I'd like to take you back six years. I was an associate at a large international law firm, at the end of a brutal week. It was about 8 p.m. on a Friday night, and all I could think about was escaping the office. I yearned to get home to my family, whom I hadn't seen all week. I felt a rush of anxiety knowing that I had to return the next day to finish my work. On the train ride home, I was heavy with emotion. The buildings seemed to move in slow motion. I found myself wondering, "How did I get here? I followed all the advice I was given. I earned the right degrees. I landed a good job. Why do I feel such a lack of engagement and fulfillment in what I do? Will this ever change? What do I have to look forward to over the next 30 years of my life? Is it just a better commute? Maybe a nicer suit? Will I ever feel engaged in what I do?" Upon reaching my station, I couldn't remember where my car was parked. I wandered around the parking lot, attributing my forgetfulness to stress. Eventually, I remembered where it was. As I approached the spot, I noticed something on the ground where my car should have been. It was a box containing my special needs son's medical records. I had recently taken them to a new doctor. The box was exactly where my now stolen car used to be. As I waited for my wife to pick me up, reflecting on the absurdity of the day, I had a revelation that would change my life. I realized that the car didn't define me. It didn't fulfill me. I decided then and there that I wouldn't spend the next 30 years of my life trading time for money to buy more things that didn't fulfill me, things that could disappear instantly. I resolved to find fulfillment in my career. The problem was, I had no idea how to do that. No one had ever taught me about fulfillment. I didn't learn about it in school. It wasn't offered as a class at my university. Although I believed it was possible because I saw other people who were fulfilled, I knew I would have to figure it out on my own. Shortly after that night, I was at home and decided to introspect, to look inward. I hoped this would provide the missing piece to unlock a fulfilling career. I took out a blank sheet of white paper and wrote at the top, "When have you been most fulfilled?" I let my pen go wild, jotting down every hobby, activity, and happy, engaging, fulfilling time I could think of. When I filled the paper, I took a step back and immediately felt discouraged. Almost nothing on the list was something I could get paid to do. I thought I must be a hopeless case. Maybe life for me was going to be a grind. Maybe I would have to trade time for money and look elsewhere for fulfillment. But I'm not one to give up easily. I flipped the page over and wrote, "What do you value?" I listed my values and then had an inspiration. I wondered if the activities and hobbies I had written down were related to any of these values. I turned the page back over and looked at them. I realized that they were. I saw a pattern. In the times in my life when I had felt the most engagement, certain values were present. These were things unique to me, like freedom, adventure, risk-taking, the ability to create and build things that add value to others, and the ability to contribute to others and communicate. That's when I realized that in my day-to-day life, I wasn't aligned. I wasn't living what I truly valued. I didn't have the freedom to create things that added value to other people. In our careers, we have to distinguish between outcomes and consequences. Outcomes are what we often focus on in school. Get this degree. Become this profession. Become a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, an entrepreneur, or get a trade. These are outcomes. Each of these outcomes has consequences, and not just money and security. They also include things like, what do you do each day? Is what you do aligned with what you uniquely value? When we enter the career decision-making space, we're bombarded with suggestions from every direction about what we can become. Our family, friends, communities, churches, counselors, schools, and even our own selves offer advice. For many people, this can be confusing. You can feel torn, unsure of what to do. You want to get it right. You want to be successful and fulfilled, but you're not sure which path is the best one to take. I remember being in that position. This confusion and pressure can create internal chaos. There's a way to make it all go away instantly, but it's a flawed solution. It's simply to choose an outcome. Create order by choosing an outcome. I remember sitting in the study hall as an undergraduate student, feeling torn and unsure of what to do. I was thinking of all the things I could be and become, feeling confused and not wanting to get it wrong. I decided to go to law school. It seemed secure and prestigious enough. I had good grades and could get in. But it was a flawed solution. A better solution is one of alignment, so that we get to experience in our day-to-day lives what we truly value. Fast forward six years. I'm now a full-time entrepreneur and writer. Every single day, I feel fulfillment in what I do. Work is a highlight for me. I'm not constantly looking for vacations or things to buy. I'm not trying to fill my life with things that aren't meaningful. I feel engagement and passion in my work. On a daily basis, I have the freedom to create things that add value to others. I live with a sense of adventure, risk, and discovery. When I was that undergraduate student sitting in the study hall, thinking about the future, what I really wanted wasn't just money or success. I wanted a fit where I could live what I truly valued. So, how do you know if your career is a good fit? I'd like to suggest three things. Number one, can you easily trigger flow in your day-to-day activities? Flow is a concept that's well-referenced in psychology and performance literature. It's been described as that optimal human state, that state of energized focus where all of our attention is directed at the pursuit of a specific task. When we hit these flow states, the world seems to melt away. Time seems to stand still. Hunger