What Should I Do With My Life?

Bamafan77 writes "FastCompany's website has an interesting article about what it means to be successful that I think builds nicely upon a recent Slashdot discussion. That Slashdot thread was about a study that wanted to find out if there is a link between college rejection and success. This new article asks a more basic question that many people struggle with: what does it mean to be successful and how do I achieve it? This article is an excerpt from a new book by Po Bronson which details the personal lives of several people, many of whom are very talented and superficially successful, who switched gears to try to find that 'thing' they are impassioned about. One interesting excerpt that might particularly hit home to the Slashdot community is Bronson's tidbit about a Rockwell manager who left his job because, though it was mentally challenging, lacked a deeper level of gratification. What is this man doing now? He's a cop in East LA."

Comments

Success is irrelevant

[defile]

Success is something that other people gauge your life by.

What do you care what other people think?

Do what makes you happy. Otherwise you'll become a Republican.

What does this have to do with...

[vocaro]

...nerds and stuff that matters? It seems like a "-1 Offtopic" story. At least the submitter could have found this article which is basically the same story but from a software engineer's perspective.

Life is what you make it.

[Hiro Antagonist]

The first part of your post was quite correct; if you're going to spend your life chasing a proverbial carrot, then make sure you enjoy the chase, because you'll never get that carrot.

The second part of your post was pure flamebait, and boiled down to "If you find Gawd, you'll be happy; if you don't, you're screwed." I'm sorry, but I'm one of the many that have found the exact opposite to be true; finding the lack of any deity has put my life in order. For some, this doesn't work -- apparently you're one of that camp. For others, they need to find Allah, or seek the wisdom of Buddha. For some, like me, atheism is the only way to fly.

It just really gets on my tits when some evangelist just *has* to put their two cents in that "we can't find happiness and fullfillment outside of God."

In a nutshell, happiness is where you find it. It can't be given to you by a church, or sold to you in a store. It can only be found by you, and only when you're ready to find it.