievements.
