One Cynical Thing...Lesson Eight

Lesson #8:?Do the job you want to do, not the job you want to tell people you do.??

I heard this while listening to an NPR interview. Simply stated, yet often hard to accept. You spend at least one-third of your time every day at work.?You may get the chance to tell people what you do once or twice a month.?Are the hundreds of hours of misery worth the five minutes of feeling cool??

My son wants to be a firefighter.?My daughter wants to be a doctor. When asked, kids yell out - garbageman, veterinarian, teacher! All are duties in service to others. I suspect people who accept this lesson are more fulfilled than the rest of us.

Would you rather be happy or special? Sure, you can be both, but only one matters. Titles were important to me.?Building a resume that?others were proud of?was important to me. Those important things never equaled happiness and fulfillment.?

Boredom is insidious.?If I quit, who would I be??Trying something new required a leap of faith and the possibility of failure, or even worse – insignificance.

I stayed way past my prime in some roles, though I had so tightly wrapped up my worth in things I cared nothing about, I couldn’t let go.?I felt if I couldn't hit that next ring, get that next promotion, or be admired by strangers, then I would be a failure.?I’d conflated my value and my job, even though at times it left me so empty I was unable to appreciate the good in both.?

By the way, no one is all that impressed with your title anyway.??