Defining Your Perfect Job / Career – Part 1

94,000.

That’s roughly the number of hours an average person will work at a “job” during their lifetime. Well, at least if you actually get to retire at age 65 and don’t work any overtime.

What I think is absolutely insane is that for most people, that almost 100,000 hours will be spent doing work that they don’t enjoy.

What a waste.

Why does this happen? Why is having a job that you don’t like an acceptable standard we live by?

What would happen if we woke up and raised our standards?

I think it’s very interesting, and sad, that most people have much higher standards for the quality and choice of coffee they drink in the morning than they do for their careers.

We have high standards for our clothing, our hair products, the shiny toys we buy, the cars we drive and the food we eat, but when it comes down to work it’s like we’ve accepted the lowest standards where we believe that it’s ok to work doing stuff we detest just because everyone else is doing the same thing.

The problem isn’t your boss though. And it’s not the evil corporations either.

The problem is that most of us are too lazy to actually sit down and try to figure out what we want to do for a living.

If you don’t have a clearly defined, written down description of what your perfect job / career is … you can’t blame anyone else for your suffering except yourself.

We hate our jobs, for any number of reasons, so in our spare time we dream up all kinds of schemes to try to make some quick money and retire young.

We jump from one business opportunity to the next, hoping to strike gold so that we can throw a few million into the bank and live off the interest, never having to work another day in our lives.

Passive income is the coolest word on the block right now. Everyone wants passive income, and we all equate it with “free money for doing nothing”.

I’m just as guilty of this as anyone. I’ve spent my share of time calculating endless formulas of exactly how much money I would need to make and figuring out exactly where I would need to invest that money to never have to work another day in my life.

What I’ve discovered though is that there is a better way.

See, here’s what most people believe their options are:

(1) Work at a job they hate or barely put up with.
(2) Through some miracle, find a way to make enough money or build enough passive income streams to never have to work another day in their lives.

Those aren’t the only options. There is a third option that most people never consider:

(3) Clearly define the “perfect job” of your dreams. This is a job where you contribute to the world in a big way, but you’re doing something you love doing so much that you don’t even consider it working. You actually consider it “play” and you wake up each morning grateful to be able to do this “work” and get paid for it.  First define it, then either go out and find it or CREATE it if it doesn’t exist.

The great news is that you can start working towards #3 TODAY!

It doesn’t require you to miraculously manifest a million dollars to be able to retire with. It doesn’t require you to chase endless business opportunities, crazy investments or other get rich quick schemes.

All that’s requires is a little bit of introspection.

You need to wake up, and stop following the rest of the herd. The rest of the herd is stuck in their dead-end jobs that they hate, dreaming of a miracle retirement.

What if you HAD to work for the rest of your life. What if it was a requirement that you MUST work every single day of your life, for the rest of your life until the day you die? What if even if you somehow manifest millions of dollars you’re still required to work?

Would you still consider working at the job you hate?

Probably not, right?

So what’s really keeping you there?

It’s that miraculous retirement fantasy.

Just for a second, I’d like you to forget that fantasy for a minute. Pretend it will never happen. Pretend a new law was just passed and everyone now has to work every day forever.

Would you then maybe put a little bit more time into figuring out what you enjoy doing? What kind of job you’d actually enjoy working at?

I haven’t completely attained my “perfect job” scenario in my life either yet, but it’s a thousand times better than where I was just a few years ago, and it’s a million times better than where I was a decade ago.

However, it doesn’t just happen automatically. You have to work on it. You have to work on figuring yourself out. You have to learn what makes you tick, what you enjoy doing, what you don’t enjoy doing and constantly be defining and redefining your perfect job scenario.

The more clear you can get on what you’d love to do, the faster and easier it will be for you to attain that.

There’s a really cool exercise I learned from a Frank Kern seminar the other day which I found really helpful for bringing more clarity to your career vision.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What am I willing to be/do/give to live the ideal lifestyle that I want?
2. What am I NOT willing to be/do/give to live the ideal lifestyle that I want?

Ideally you’d want to write out as many answers to each question as you can, but I would say that 10 would be the minimum.

When I did this exercise I realized something very interesting. When I listed all the things I am willing to be/do/give in order to live the kind of lifestyle that I want, I realized that I’m willing to be/do/give a LOT!

I consider myself a pretty lazy person, but when I did this exercise it showed me that I’m not trying to get something for nothing. I am genuinely willing to be/do/give a LOT in order to have all the things I want in life.
It’s just that all the things that I’m willing to be/do/give are all things I enjoy so they’re not what I would consider “work”. However, to other people I’m sure they would seem like work because they don’t enjoy the same things that I do.

For example, I know quite a few people that would consider having to write a +1,000 word Blog post absolute torture, yet here I am at 4am in the morning writing this post and enjoying every moment of it.

That’s the beauty of getting clear on this. By seeing just how much you’re willing to do / be and give, it makes you realize that you do deserve to live the lifestyle you want, regardless how extravagant your dreams are.

The second part of that exercise is just as important. Getting clear on what you’re NOT willing to be / do and give is very powerful. It puts your subconscious concerns to rest as you clearly state what you are not willing to do.

The cool thing is that anything you put on your “Not willing to do” list is probably on someone else’s “Willing to do” list.

For example, one thing I’m not willing to do is to travel all over the world all year long to do what I need to do. I’d much rather prefer to work from home, and utilize video conferencing technology than jump on a plane and travel all over the place.

I don’t mind traveling to a few places a year under the right circumstances but I would never want to work out of a suitcase & hotel room like so many people do.

The thing is that I know quite a few people who love traveling and they would totally enjoy having a job where they are never home. Maybe not forever, but they would enjoy traveling all over the world.

Take a couple of minutes now and answer those two questions. Figure out what you’re willing to be/give/do and what you’re not willing to be/give/do in order to live the lifestyle you want.

When I say “lifestyle you want”, I’m not talking about your current lifestyle that you’ve settled for.  I’m talking about your ideal dream life where you’re living where you want, doing what you want with whomever you want.

It’s the first step in defining your perfect job.