What Should I Do With My Life? →
An excerpt from Po Bronson’s 2007 book by the same name. Good passages:
Embracing your dreams is surprisingly liberating. Instilled with a sense of purpose, your spending habits naturally reorganize, because you discover that you need less.
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Avoiding crap shouldn’t be the objective in finding the right work. The right question is, How can I find something that moves my heart, so that the inevitable crap storm is bearable?
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Is your choice something that will stimulate you for a year or something that you can be passionate about for 10 years?
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Those who have found their place don’t talk about how exciting and challenging and stimulating their work is. Their language invokes a different troika: meaningful, significant, fulfilling. And they rarely ever talk about work without weaving in their personal history.
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Find a value system that enforces a set of beliefs that you can really get behind. There’s a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like-minded people. Peer pressure is a great thing when it helps you accomplish your goals instead of distracting you from them.
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“Keeping your doors open” is a trap. It’s an excuse to stay uninvolved. I call the people who have the hardest time closing doors Phi Beta Slackers. They hop between esteemed grad schools, fat corporate gigs, and prestigious fellowships, looking as if they have their act together but still feeling like observers, feeling as if they haven’t come close to living up to their potential.
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“What do I do next?” to making strides toward answering “To what can I devote my life?”
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Asking “What Should I Do With My Life?” is the modern, secular version of the great timeless questions about our identity. Asking The Question aspires to end the conflict between who you are and what you do. Answering The Question is the way to protect yourself from being lathed into someone you’re not. What is freedom for if not the chance to define for yourself who you are?
