How to Find Your Dream Job

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is graduation season. A lot of freshly minted graduates are streaming out of our colleges, high schools, and technical programs. A lot of new graduates are looking for their dream jobs.

How do you find your dream job?

I want to share some insight from a good friend of mine named Bill Martin. Bill is an octogenarian with a lot of wisdom. If I told you his entire career history you would be amazed at this man’s success. If you could meet him, you would be amazed by his humility and charm.

He recently spoke to engineering graduates about how to find their dream jobs. Here it is in all its wisdom and simplicity:

  1. Get a job. Work hard and do great at it.
  2. Get a better job. Work hard and do great at it.
  3. Keep repeating this until you…
  4. Get your dream job.

I sort of understood this when I was young. I did not expect to have a dream job right out of the gate. I knew it was out there if I worked and produced value for my employers. A job well done leads to a recommendation and to advancement. The idea of an entry-level position is that you do not stay there long. It is simply where you enter.

In your pursuit of a dream job, don’t forget to get a job and do really well at it. That will lead to good things.

Thanks, Bill!

 

The Myth of the Stress-Free Life

Have you ever dreamed of  a stress-free life? In this stress-free life there is no one to tell you what do do, how to do it, or when it must be done. You are master of your universe and get to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. This dream becomes most desirable when your boss or someone else with authority puts the pressure on you to perform or face the consequences. Those consequences may include being fired or getting an F in a class. This dream of a stress-free life is very seductive because it tempts you to believe that you can somehow escape the responsibilities of adulthood. Adulthood requires you to be responsible and to fulfill the requests of other people.

My operating assumption is that stress is the normal default condition of life. Consider this:

 Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by M. Scott Peck

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This dream of a stress-free life can take many forms. One example is a young man I know whose dream is to move into a modest cabin on a ranch and to live off the land. This is an idealized vision of leisure that is not based in reality. Anyone who has grown up on a farm or ranch can destroy this myth quickly. The realities of that kind of life intrude upon the idealized dream. Before I detail some of these realities, I must say that living on a ranch in a cabin and living off the land is a perfectly fine ambition. If that is what you want to do, you can do it. I am just pointing out the reality that it will be full of responsibility. Life always is. To live on a ranch or farm is to trade your current stresses for a new set. This is true because, as Peck says above, life is difficult. This is the default human condition.

My grandparents lived on a farm, and I have recordings of them discussing the hardships they faced. Among the difficulties of life on the farm are:

  • Food. You still have to eat. Perhaps you will hunt your food, fish for your food, or grow your food. All of these require work, and there are deadlines built in.
  • Money. Just because you live on a ranch does not mean you need no cash. You will need to buy equipment, seeds, tools, clothes, gasoline, and any food you cannot catch, hunt, or grow. You will have to pay for your electricity and heating gas or oil. You will have to pay for water or at least drill a well and maintain your pump operation. Also, the government will still require you to pay property taxes on any land you own. Any buildings you own must be maintained and repaired. This all requires money.
  • Natural deadlines. Careful attention has to be paid to the seasons. No boss may tell you when to plant the corn, but if you do not do it at the right time you will not be pleased with the result. Once the corn is grown you must harvest it in a narrow window. That sounds like a deadline to me. In addition, the animals must be fed, and the cows must be milked. Those fish are neither catching themselves nor cleaning themselves once caught. The deer are not shooting themselves nor dressing and processing themselves.
  • Natural challenges. Farmers and ranchers face lack of rain (drought), too much rain (flood), hail, high winds, insects, and weeds, just to name a few challenges.

If you really turn the clock back and envision a time when nomadic hunter-gatherers lived a care-free life, you would find that their lives were not actually care-free at all. If your own well-being is dependent on successfully hunting wild game, your own hunger becomes the stress in your life. If you do  not leave the cave or the tee-pee you will starve regardless of whether or not you have “Leave Cave” in your day planner.

 So What?

Given that there is no such thing as a stress-free life, part of becoming an adult is accepting this fact and crafting a Forward Story that embraces this reality. Avoiding stress is not a realistic strategy. I encourage you to embrace the idea that stress and responsibility are inherent in life. With this baseline realization you can then get around to a future worth living. The Myth of the Stress-Free Life is one end of the spectrum. In our next article we will explore the dangers of too much stress.

What are the stresses in your life, and how do you handle them?

Kombucha Guy Loves Kombucha

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It’s Saturday morning, and I am about to head down to our local farmers’ market to stand in a line and buy a product that my wife loves: Kombucha. We refill seven bottles each week. She has a one bottle per day habit.

I am starting to wonder what they put in this stuff that makes it so irresistible. Kombucha is an ancient beverage that tastes a little weird at first, but really grows on you. It contains an active culture called a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast), which is probiotic.016

The guy that sells this stuff is known to us only as Kombucha Guy. I’m sure he has a real name, but we don’t want to know it. We prefer to refer to him as Kombucha Guy because this fella really loves kombucha. He embodies the practice of ABS – Always Be Selling. He can have a line of ten people waiting patiently to refill their bottles and yet he is still singing the praises of kombucha to every person who walks by his booth.

The thing I like about Kombucha Guy is that he really loves what he is doing. As far as I can tell, he is totally sold on kombucha as a product, and he really believes everyone should be drinking it.

It reminds me of one of my favorite poems. In Two Tramps in Mud Time, Robert Frost writes:

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation

The idea of uniting your avocation (your love) and your vocation (your work) is the holy grail of career goals. If you are ever able to combine these together, do you ever really “work”?

I would love to hear from you if work and love are the same. What do you do? If your current work is not what you love, what do you think you would love to do?