subsides. We lose our sense of self-consciousness, and we come out of these flow states feeling charged, feeling more complex, and wanting to experience these flow states again. I have found that when I'm living what I value, flow comes easily and often. But when I wasn't, I was constantly thinking about the end of the day, the weekend (if I had one), and the vacation. When the vacation ended, I dreaded having to go back to work. I felt anxiety on Sunday nights knowing that I had to return to the office on Monday. Point number two, are you easily motivated in your work? I like to create a contrast between two different forms of motivation. One I call push motivation, and the other I call pull motivation. Push motivation is what I experienced as a lawyer. Push motivation always requires something external, either an external reward that we are seeking or an external pain that we are trying to avoid. We will dig in and push and affirm ourselves, doing what we need to do because we want that reward. We want that paycheck. We want that bonus. But here's the problem: when that reward no longer becomes compelling to us, and when we're no longer scared of that pain, we lose motivation. You see this all the time with money. When money is our only reward, we get to the point where we have enough money, and we think, "Why am I doing this? I don't feel engagement. I don't feel passion when I do." Let's compare that to the other form of motivation, pull motivation. I call this pull motivation because I feel pulled by something, something greater than myself. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I feel like I've tapped into a larger sense of purpose. This is the type of motivation that doesn't need an external reward. This is the wake-up-early, stay-up-late, turn-off-the-TV type of motivation, just because you want to. Because you feel engagement in what you're doing. This is the type of motivation that I feel when I'm living what I value. The best part of this motivation is that you're not tied to the rewards all the time. You will do the actions for their own sake. They're intrinsically beneficial to you. You feel joy just taking the action. This leads me to my third point. Are the actions their own reward in your career? To understand this point, you have to understand yourself. What makes you unique? What do you uniquely value? What makes you come alive? What makes your heart sing? Because if you know this, there is a career that allows you to experience these things on a daily basis. Not every single day over the last six years has been successful for me. Like every entrepreneur, I've had lots of setbacks, lots of failures. But I don't view failure the same way anymore. When I was operating only under push motivation, when the only thing that mattered to me was the pursuit of money, failure was catastrophic. But when you're operating under pull motivation, when the actions themselves are intrinsically rewarding, failure is just feedback. Failure is just education. You transcend the need for constant rewards. You learn to reward yourself. So, if you're the type of person who comes alive by empowering others, building communities, and engaging teams, and if your career allows for this on a daily basis, it will be internally fulfilling. You won't be constantly thinking about your salary. If you're the type of person who loves analyzing systems and complexities and solving problems, and if your career allows for this on a daily basis, it will be intrinsically rewarding for you. If you're the type of person who has a competitive drive, a competitive fire, and you want to test yourself to see what inner greatness you have, and if your career allows for this on a daily basis, you won't just be thinking about the vacation. You won't be thinking about the weekend. You won't just be thinking about the type of car you drive or the house that you have. It will be internally rewarding. And if you're the type of person who comes alive with a sense of discovery about the world, who loves learning, and if your career allows for this on a daily basis, it will be internally rewarding and fulfilling for you. What I'm advocating is that we look beyond doing what you love. We often say, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." I totally agree with that advice. But for some people like me, that advice is hard to implement. I take a sheet of paper and write down the things that I love, and I realize that nobody's going to pay me for any of that stuff. Does that mean I can't be fulfilled? Absolutely not. It just means that we have to look at it from a different angle. The angle is this: What is uniquely you? What do you uniquely value? What makes you come alive? What makes your heart sing? Because there is a career out there for every single one of us that will be fulfilling. If we can align what we uniquely value with our career, then we trigger flow. We trigger flow often. It becomes a daily thing. Every day we're feeling more complex. When we trigger these flow states, we feel fulfilled. Motivation is easy. It's not just about the rewards anymore. We feel pulled to a greater pursuit. We want to wake up early. We want to stay engaged. Because it's part of who we are. Most importantly, we've transcended the need for constant external rewards. We have achieved the greatest freedom that I think you can achieve: the ability to reward yourself. You don't need your boss's assurance. You don't need the vacation. You don't need the nice car. You don't need the fancy house. The work itself becomes fulfilling. That's the secret they don't teach us in school. Fulfillment isn't achievement. Fulfillment isn't something that you have to get to later in life. It's not the amount of money you make. It's not your title. It's not the type of car you have. It's not the type of home you have. It's not what people think about you. It's whether or not you think that your work is meaningful. It's whether or not you feel intrinsically engaged in the work that you do. That's fulfillment. And every single one of us can have it. We can have it from the day we start our career for the rest of our lives. Thank you.