How to Choose the RIGHT Career and Escape the Daily Grind

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today we're gonna talk about how to choose the right career.

You have to love what you do, and I'm not gonna go over that long, but it solves a lot of problems because when you love what you do, when you really love what you do, you work harder. I mean, I have friends that don't love— and, you know, I tell this story. A Wall Street titan, big guy, but I was richer than him and I'm richer according to Forbes. I'm much richer than him. So I like that, you know? I like that. But this big Wall Street titan, he's a big name. He has a son, and his son is a wonderful human being, which is amazing because the guy is a horrible, a horrible person. But he's one of the biggest guys on Wall Street. So he wants his son, Alex— I'm going to use the name Alex. It's not his name, but I don't want to get this guy in any more trouble with his father than he already is. Alex isn't the strongest character. The father is a brutal, vicious killer. So the father has a big firm on Wall Street, and he wants Alex to go into the firm, of course. You know, "Come on, Alex. Get in there. Get in there." In the meantime, all these kids are graduating from Wharton and Harvard and Stanford, and they're just eating Alex's lunch. He doesn't have a chance. He doesn't have a chance. And he doesn't like it. He's not liking what he's doing. You got to love what you do. He's not liking it. So, one day— but he can't leave because of his father. I actually tell him, "Why don't you leave? Your father is brutal." The father is just killing the guys. Tell him, "You don't have what it takes." "I'm sorry, Dad." Oh, this is great. So, I say, "You got to leave the father. You got to leave him." He said, "I just can't, Donald." So, anyway, he's a spoiled guy. He's a member of a very good golf club in Westchester, which is a rich place in New York. And he's on one of the committees, and he's on the Greens Committee. And they put him in charge of redoing the course. They're doing this big renovation of the course. It's a very good club. And he's there every morning at 5 in the morning. He doesn't leave. He did such an unbelievable job. The contractors respected him. Everybody respected him. So, the wife comes up, "He's doing so great, Donald. He's so amazing." And they give him an honor. And this is a tough group of people that have this club. You know, they're club members and they're difficult. They gave him an honor. The club came in under budget, faster by 2 months. He did an unbelievable job, and the quality of the work was 10 times what they ever anticipated. So they gave him a medal. I said, "You know, Alex, you ought to go and do this for a living. You ought to be a builder, whether it's houses or clubs or golf courses, renovation or this. Oh, my father would go crazy. He'd never let me. So Alex went back to Wall Street, where he was miserable, and a year later he quit. And he started doing renovations of houses and clubs and different things. And he's doing great. So you've got to love— what you do.

Step number 1 is the most important part of the process, and that is prepare your mind. All right, when we get into ruts, okay, we get into relationship ruts, we get into workout ruts, we get into career ruts. When this happens, we let our self-worth and our value depreciate, right? We don't feel as confident, as good as we should. Well, step number 1 is to prepare yourself to start feeling good about yourself in order to take action and to realize that you are not only a success, you are going to be an incredibly valuable commodity. You need to condition your mind and realize that you are a valuable asset, okay? You're not just John from accounting, no! You're John! Yeah, you might work in accounting now, but look out world, I am coming. But you need to realize that the job hunting process and finding a new career, it's not a quick fix, all right? If it was, everybody'd be doing it, okay? It does take time, and the bigger or more The more drastic of a change that you're going to make, the longer you're going to need to prepare for. But one thing that is critical is to keep your mind focused and to keep your mind in a good space. One thing that I would recommend doing in order to feel good about yourself, something that works for me and I know it works for a lot of other people, is to volunteer. Yeah, it has absolutely nothing to do with your new career, but it has to do with you feeling good about yourself. This is also a great time to up your image, your style, your grooming game, all right? What happens after you get a haircut? Exactly, you feel great. What happens when you get a new pair of shoes? Yes, you're like, "Whatever, check out my shoes. I feel good," right? This is a perfect time to take inventory of what you have, spruce up where you need to, but all in all, you're putting together the best personal package that you possibly can, from mind to shoes.

One of the problems in the world is that you have two choices. Almost always. You can choose status or you can choose substance. And he says what happens with a lot of people when they're figuring out what they should do with their life, you know, they listen to— let's say your mom says, oh, being a doctor, you know, that's such a great job, it's so prestigious, you'll always make money.

But—

and so people— I, in fact, my dentist, when I was like 15 years old, he wanted to be an artist, he told me, but his mom made him be a dentist because it was a higher status. But he didn't have that real feeling for it. You know, he didn't have the substance, wasn't there. So, Peter Thiel, you know, he's the co-founder of PayPal and now a billionaire. He says when you have those choices, when you have that fork in the road, really go after the substantive thing. And so, as you're figuring out your general career and your business destiny, don't just go, okay, everybody— now, I'm not saying you shouldn't be a doctor. A lot of people should be doctors. We need more good doctors. But don't be a doctor just because the status is there because you won't have the highest level of curiosity that you need to really thrive in what you ever do.

