How to Make Your JOY Your JOB

What if you could make your job more joyful, right here, right now?

You can. Here's how.

Some of us are lucky. We know early on what we want to do when we grow up. That was the case with my son Tom.

My sons grew up on Maui.?Ever night we'd go for a “walk and roll” through our neighborhood.?I would walk and Tom and Andrew would ride their big wheels, bikes or skateboards. One night, when Tom was about eight, we stopped to pick some plumerias off a tree and I asked him, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

Tom paused and then pointed to the sky and said, “Something to do with up there.”

Guess what? Tom got a degree in Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy, Physics and Math from Virginia Tech (go Hokies) and landed his dream job at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he and his team are responsible for the environment on the ISS - International Space Station. It gets better. He met and married his future wife (who has the world's coolest job title - Astronaut Scheduler) in Mission Control.?And he just got back from leading an international team at the MARS biosphere in Utah.

It gives me chicken-skin (Hawaiian for goose bumps) every time I think how Tom ended up doing exactly what he envisioned doing - when he was eight years old.

Are you thinking, "Well, good for Tom, but I still don't find or create work I love!"

One way to figure that out is to take a good look at what you do when you're not working.

What do you do,?by choice, in your free time??What’s FUN for you? What do you look forward to? What do you do because you want to?

Noticing what we do when we're not working can reveal what we would do even if we weren't getting paid for it. Then, the trick is to figure out how to integrate that into your current job - or to create a side hustle where you get to do that now, not someday.

1??What intrigues me? What do I do that puts the light on in my eyes, fills me with joy?

2. What did I love to do growing up and wanted to do as a career but was told to "stop daydreaming, get your head out of the clouds" and pursue something more practical?

3.?What skills am I good at that make me feel good? (Please note: these don't have to be typical professional skills - they can be riding horses, playing the piano, gardening, etc.)

4. Who in business do I admire who is lit up, who is doing whole-hearted work? I look at their career and think, "I wish I could do what they're doing."

5. Where can I provide a shortcut? Where can I expedite people's success, health or happiness? How can I save them time and money or make them time and money?

6. What don't people know how to do - that I know how to do? What aren't they good at - that I'm good at? What don't people want to do - that I actually enjoy doing?

7. What do I find meaningful, purposeful? In an ideal world, how would I like to leave a lasting legacy and make an enduring difference by contributing what fills my heart?

After answering these questions and clarifying what calls you, follow Pablo Picasso's advice, "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."

Actually, if you want to make your joy your job, you need to get paid for your gifts instead of giving them away for free.

One way to do that is to strategize how you can monetize what's meaningful to you.

Who would pay you to teach what you do well to them?

Who would pay you to do what you do well for them?

Where are you a SHORTCUT that saves people time, money, hassle?

What is your secret sauce? What special skill do you have that other people envy and wish they had? Codify the steps you took to acquire it.

Take people behind the scenes of how you learned to do that.

Reverse engineer how you got good at this. Outline a step-by-step methodology so people don't have to start from scratch and figure this out on their own.

People will pay for your shortcut because you're expediting their path to getting what they want.

Katherine Graham of the Washington Post said, "To do what you love and feel that it matters, how could anything be more fun?"

Well, the only thing that could be more fun is to do work you love, feel that it matters, do it with people you enjoy and respect and get paid for it now, not someday.

Want good news? I share ways to do this in my SOMEDAY is Not a Day in the Week book.