How to find more meaning in your career
For many professionals, their careers are generally based on climbing the corporate ladder and getting paid more. However, that’s unlikely to give you a feeling of ongoing fulfilment, even if you do get to the very top.
It’s easy to get sucked into the corporate vacuum and chase a more prestigious job title or a bigger pay packet. Essentially, we end up developing our careers based on two things.
Money (and our need/want for more of it).
Talent. We follow a path that we’re skilled in.
Money is directly related to our hierarchy of needs as money can give us things like safety, security, shelter and food.
Talent is what you’re good at (in fact you’re so good at it someone is willing to pay you for your services). Your talent can give you short-term gratification as you’ll typically gain a fleeting sense of fulfilment from your contribution to a task.
However, for many people, they may be talented at what they do and make really good money, but it’s not highly fulfilling.
For greater fulfilment, our goals need to be connected to who we are internally, not just the external rewards of money or short-term gratification of doing what we’re good at.
Finding the purpose and meaning in your career
While money and talent are important from a career perspective, there are two other factors we also must consider for greater fulfilment in our lives.
These are: purpose and meaning.
Purpose is when your career, and what you do in your career, will help others, and not just benefit yourself. This could be at:
An individual level. For example, you might mentor a junior colleague.
A community level where your work helps a specific community group.
A broader societal level where you’re doing something to help humankind more generally.
In addition to purpose, your career must also have meaning.
In other words, your career should be aligned with your own individual values and beliefs - i.e. who you are as a person and what you stand for.
For example, if you value creativity but work in a finance role, it will be harder to find ongoing fulfilment in your career - regardless of how good you are at your job or how much you get paid.
When it comes to our careers, we typically only think about money and talent.
But if you can consider money, talent, purpose and meaning, you’re likely to find more fulfilment, not just in the result but along the journey as well.
It’s not just about the end, it’s about the journey
Does this sound familiar?
You’ve set a goal. You worked hard to achieve the result but you didn’t feel fulfilled along the way?
That’s likely because your goal was based on money and talent alone.
When you add meaning and purpose to a goal, you’ll likely feel more connected to the journey, and not just the end result.
For example, perhaps your goal is to get a promotion.
Naturally, this can take time and a lot of work, which can inevitably make the journey to that goal quite long.
If getting a promotion is based purely on money and talent, then you may not have enough motivation to see that journey through to the end.
Indeed, you’ll likely face a myriad of obstacles along the way to getting a promotion. But if your goal also has meaning and purpose you’ll be more likely to overcome these.
Furthermore, if your goal is driven by meaning and purpose as well as money and talent, you’re more likely to be connected to, and find more fulfilment from, the journey and not just the result.
Don’t hand in your resignation just yet
If you’ve come to a sudden realisation that your career doesn’t reflect your purpose or meaning, it doesn't mean you have to quit your corporate job tomorrow.
Rather, try and ‘lean into’ projects or specific areas of your career that align with your meaning and purpose.
If you need help finding more meaning in your career, we’d love to chat.