The first part of this 3-step passionate work framework is becoming a self-expert and understanding yourself, because if you don't know what you're looking for, you're never going to find it. And the thing is that no one's gonna do this for us. You know, there's no major in university on passion and purpose and career. I don't know how that's not a required double major, but don't even get me started on that. I mean, you spend more time picking out a dorm room TV set than you do, you know, picking your major and your area of study. But the point is, it's on us to figure that out, and we need a framework, we need a way to navigate through this. And so, the first step of our compass is finding what our unique strengths are. What are the things that we wake up loving to do no matter what, whether we're paid or we're not paid, the things that people thank us for? And Strengths Finder 2.0 is a book and also an online tool, highly recommended for sorting out what it is that you're naturally good at. And then next, what's our framework or our hierarchy for making decisions? You know, is it the people that— or do we care about the people, our family, health, or is it achievement, success, all this different stuff? We have to figure out what it is to make these decisions so we know what our soul is made of, so that we don't go selling it to some cause we don't give a shit about. And then the next step is our experiences. We have— all of us have these experiences. We learn things every day, every minute, about what we love, what we hate, what we're good at. What we're terrible at. And if we don't spend time paying attention to that and assimilating that learning and applying it to the rest of our life, it's all for nothing. It's like every week, actually every day, every week, every month, every year, I spend some time just reflecting on what went right, what went wrong, and what do I want to repeat, what can I apply more to my life. And even more so than that, as you see people, especially today, who inspire you, who are doing things where you say, "Oh, God, what Jeff is doing, I want to be." "Like him." Why are you saying that? Open up a journal, write down what it is about them that inspires you. It's not gonna be everything about their life, but, you know, whatever it is, take note of that, 'cause over time we have this repository of things that we can use to apply to our life and have a more, you know, passionate existence and make a better impact. 'Cause when we start to do— put these things together, we can then define what it is success actually means to us. And without these different parts of the compass, it's impossible. We end up in the situation, we have that— scripted life that everyone seems to be living, going up this ladder to nowhere. It's kind of like in Wall Street 2, if anyone saw that. The kind of peon employee asked the big Wall Street banker CEO, says, "Hey man, what's your number? Everyone's got a number where if they make this amount of money, they'll leave it all." He says, "Oh, simple. More." He just smiles. And it's the sad state of most of the people that haven't spent time understanding what actually matters to them. We just keep reaching for something that It doesn't mean anything to us, but we're doing it because everyone said we're supposed to. But once we have this framework together, we can start to identify the things that make us come alive. You know, before this, a passion could come and hit you in the face, or maybe in your possible life work, you might throw it to the side because you don't have a way of identifying it. But once you do, you can see something that says, "It's congruent with my strengths, my values, who I am as a person, so I'm going to grab a hold of this, I'm going to do something with it, and I'm going to pursue it and try and make an impact with it." And Live Your Legend and the movement we've built wouldn't exist if I didn't have this compass to identify, wow, this is something I want to pursue and make a difference with. So if we don't know what we're looking for, we're never going to find it.

If you want to know how to decide if a career opportunity is a good one, there are several things you have to take into consideration. Number 1, does it make your heart sing? The number 1 feedback system that you were given at birth is joy. If you're not experiencing joy as you think about doing something and as you pursue doing it, then it's off course for you. You also want to put your rational mind to work. You want to do some due diligence. Ask other people who've gone down that road before. What was it like? What did they have to do? What were some of the costs of that path? What were some of the payoffs and the benefits? And really get a sense of what it would be like to do that. Sometimes you can go and do an internship or you can work for a friend in their restaurant just to see if you like it, 'cause often the fantasy doesn't match the reality. And the other thing is to simply trust yourself. You know deep inside what's true for you. And if you'll take a few minutes and go inside, we call it meditation, and just ask and sit with the question and see what kind of feelings come up. Does this feel right? So do all the rational research, but then ultimately bring it back into your heart and decide, does this feel good for me? And if it makes sense up here and it feels good, then step into it. Just lean into it and see what happens. Pursue it. No decision is forever. You can always change if it's not what you want.

How should I approach finding a career that is fulfilling but doesn't strengthen my ego? And secondly, and perhaps the more pressing question for me is, how do I do this while also becoming comfortable and embracing the uncertainty that's defining my life right now?

Good question.

Yes.

So, to what extent have you become successful in embracing and accepting, at this time of your life, that you don't know yet what your purpose is? To what extent are you able to say, "Well, see, can I become comfortable with not knowing?" Have you been able to do that?

I—

there are periods where I've been able to, but mostly it's just A lot of thinking and feeling very uncomfortable about not knowing. Yes. So when these thoughts arise, they tell you it's not okay, the way you are right now is not okay. Realize that these are thoughts that arise in your mind, conditioned by the surrounding culture and so on. And you don't necessarily need to believe in each thought that comes and tells you it's not okay not to know what to do. Life is an adventure. It's not a package tour. When you travel, you can take a package tour and everything is already planned, there's no uncertainty, and every year you go to a beautiful nice hotel room in an exotic country, but you won't even know it's exotic because your hotel room is the same as every other hotel room. You're totally sheltered, but everything is planned. You know beforehand where you're going to be in 10 days' time exactly. That's not an adventure, and it's unlikely that you are going to evolve internally through a trip like that. But if you went into a true trip into some exotic country, thrown back on your own resources, then you would encounter true adventure, but all— and you would probably not be the same person when you come back. Why not? Because we are constantly faced with uncertainty. Mm-hmm. And if you're able to accept that, you can actually enjoy the adventure. If you cannot accept the— I'm giving this analogy of a trip because life is a journey.

