What they don't teach you about career fulfillment in school | Ryan Clements | TEDxKelowna

I would like to go back six years. I'm an associate at a large international law firm and I'm at the end of a brutal week, it's around 8pm. on a Friday night and the only thing I can think about is leaving this office, it's the last place in the world I want to be. I want to get home to my family. I haven't seen him all week and I feel a wave of anxiety. knowing that I have to come back tomorrow and finish this work I'm on the train on the way home I feel heavy with emotion it seems like the buildings are moving in slow motion and I think to myself how I got here I implemented all the advice I was given I got good degrees I got a good job.

How come I feel such a lack of commitment and satisfaction in

what

I do? Is this ever going to change? What do I have to expect over time? The next 30 years of my life will just be a better commute, maybe a better suit, will I ever feel committed to

what

I do? I arrive at my station and I don't remember where I parked my cars. I wander through the parking lot. I think it must be stress and I remember where it is, so I turn to my car and see something on the ground exactly where my car was parked.

I see this and it is something that is unmistakably mine, it is a box that contained my son's, which has something special. need medical records. I had just taken them to a new doctor. Now that box containing those records is on the ground where my now stolen car used to be while I wait for my wife to come pick me up thinking about the absurdity of the day. I have an impression and it is something that will absolutely affect my life, something that will impact me every day for the next six years and the impression is that that car does not define me, that car does not even satisfy me and I.

I'm not going to spend the next thirty years of my life trading time for money so I can buy more things that don't satisfy me,

they

can evaporate instantly. I'm going to find satisfaction in my

career

, but there's a problem I have no idea about. How to Find Fulfillment in My Career No one ever taught me about

fulfillment

. I didn't learn it in

school

,

they

didn't offer it as a class at my university, so even though I think it's possible because I can see other people feeling fulfilled. I'll have to figure it out on my own shortly after that night I was home.

I thought maybe what I needed to do is introspect. I need to look inward because maybe that will give me the piece I'm missing to open a

career

as a professional. satisfaction, so one of the first things I did was take out a blank sheet of paper and at the top of this sheet I wrote this: When have you felt most fulfilled? and I let my pen go crazy. I wrote down everything I could think of, any hobby. any activity, happy time, participation time, satisfaction time, and when I filled out that piece of paper, I took a step back and immediately became discouraged because there was almost nothing there that they could pay me for and then I thought, man, maybe I should be like a lost case.

Life for me is going to be a routine, maybe I will have to exchange time for money and I will have to look elsewhere to find satisfaction, but I don't give up very easily. I turned the page and thought: what do you value and? I started writing down the values ​​I had and then I had an inspiration. I thought: I wonder if these activities, these hobbies that I wrote. I wonder if they are actually related to some value, so I turned the page again and looked at it and realized they were. I realized that there was a pattern to the times in my life when I had felt the most committed.

There were certain values ​​present. Things that were unique to me. Like freedom. The adventure. Take risks. The ability to create. things build things that add value to others the ability to contribute to others and communicate and that was when I realized that in my day to day life I was not aligned I was not having the opportunity to live what I really valued. We don't have the freedom to create things that add value to other people in our careers. We have to distinguish between results and consequences. Results are what we often focus on in

school

. Get this title.

Become this profession. Become a doctor, lawyer, dentist and entrepreneur. An exchange, those are results, each of those results has consequences and many other consequences besides money and security, things like what do you do each day and is what you do aligned with what you uniquely value when we enter into the decision of career. As we make space, we enter a sea of ​​suggestions and receive suggestions from all directions about what we can become, what we can be, our family, our friends, our communities, our churches, our counselors, our own schools, our own friends, and for many people this can be very confusing you can be very divided you are not quite sure what to do and you want to do it well you want to be successful you want to feel fulfilled but you are not exactly sure what the best path to take is I remember being there and this confusion this pressure can be chaotic internally and there is a way to make everything disappear instantly and it is a way that I use but it is a flawed solution it is simply choosing an outcome create order by choosing an outcome that I remember the table I was sitting at in the room study when I was an undergraduate when I was feeling torn, not quite sure what to do, thinking of all the things it could be and I felt confused, not wanting to make a mistake and I just thought: I'll go to the law, it's safe, it's enough prestigious, I have good grades, I can get it, but it was a flawed solution, a better solution is alignment so that we can experience in our daily life what we really value.

Now, six years later, I am a full-time entrepreneur and a writer every day. I feel satisfaction in what I do. Work as a highlight for me. I'm not looking for vacations all the time, what I can. I don't try to fill my life with things that don't make sense. I feel commitment and passion in my work and on a daily basis I have the freedom to create things that add value to others. I live with a sense of adventure and a sense of risk in a sense of discovery that you see when I was that college student sitting in that study hall thinking about the future what I really wanted wasn't just money it wasn't success I was fit I wanted a place where I could live what I really value, so how do you know if your career is a good fit?

