Fireman, Astronaut, Race-Car Driver — Oh My!

Kids are always dreaming of what they want to be when they grow up. Sometimes it's something generic, like a superhero, or heroic, like a firefighter or police officer, or something completely out of the blue and made up, like a unicorn tamer. My sons (aged five and seven) want to be a scientist and a soldier, respectively, and become extremely excited when either of those occupations are mentioned.

Whatever a child thinks of it is always said with tremendous enthusiasm, followed by a terrific smile. The enthusiasm and the smile show the child's happiness in stating what he or she wants to be when the child grows up.

That is exactly how you should be when explaining to your friends and family what you want to do with your future. Simply, enthusiastic about the possibilities your future career may hold for you, while doing what you love.

While determining what you want to do with your future may seem silly at first, perhaps even intimidating, finding your passion and motivation is truly the most significant thing you can do. Remember, being happy or unhappy at a job might affect how you behave at home or in your personal life, so choosing the right career path is very important. You have to identify what will motivate you in order to fulfill the utmost potential within yourself, and that may not necessarily be more money, a fancier title, or a bigger office with a nicer view. (I once took a job solely for the money and paid the price; I was miserable. I learned that happiness is being in control of my own future, whether as an auditor, author, or a unicorn tamer.) Everyone has different motivations and varying needs, which leads to people traveling opposite paths because of those differing needs.

These different needs may lead to different types of motivation; therefore, we must first look at the beginning of the thought process. When we look back at this starting point, we see it may set us up for failure. Teenagers, who for all intents and purposes really still are children, are forced to decide what they want to do with their lives with the ever-present choice of going to university looming. If you take a hard look at it, education is set up in the most unintelligent of fashions for some since it is quite hard to figure out exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life at the age of 17 or 18. For example, you enter business school since that's what you think you want to do at 17; after three years you realize that business school isn't really for you, rather you would have preferred to be a teacher.

Even though education may be a setup for possible failure, some kids get trapped into the mind-set that they need to go to university because everyone else is doing the same thing and because it is considered the right thing to do at the time. However, these kids then get stuck wasting the first few years of their postsecondary education solely because they don't have a clue as to what they actually want to study and may end up settling for a degree they didn't want in the first place (e.g., the business degree versus education degree).

Universities will try to sell you on the idea that you are attending school in order to "find yourself," but what they fail to tell you is that the people paying the bills want you in and out of university with a job at 22 (assuming your parents are footing some or all the bills!). My parents were definitely not going to let me discover myself by taking a variety of classes over five or six years (e.g., business, education, science), and most won't. In my career, I've only met one person who took several years of university classes while he was trying to find himself, and he came out with a computer science degree that he could have gotten in a much shorter amount of time, and that was only because he was the son of a university professor, so he attended classes for free. His parents didn't mind him living at home, which was close to the school, so he had little-to-no costs while attending school.

After receiving a degree that they may not want, they end up with a job, and eventually a career, that they really may not desire. Instead of continuing down the least desired path, they possibly should have taken a few years off school, figured out their own lives and passions and then gone back to school to do what they really wanted. Yes, there is difficulty in willing yourself back into study mode after years of being away from it, but if you're motivated enough, that won't matter, even at the age of 34. Even after being away from school for a while and having a degree, I still found motivation at age 27 to go back to school to get even more education for the advancement of my career.

One of the most helpful things in finding out your true passion in life is to connect the dots in your own personal career journey. Use this to find out what made you happy in previous experiences and then to plan out your future dots so that you connect them more easily. The good dots in your life can be copied, such as the good habits or tendencies that certain managers or coworkers had, or even just something you respected or admired, or jobs/tasks that provided you with a great deal of personal enjoyment and satisfaction.