Yes.

So realize that life is an adventure, and part of the adventure of life is being in that state that you are in now. If everything were already clear to you now, everything were already mapped out, there would be no evolution of yourself as a human being.

And may I say, Ivy, that is part of what being 26 is all about.

That is—

That is what 26 is. You're trying to figure it out.

That is—

yeah, that is what the 20s are for.

Yes, and another very helpful thing to remember is one of the most wonderful things in your period of life is to make mistakes.

Yeah.

Because mistakes means you realize, oh, that's not— that wasn't my purpose.

Yes.

And so you're a little bit closer to your true purpose. And then perhaps you think, oh, maybe that is my purpose. And then you, after a while, you realize, no, that's not— it's very helpful to make mistakes because gradually you begin to realize what it is that is right for you.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. My quick take on it is I think there's a lot of pressure people put on themselves to find the right career, and often way too early, whether it's pressure you put on yourself or pressure that other people, friends, family, society is putting on you. And I think the worst thing that you can do is get yourself locked into a career and not be able to jump off. I think too many people do it because it's a smart thing, the safe thing to do, and they end up living for the weekends and the evenings, and they hate their jobs, and that ends up being, you know, they hate their lives. And I don't want that to be you. And I think it takes a lot of courage to jump off one path to go for something else, especially when you don't know how it's going to work out. But if you find yourself going to work every day and hating what you're doing, then you have to change. You have to change what you're up to, because otherwise that's what you're going to do for the rest of your life, and it's only going to get harder and harder and harder to jump off to a different career path. For me, it's chasing what, what makes me come alive. If you have something that you're curious about, go out and try it. Don't, don't make it some big expensive project that you just can't afford you can't afford to do that requires you to quit your job, you know, do something small, do something on the side, just test it out. Whatever big dream you have, whatever curiosity you have, find the smallest way to get started. If you want to learn how to dance salsa for whatever reason— I never imagined being an owner, an investor in a salsa dancing business, but I had an inclination to try salsa and I liked it and I fell in love with it and it became a business opportunity for me. I've tried a whole bunch of other stuff that hasn't worked out and that's okay. That's okay too. The important thing is to start small, do little tests, see what makes you come alive, see what feels good, see what gives you energy, and then continue to find ways to do that over and over and over again. And the path, you know, the staircase will appear with every step that you take. I made this video because Abdallah asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, Leave it in the comments and we'll see what we can do. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious as to how you found your career or what career advice you'd give to other people who are searching for it. Leave it in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.

Here's a great discovery: only the truly competent individual can be free of politics in an organization. When you're really good at what you do, you can actually rise above politics. Think about it. It's the mediocrities at work who have to play games, and every study shows that although they sometimes succeed in the short term, they invariably fail when everyone figures them out. Select your work carefully, and if you don't love what you're doing enough to want to be the best at it, get out. Flee from the bore. Boring or unsatisfying job as you would from a burning building. Working at something that you don't care about is the very best way to waste your life. Remember, this life is not a rehearsal for something else. One key to getting onto the fast track is for you to work for the right company and the right boss. The right company is one that respects its people and practices pay for performance. The right company is dynamic, growing, open to new ideas, and full of opportunities for people with ambition and initiative.

Michael Gerber, the guy that wrote The E-Myth, you know, talks about why so many businesses, young businesses, fail. And one of the things he says is most people are not really entrepreneurs, but they think that's what they should be. They think that's the sexy thing, that's the most attractive thing, that's the best answer. And what I say to to you is you gotta separate the vehicle from the outcome. What is it that's gonna truly fulfill you? What is it that's gonna give you that extraordinary life? What's gonna make things magnificent on your terms? Not somebody else's terms. Not your father, your mother, your background. What is that really? Separate the vehicle, 'cause there's many ways to get that vehicle. What I'm saying, sometimes you gotta reevaluate what's gonna really make you fulfilled. What is your gift? Are you an artist? Are you the talent that can produce something no one else produces as a skill or a product or a service or some impact? Are you incredibly good at management? You really know how to manage or lead people. Are you an extraordinary entrepreneur that has— can take that gigantic gut load of risk and can create the vision and attract the talent that you need and the managers and leaders? You may have all three abilities. But which one really fulfills you the most is going to be the critical question. Because we tend to want to do them all, especially in a room like this, because you're all overachievers, right? Me too. And you say, "Well, I can do all these." Yes, you can, but what will it do to your quality of life? See, again, the secret's going to be this: What is an extraordinary life on your terms today?