I would like to suggest three things, number one, can you easily activate flow in your daily activities? Flow is a concept referenced in psychology and performance literature. It has been described as that optimal human state, that state of energized focus where all our intention is directed towards the pursuit of a specific task and when we reach these flow states, the world seems to melt, time stops, hunger decreases, we lose the sense. of self-awareness and we come out of these flow states feeling charged, feeling more complex, feeling like we have grown and wanting to have these flow states again.

I have found that when I am living what I value, the flow comes easily and often. when I wasn't constantly thinking about the end of the day constantly thinking about the weekend if I had a weekend constantly thinking about the vacation when that vacation ended dreading having to go back to work feeling anxious on Sunday nights knowing I have to go back to the office on Monday. Point number two: Are you easily motivated in your work? I would like to create the contrast between two different forms of motivation, one I will call push motivation and the other.

I'm going to call it attraction motivation. Push motivation is what I experienced as a lawyer. Push motivation is that type of motivation that always requires something external, whether it's an external reward that we're seeking or an external pain that we're trying to avoid and we'll dig deep and we'll push and we'll assert ourselves we'll do what we have to do because we want that reward we want. that paycheck we want that bonus but here is a problem when that reward is no longer attractive to us and when we are no longer afraid of that pain we lose motivation and you see this all the time with money when money is our only reward we reach the point at which we have enough money we think why am I doing this I don't feel committed but I don't feel passionate about what I do, let's compare that with the other form of motivation, attraction motivation.

I call this attraction motivation because I am attracted to something bigger than myself. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I feel like I've tapped into something bigger. sense of purpose this is the type of motivation that does not need an external reward this is getting up early staying up late turning off the television type of motivation just because you want to because you feel committed to what you are doing this is the type of motivation I feel when I live what I value and the best part of this motivation is that you are not tied to the rewards all the time, you will do the actions for yourself, they are intrinsically beneficial for you, you feel joy in just taking which brings me to my third point are actions their own reward in your career to be able to understand this point you have to understand yourself what makes you unique what you uniquely value what makes you come alive what makes your heart sing because if you know this, there is a career that allows you to experience this in day to day, it's not that every day for the last six years has been successful for me, like every entrepreneur, I have had many setbacks, many failures, but I no longer see failure in the same way when I operated only under this motivation of push, when all I cared about was the pursuit of money, failure was catastrophic, but when you operate under a pull motivation, when actions themselves are internally rewarding failures, only feedback, failure is only education, you transcend the need for those constant rewards, you learn to reward yourself, so if you are the type of person who comes to life by empowering others, building communities, engaging teams, if your career allows it.

The day to day life will be internally rewarding you will not be constantly thinking about your salary if you are the type of person who loves to analyze systems and complexities and solve problems if your career allows it on a day to day basis it will be intrinsically rewarding for you if you are the type of person who has this competitive fire. Manage this competitive fire. You want to test yourself to see what integration you have if your career allows it on a day-to-day basis. You're not just thinking about the holidays. You're not thinking about the weekend, you're not just thinking about the kind of car you drive or the house you have, it's internally rewarding and if you're the kind of person that comes alive with a sense of discovery of the world.

You love to learn, if your career allows it on a daily basis, it will be internally rewarding and satisfying for you. What I'm advocating is that we look beyond doing what you love. We like to say do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life and I totally agree with that advice, but here's the problem for some people like me: the advice is hard to implement because I take a piece of paper and I write the things that I love and that I like. I'm going to say that no one is going to pay me for any of that.

Does that mean I can't feel satisfied at all? Not only does it mean that we have to look at it from a different angle and the angle is this: what are you uniquely? What do you do only? value what makes you come alive, what makes your heart sing, because there is a career for each of us that will be fulfilling for us and if we can align what we uniquely value with this career, then what happens is that we activate the flow. triggering the flow often becomes an everyday thing each day we feel more complex when we trigger this flow States in which we feel satisfied motivation is easy it is no longer just about the rewards we no longer feel drawn towards a greater pursuit we want to wake up Early on we want to stay engaged because it is part of who we are and, most importantly, we have transcended the need for constant external rewards.

We've achieved the greatest freedom I think you can achieve: the ability to reward yourself when you don't need your boss's reassurance. You don't need a vacation You don't need a nice car You don't need a fancy house The work itself becomes rewarding That's a secret they don't

teach

us in school Fulfillment is not an achievement Fulfillment is not something you have to achieve anymore Getting ahead in life is not the amount of money you make it is not your degree it is not the type of car you have it is not the type of house you have it is not what people think of you but whether you think that or not your job is Significantly, whether or not you feel intrinsically committed to the work you do, that is satisfaction and each of us can have it and we can have it from the day we start our career for the rest of our lives, thank you.