Richard Leider, an executive and career coach from Minnesota, published an article in Fast Company back in December (see article).  He makes recommendations for finding purpose in your life by aligning your career with your life’s purpose. 

The article contains a description of his 10 “laws” for making decisions on purpose with one of them proposing the two questions:

• What do you want?
• And how will you know when you get it?

He makes a really valid point that many of us fail to even propose these questions prefering instead to just stay busy.  We have a lot of good excuses, but have to really admit to ourselves that we prefer a purposeless life.

He states very clearly that talent plays a major role in career selection, but so is your passion, environment and your vision. He calls out environment as the main roadblock preventing people from achieving their definition of success. In the wrong environment, even the most talented and visionary person with tons of passion will fail miserably.  He asks, “Are you willing to trade off 60% of your time just to have money to spend the time that left?” It’s really a statement to be considered so you don’t look back on your life with regrets about taking the easy road and living a less that successful life.

Read this article.  It’s well worth the time.