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What Should I Do With My Life?

Posted by michael on from the spend-more-time-reading-slashdot dept.

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."

3 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Duh! by FrostyWheaton · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    The answer is simple.

    How is success measured?
    Karma

    How do you achieve it?

    Post insightful comments on Slashdot

    Or if you prefer, the answer is 42.

    --
    Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
  2. The Call by superyooser · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    It sounds like Bronson's been reading The Call by Os Guinness. This is a very comtemplative and meaningful book that provides good guidance pertaining to our question here of "What should I do with my life?" Here are some of my notes from the book (mostly excerpts) to give you an idea of what it's about.

    We human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us. (45)

    A sense of calling should precede a choice of job and career, and the main way to discover calling is along the line of what we are each created and gifted to be. Instead of, "You are what you do," calling says: "Do what you are." (46)

    If there is no Caller, there are no callings - only work. (42)

    God does call us to "be ourselves" and "do what we are." But we are only truly "ourselves" and can only truly "do what we are" when we follow God's call. (48)

    We are not called first to special work but to God. (43)

    The notion of calling is vital to the modern search for a basis for moral responsibility and to an understanding of ethics itself. (90)

    All we are is a hearing and a response. We are responsible because we are response-able. Between the first word of God's creation and the last word of His judgment our ways of life are our response to God's Word to us. (92)

    To make the choice of career or profession on selfish grounds, without a true sense of calling, is probably the greatest single sin any young person can commit, for it is the deliberate withdrawal from allegiance to God of the greatest part of time and strength. (47)

    Be "inner-directed" by God rather than "other-directed" by our environment. Don't succumb to "outside-in" thinking. (74, 75)

    In many cases a clear sense of calling comes only through a time of searching, including trial and error. Clarity may apply to only a part of your calling at first. (52)

    Life is lived forward but understood backward. (53)

  3. Plastics by yet+another+coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Plastics