How Can You Find Life Satisfaction?
Part 1 of 2: It’s Your Decision
Years ago, in the 1970’s, I remember listening to the advice of professor Joseph Campbell and thinking to myself, “Gee, that sounds right.” He taught literature and mythology at Sarah Lawrence college. “Follow your passion,” he said, and that sounded like the right way to find your best path in life—at least, when you were in college.
He seemed to be telling me to do what I liked doing, and that meant I’d always enjoy my work or job. But I found it was a formula that didn’t work in my second year in college when I discovered that my love of drawing cartoons wasn’t going to pay me much money.
Much later, sometime in the 2000’s, I happened upon a video that seemed to take the completely opposite view of finding my job path in life. It was a podcast hosted by Patrick Ben-David, a seemingly self-made businessman who was selling his more practical-minded education program called Valuetainment. “Follow the money,” he seemed to be saying, as he quoted the cost of different college degrees and what jobs in those fields paid. Some career fields just didn’t seem to be worth the cost of college.
He was a compelling salesman - so much so, I decided to include one of his videos in this post, you can click on it below. It’s worth viewing:
Looking back now, I see these two videos as polar opposites of advice for selecting your work path in life - either follow your emotional mind choice, or your logical mind choice. But viewing these simple choices side by side, I began to realize something else my long career had taught me; it’s not that simple. Like every other important life decision, you have to collect as much experience and education as you go along and keep thinking about your career choice, and realize that it may change as you develop and age. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, on average, people change jobs 12 times during their careers, with men holding 12.8 jobs on average, and women holding 12.5. Individuals born between 1990 and 2010 are expected to change careers between 5 and 9 times and change jobs about 14 times before retirement. So much for simple, one-time decisions about your career choice. It’s more complicated than that.
What Pew Research Found in 2023
When taking a wider view of how people’s lives are changing, it’s obvious that change and uncertainty of choice is common for personal decisions as well as work decisions.
When asked what it takes to lead a fulfilling life, only about one-in-four American adults said that having children, getting married, or having a lot of money was extremely or very important. Instead, the vast majority said that finding the right jobs or careers and having close friends were highly important.
The Problems of Predicting Your Satisfaction from Your Life Choices
The two biggest questions I think anyone might ask about evaluating life choices are; (1) what, exactly, are you evaluating? And, (2) Why are you trying to predict your future satisfaction? You should know by now you can’t predict the future.
My belief is that any planning ahead is better than none, but don’t just fantasize about living a successful new life; focus on asking the right questions about your emotional needs as well as your practical life needs. For example, what kind of work do you enjoy doing vs. don’t like at all? And, how much money do you have to make to live the life you want to live? Don’t expect the answers to come quickly or easily. These questions get you started looking for what’s important to you. Those are the best kinds of questions to ask as you look around and talk to other people about different career choices you’re thinking about.
Above all, realize you need experience doing a kind of work before you can really understand what it requires or offers you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone tell me they started working in a certain job simply because they needed money, but that then became their career. That’s true of entertainment stars such as Bing Crosby, James Cagney, Jackie Gleason, and so many more. I wish I had worked in an ice cream or yogurt store before I invested in starting my own ice cream store. I would have learned how much I hated standing behind a counter and waiting on people. I much preferred sitting at a desk, thinking and writing analyses and reports. The lesson I learned is just common sense; don’t invest in and start a business until after you’ve worked in it first for a while.
I think the late Charlie Munger came up with the best answer I’ve ever heard to the question about why you should think about your future satisfaction; you don’t want to make any big mistakes. I’ve often wondered if I would have married my first wife if I had realized she would most likely turn out to be like her mother, a woman who only wanted to be a homemaker with no interest in business or intellectual subjects. I missed seeing a lot of practical as well as emotional needs I had before I graduated from college. I should have asked a lot more questions about what I wanted or needed then.
Charlie Munger’s Career Choice and Primary Strategy to Achieve Life Success
Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire-Hatheway had a gift for concise action thinking. Charlie Munger passed away in 2023 but his words still make a lot of sense to me.
Another great idea of his, if you will allow my rephrasing, is this one:
· Your opportunities in life are more obvious if you prepared your mind; take every opportunity to learn every day, from your life experiences.
Dan’s Net Take-Away
Nothing in life is either easy or simple. Stop looking for, and don’t ever listen to, somebody else’s simple direction on how to be successful.
Start learning and thinking for yourself and never assume you know it all. You never do and never will. But if you’re ready to work and keep learning, you will continue to find better opportunities to fit your personal needs and wants in life.
The most critical learning is usually the most difficult and sometimes the most frustrating and painful; I’m now talking about learning yourself. What are your needs and wants? To satisfy them, you’ll have to first learn what they are. Next week, I’d like to talk about the most important tool in your brain- the prefrontal cortex. It’s a part of your brain that can make all the difference between simply reacting to something, and figuring out what to do and how to do it.