Some of these dots can be things such as wanting to be successful, learning and growing, continuous improvement and building an environment that you want to work in all the time. You have to figure out what you really enjoyed and didn't enjoy doing. When Steve Jobs, a huge public icon who founded a revolutionary company, was fired from his job at Apple, a company that he founded, he took the money and the things he knew he liked and began other companies, like Pixar, based on those ambitions. When he was fired, it actually started a bigger fire in his belly and motivated him to be even better. Jobs is the perfect example of how being let go and figuring out your true passion in life can make someone great. These hard lessons in his life allowed him to take a step back and turn his despair into motivation.

After taking a sober second thought, recognizing these dots in your life will help you realize that you can learn lessons from them in order to better yourself. If someone did something you absolutely couldn't stand, or that others couldn't stand, never do it, or do the opposite. You can learn things such as the value of respect, open communication, and how to treat people fairly by observing poor or weak leaders. Never think that just because something bad has happened there is no learning point that can be taken away from that experience.

In the end, only you can determine what will make you happy and what gives you the motivation and passion in life to seek out that path. This leads me to the story of Sam, my wife's brother, and the catalyst for why I wrote this book. During his high school years, Sam grew up on a farm and got pigeonholed early in high school that his future career was going to be as a welder. He enjoyed working with his hands and thought this could be the career for him. Because you could become a welder with the bare minimum of high school credits, Sam took the minimal amount of classes that he needed. As soon as he did welding for a bit after high school, he realized he was unfulfilled and that this wasn't what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

Sam eventually became a paramedic and realized it was a very good job, but again, he couldn't imagine himself doing it for the next 30 years.

So, at the ripe old age of 22, Sam moved in with me and my wife in order to go back to school. I heard him moan every three months or so about how he wanted to quit school because he was too old and there were going to be no jobs once he graduated (typical problems). At such a young age, Sam already seemed defeated and felt that the time to obtain a university education had passed him by. No one had ever said anything about age, yet he couldn't get himself past the age mentality of education — in at 17 or 18 and out by 22. Eventually though, Sam turned things around, and graduated among the top of his class.

Now that Sam gained more confidence, he was better prepared to take on future challenges. Imagine if Sam was already feeling defeated and that education had passed him by — someone who didn't have financial concerns or kids — how tough must it be for someone in his or her 30s with a spouse, kids, and a mortgage. I understand how difficult this can be, and Sam's seemingly defeatist and lost attitude was one of the reasons I started researching ways to help people who were outwardly stuck in the middle of their careers.

Education might fail some people since it could force you into the uncomfortable position of having to choose your future in an instant, instead of stepping back and carefully laying out a plan for yourself and discovering what you want to do. Never think it's too late to go back to school and invest in your professional growth and development, because it is not. Take time off, find motivation to go back and prepare yourself to succeed, because you truly deserve to bring out your innermost latent potential and become the best version of you.

Flailing in Quicksand

If the following sounds a bit like you, you might be stuck in a job that you don't like and desperately need a change of scenery: You wake up in the morning and check your clock. The time says it's six thirty, thirty minutes after you were supposed to get up and get ready for work. You yawn and grumble about having to leave the comforts of your nice warm and cozy bed in order to get to a job you despise, a job where you dislike your coworkers because they gossip like teenagers and where you think your manager has it out for you. But since you need to pay the bills for the overpriced house you just bought (no one is going to help you with that mortgage), you grit your teeth, trudge out from underneath the blankets and start the coffee pot, where you may have two or three cups of steaming thick tar before leaving for the day's battle.

When you get to work, you log on to your computer and instantly visit Facebook, Twitter, or whatever other social media website may consume the precious hours of your day. You may shuffle around a few pieces of paper, sign a few documents, and even attend a couple of mind-numbingly boring meetings, but the majority of your day is spent clicking "like" on Facebook and seeing your neighbour's dog dressed up in a million different outfits that your neighbour thought were just so adorable.

Many people get stuck in their lives or careers, but these things can be fixed. The key to solving the problem of being stuck is to recognize that you are actually stuck. While dreading the morning alarm and spending too much time on social media sites are good indicators that you may be stuck and need a change, your feelings toward your current job may not be the only signs.

