Finding meaning in career

$231,000 a minute. That's how much Jeff Bezos earns. Let's put it this way: every minute, Bezos makes roughly 4x what the average millennial makes in a year. The Amazon founder and CEO - the world's richest man right now is on track to become the world's first trillionaire. 

Unless you are independently wealthy, most people spend many of their waking hours in an office, at home, or outdoors, doing work. 

Through the "trying twenties" all too often, we try this, then we try that - a mixture of hope and guesswork. Jobs and relationships become a series of learning experiences as life doesn't work out as we might have hoped or planned. If only we had known then what we know now...

There is no best career - only the best one for us at a given time of our life. There are both satisfied and dissatisfied people in medicine, plumbing, hairstyling, law, sales, teaching and every other line of work. Life is an experiment. 

In my own search for a career, I travelled a winding path. Fresh from graduation, I was a computer operator for two years, until I was offered a sales position. Professionally, it felt as if I was leading a charmed life - three times award-winning sales person - until I decided  to switch industry and sold insurance. I did that for two years and joined the hospitality industry. I worked at a combo of resorts, convention hotels and city hotels. It wasn't until 2005, at age forty, when I relocated to Singapore. Then my life changed considerably. I worked in large 1,200 rooms hotel and even spent four years doing turnaround projects and business development. Then seven years ago, I took up a leadership above-property role. At last, I had found my career and calling. 

They say it takes ten years to become an "overnight success." In my case it took twenty five years of experimentation and uncertainty. So what I share is not abstract theories. I've been in the trenches; I've done the soul-searching, experienced the disorientation and doubt. On the quest to find our career and calling, we're like driving in the dark - we can see only as far as our headlights illuminate.

There's nothing wrong with experimenting and trying different sorts of work, but why not pursue a career consistent with our innate talents and abilities? 

Some of us are stronger in sports or mathematics than in English  or art, or the opposite may be true. In every field there are those with abundant talent who have little interest in a given arena - and others who have great interest but little talent. Of the two, interest (or passion for) may be the more important factor.

Many high achievers have been pushed to the top of their professional ladder by social pressures or parental expectations, only to discover later that the ladder was "leaning against the wrong wall."

So consider carefully the kinds of areas or activities you genuinely enjoy which is why I advised my son, "Do what you love, then get someone to pay you for it."