How to find a fulfilling job

My job sucks and I fucking hate it.

Okay… fair enough your boss may be a condescending asshole, Karen’s loud nasal breathing and explosive sighs may drive you crazy and you may be fed up of working weekends while your friends are busy hanging out and making memories.

The real question is what are you going to do about it?

In this post, we explore what makes a dream job, what could be stopping you from getting yours and why it's important to outline your mission. 

What makes a dream job?

Perhaps your current reality is a far cry from the dreams your younger self once had? 

Most of us want to have our ideal job that pays the bills while allowing us to work on something we are truly passionate about, some may not have gotten as far as imagining what that may be, but the thought still exists nonetheless. 

The trouble is quite often we don’t do much about it. I know I've been guilty of this in the past. Working 14 hour days, 6 days in a row in a soul-destroying job, just because it helps the bank balance.

Imagine you won the job lottery and could specify exactly what you wanted in your dream job… what would it involve? I’m willing to bet it would have a blend of joy, flow, purpose, environment and reward. It would be a job that makes you feel happy and content with the right blend of challenge and learning, that would allow you to be immersed in activities that create flow states. A job that has the right social and ergonomic environment for you. 

For example, doing the school run with the kids may be very important to you so a 9-5 with no flexibility is probably not the ideal solution. Of course this work would pay you fairly for the value you provide. Even without a desire to be rich let's be honest, stressing about money and making sure you’ve got enough wonga to cover the bills just isn't the one.

Why not take a few minutes now to think about a realistic target for all of the above?

Set yourself a target salary a year from now and the sort of environment that you want for yourself. 

Once you have had more of an idea of your ideal job in these areas you will be able to work backwards and start creating strategies to get there. If the fear of failure is holding you back from going after what you want we highly recommend going through an exercise of fear setting, give it a Google, there are a few good articles that will walk you through it. I expect you will come out of this activity feeling less anxious about taking risks and more concerned about the consequences of inaction.

You may find having thought about your dream job and all the factors concerned that it doesn't currently exist. This may be due to the limitations of geographical freedom or independence. If this is the case why not explore creating a side hustle or small business that’s closely linked to your passions. Working on this would not only allow you to live life on your terms and build something you truly care about, but it will give your CV some serious clout. After all, very few people have the initiative to make something like this happen. 

It's the ideal time to shake things up as work environments have changed massively since the pandemic. Many jobs that may not have suited you as they were office-based and involved a bitching commute could now fall into your dream job category. Working remotely in these jobs may make some of these roles perfect for you. Especially once the world starts to open up you could work remotely while travelling the globe. 

Ultimately if you are unhappy in your current role don’t just settle for mediocrity, make something happen. There may be positions in your current company that could develop your skill base and push you outside of your comfort zone leading to lots of new opportunities in future. Even if you start small, just experiment with something new and you may be surprised where the rabbit hole takes you.

One thing we can’t recommend highly enough is thinking big, failing to do so will limit your opportunities. If human beings were limited by unimaginable possibilities then Wright brothers probably never would have persevered with inventing the world's first motor operated aeroplane and the world would probably be much more divided than it is right now. 

Creating a main mission

We highly recommend creating a mission for yourself. This is one of the activities in our onboarding process and we based it on advice from Warren Buffet, one of the world's most successful investors. He recommends narrowing your focus. Buffet recommends picking out 25 goals and then whittling this down until only the 5 most important and exciting ones remain. 

If you’re new to this we recommend narrowing this down further to just one goal, for the first 6 months, every 6 months after that you can introduce the next most important goal! For example, you may want to buy your first house or run your first marathon. Having either of these goals will have a massive knock-on effect in other areas of your life, you would likely become healthier and more disciplined while training for a marathon which would bubble over into your personal and professional life. 

Saving up for your first house may lead to you applying yourself more at work and making your first investments into a LISA both of which will develop valuable skills that will serve you well in future. 

Asking yourself powerful questions

Once you have your mission in mind and are faced with certain decisions try asking yourself this question. Does what I am about to do move me closer to completing my mission? If yes, then proceed, if the answer is, ‘actually this is going to move me further away from my mission’ then ask yourself this follow up question. Is what I am about to do now worth it? These questions have helped us form behaviours and habits that incrementally move us closer to our grandiose dreams. They can help you too.  

Understanding your mission before you embark on your journey really works for us. When the going gets tough, it’s much easier to endure when you’re driven by a clear purpose.

Once you have your mission this will give you clarity on your current work situation.

Ask yourself if the work you’re doing right now is moving you closer to your mission?

If not, how can you change this?

What is the Hero's Journey?

Have you seen any of the following movies?

• The Matrix
• Lord of the Rings
• The Game
• The Princess Bride
• Star Wars
• Rocky – (and Silvester Stallone’s personal story for that matter)
• Finding Nemo

For a full collated list see here: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls052754941/

You may be asking yourself what do the above movies all have in common.

Aside from being very popular classics, they all share a similar structure which can be found in most mythological narratives.

This concept was first theorised by Professor Joseph Campbell. He refers to this structure as the “monomyth,” or hero’s journey.

We love this concept and in this post, we will unpack what it means, and how we can use it to our understanding of it can only benefit us.

Campbell summarises the concept by saying “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

For us, the concept allows us to frame our current situation into the bigger picture which allows us to enjoy the trials and tribulations with a different mindset.

Thinking about the protagonists in the movies above, are you Frodo in the Shire or Neo in the office cubicle? Are you currently in your ordinary life or has the next stage already begun for you?

The call to adventure.

This can come in many forms, a new job, a move to a new place, the exploration of a new skill, ending a long term relationship or trying to stop an addiction.

Whatever the call to adventure is you can see from the examples above this will happen many times throughout your life on different scales.

This call to adventure to me means the beginning of a journey of improvement. You are being called to explore and change for the better. Campbell called this entering into unfamiliar zones the crossing of the threshold.

Our propensity to remain fixed in our ordinary lives is shown in the hero’s journey, this can be because of the insecurities and fears that when the call to adventure surfaces our heroes are often initially unwilling to make a change, preferring the safe haven of the ordinary world.

When presented with the call to adventure in your own life you must analyse where your resistance to change comes from. 

Unfortunately, life isn’t a Disney movie so it is not advised to blindly accept every call to adventure as it could escalate quickly and you could end up like this guy.

It can be helpful to think about your overarching mission when presented with a new call to adventure. 

What are the risks and rewards and do they align with your overarching goals and desires? 

This will mean you can avoid becoming over-encumbered with projects or taking on unnecessary risks.

So, let’s say you’ve recognised the call to adventure and you want to grasp the opportunity, what’s next?

Trials and tribulations.

This is the exciting part. You are really beginning your journey, taking the plunge and heading into the new challenge.

The important part here is to anticipate setbacks and see them as opportunities for learning and becoming stronger.

Cast your mind back to the movies above or other stories you are familiar with and ask yourself do the setbacks make the story more interesting and enjoyable?

Do the setbacks make the protagonist better? Do they help to define the hero that emerges in the end?

There is plenty more to dive into with the hero’s journey in the initiation and return phases like mentorship and returning with the elixir (love, freedom, wisdom, wealth) but we will cover that in a future blog.

For now contemplate where you may be living an ordinary life, where there could be an adventure and consider taking the leap with the right mindset.