Working To Live A Determined Professional Life

Do You Love What You Do? 

Your life's work is not necessarily your employment work. The latter is how you put food on the table, clothes on your back and shelter over your head.

It is interesting that the workplace has so many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tracking a variety of areas in order to measure organizational success and improvement. And yet, very few people use the one solitary KPI of determining their own career success that makes the most sense ── do you love what you do?

If you do not love what you are doing in your employment chances are you are working to live ── generating an income to meet your financial obligations and some of your wants and desires. Hopefully some of these wants and desires are aligned with your Determined Life goals and desired outcomes.

You can leverage your income generating activities one of two ways:

1) continue to climb the income and status ladders in your organization or industry and focus on career success as a key metric for your life, or

2) use your employment income to fund your dream fulfillment and achieve your Determined Life goals.

The first alternative makes your personal revenue scalable, but often results in the postponed pursuit of your dreams, goals and life's purpose. 

The second alternative leverages your ability to produce sufficient (though perhaps not maximum) income while making your Determined Life dreams and goals scalable by reserving the majority of your time and energy for pursuit of your goals and life's purpose.

Albert Schweitzer understood the linkage between success and doing what you love: "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." 

That's what we would call Living A Determined Professional Life. 

This article is partially excerpted from our top-ranked personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.