All my posts usually begin with a quote, that inspires me to write. Often times, this quote and these thoughts are interconnected with a book I have read so far, and that is how my posts are usually born.

In this particular case, I will make an exception as I believe this book deserves its own post. The relevance of this topic is not only personal, but also born from the life-changing experience of so many friends around me, who after years of working a “regular” job in a company, have found their true calling and have recently ventured onto pursuing their dreams. They won, what the author calls it, the “career lottery”.

The thing that I am liking the most about this book so far, is that it recognizes that professional happiness can mean different things to different people. Quitting your 9-5 job doesn’t mean happiness for every single person. Everyone has their own interpretation of career fulfillment.

“There’s more than one possible path to career success, but you want to find the best one, the thing you were born to do. You want to win the career lottery and discover a job or vocation that doesn’t feel like work. Achieving this goal will require changes in mindset, strategy and action.” To win this ticket, you need to enter to win. Without it, you have zero chances of success. You need to level up. Small changes won’t make the cut.

Changing your mindset of traditional scripts, is the first step towards finding your calling:

• don’t think like a CEO – think for yourself and find out your own tactics
• don’t find a “niche” – live a well-rounded life – specialization is overrated
• if you miss an opportunity, there will be others
• there is more than one way to work

Once you cleared your head of the common staples of what everyone thinks you should be doing ( including your own inner beliefs ), the second step is to find what meets your specific needs. Everyone is different, yes, but majority of people will be looking for:

• JOY – something that makes us happy
• MONEY – something that is financially viable
• FLOW – something that maximizes our unique skills

“To find the work you were born to do, you need the right combination of joy, money and flow”. Anything else, will never be a perfect match. “Once you’ve found your ideal combination, you’ll know it. It will feel like it was right there waiting for you all along.”

The third step and important factor is recognizing that it’s not just what you do, but also how you do it, that makes a job the dream one. You need to match your job with the best working conditions FOR YOU, to win the famous career lottery. Having joy, money and flow but with the wrong team, bad management, tiring working hours and zero life-work balance, will compromise your happiness moving forward. Below are the most common important factors to take into consideration:

• flexibility of schedule – as you will want to make sure to have time for yourself
• reporting and accountability – what is the right mix that will make you the most productive?
• social environment – where, how and with whom you work?
• sense of contribution – we want to be part of something meaningful
• collaboration – do you prefer to work alone, in teams or a mix?
• deliverables and metrics – are you comfortable on how you have been asked to deliver your work?
• security – do you feel safe in your job?
• intangible benefits – what will you gain by doing what you do?

The fourth step and important variable is finding your ideal form of work, and this comes in different shapes and sizes, especially in today’s world:

• traditional career employment
• small business ownership
• vocational, manufacturing, or trades
• military, government or public service
• freelancing or consulting
• partnership or co-working
• part-time, seasonal or casual employment
• and so on….

Moreover, as there are different professions, there are also different specialties in each with different employment structures within them.

The fifth step, so called “career insurance”, is to plan. Big changes in life should never be dictated by emotion or not thought of properly, hence before taking further steps, the recommendation is to ensure that you have some things in place to make you feel comfortable with what you are about to do. You cannot expect results if you are distracted by other worries. The below are just suggestions:

• have more than one source of income
• keep expenses lower than your income
• maintain good relations with everyone

The next step will be…prison break! “If you want to create any sort of art, you have to do the work, and you have to do it for you first. There is no points sitting around telling the one-day-I-will story”.

In the next post, we will discover what comes next…