One of the biggest issues that stems from the lack of stimulation and passion from a current job is that you may begin to look ahead for your next job. In one of the eye-opening experiences of my life, I was working for one of the world's largest professional services firms. This organization worked on projects given to them by other organizations. I had a glimpse into the workings of several organizations, some large and some small. What I observed during this time was that there were happy and unhappy employees, as well as petty and immature problems. This just shows that every company can have their own problems.

While you may think you're just wasting your time working for Company A doing middle-of-the-road work, and that by moving to Company B all your problems will disappear, the fact is the scenery is not likely to change anything. Sure, there may be better window dressing, or you may think the grass is greener on the other side, but rather than moving ahead in your career, you're simply taking a step sideways. You need to get to a point where you can trust yourself to take a step backward, if need be, so you can take two steps forward instead of just moving laterally.

If you're stuck in your career, you need to be able to see the long-term goals and prospects that are actually better for you. I took a pay cut when I accepted another job because I felt limited in my current organization. I knew that accepting a new job at a different company would result in less pay and a lesser title, but the opportunity to advance in the new organization was greater. I trusted myself and knew that with a lot of hard work and dedication, I would be back at my former position and pay grade I had received at my former organization. But this time I was with a new organization with better growth opportunities.

There are also a few other problems when looking ahead for your next position. The first problem is that if you dedicate too much time and attention looking for your next job, you may begin to lose focus on your current job and your tasks. If you can't live up to the expectations of your current job due to distractions outside it, how can you really assure yourself the same thing won't happen with your next job?

Another problem is that if you are caught searching for your next job, coworkers, or even your manager, may notice and grow unhappy with your plans. If this happens, there's no guarantee you'll even keep your current job, meaning you may end up unemployed while searching for another job. Yikes!

Your home life may suffer as well. If your loathing going to work grows to become a strong and overpowering feeling, it can affect your attitude at home and may even cause troubles between yourself and your significant other or family. Being unhappy at work can cause trouble for you in every aspect of your life and affect others as well. If your personal life becomes unhappy because of your job, the feelings of jealousy and bitterness due to others leapfrogging over you with promotions or raises may develop. Jealousy and bitterness can create a "why not me" attitude, which can be very harmful. People get so hung up on what the "Smiths" are doing that they become influenced by what they do.

For example, if two neighbours are moving out of their houses into other neighbourhoods, two other neighbours are possibly thinking about how and why the other neighbours are moving. The gears begin to start turning in their heads that they need to move as well and are even willing to put themselves in significant debt in order to have a perceived better address. Friends, we just emerged out of an economic crisis where thousands of people lost their jobs and, in turn, their homes. Don't let others influence your decisions. Remember, you're the one who will have to pay that mortgage, not your neighbours.

This mentality, in professional and personal aspects, causes things to become blurred and messy. If you are constantly seeking out happiness due to your jealousy of and bitterness toward others, you may get stuck. You buy all these big toys, such as a new truck or boat, which you want after seeing others purchase them and in order to have the illusion that since you're buying things you want, you're happy. You might even overspend on lavish vacations because you have developed a focus on overspending and living beyond your means in order to buy your happiness.

But as the years go on, you realize they don't make you as happy as you thought they would since you are working at a job you hate, which leads to the realization that you're actually stuck in your career and in your life. All the toys and vacations that you spend your money on are really just short-term investments with short-term returns. Instead of making these short-term investments, invest the money in yourself so you can create a better you and live a lifetime of happiness, not just one week in a tropical destination per year!

How do you know if you are overspending and possibly living beyond your means? Most financial specialists would suggest you have at least six months of cash on hand to cover your expenses, in case of an emergency or if something unexpected happens, like getting laid off. Or a sign that you're overspending is if you use your credit cards to buy household items like groceries or gas for the car and are unable to immediately pay off the balance.