In a decade of coaching those in transition, five timeless tensions continually emerge. While often subtle, these choices profoundly shape our lives. Let’s tuck into these big decisions:

Purpose or Passion?

Find your passion. Make it your work. And never work a day in your life. Or…follow your purpose? Wait, hold up, isn’t my purpose going to include my passion? Or should I find and cultivate my innate talent? The self-help landscape is riddled with confusing contradictory advice.

Passion is about what excites and motivates you while purpose is your deeper reason for existence. The two can certainly be interconnected. A little reframe: Imagine you are an instrument. Ask yourself what instrument you are here on this planet to play. Not the cello, I mean for example building a business that makes a difference in people’s lives. Or perhaps it’s fighting for a particular social cause. Or maybe it’s elevating those in your community.

The Verdict: If your goal is to end up passionate about what you do for a living then following your passion is bad advice. Instead, flex the vocational courage to commit to your purpose: something you know you were meant to do with your time on earth.

Deep or Shallow Work?

Shallow work flexes your logistical style tasks that are important for defining scopes of work, dividing labor, and coordinating among teams. It doesn't require intense focus or using hard-to-replicate skills.

Deep work is much more cognitively demanding than shallow work and requires a sustained focus without distraction. It’s dependent upon your unique talent, creativity, and hard-to-replicate skills. Unless you are superhuman or using enhances, you’re likely able to do a max of 4 hours of deep work per day.

The Verdict: Prioritize depth over superficiality. Be vigilant about protecting the time for your deep work; the rest can fall into place.

Should or Must?

Choosing ‘should’ often means listening to the voices of others — family, friends, colleagues, and even loved ones long gone. Their advice can be sound and they want the best for you. But, … they don’t know what it’s like to be in your body, in your brain, with your heart.

When you choose ‘must’ you heed the inner call from within. What makes your heart sing, what tickles your soul, what floats your boat?

The Verdict: Given the state of the world, the state of your being, and in your particular context — choosing must is your duty. Sometimes you slip up and fall back to the shoulds, so the practice is daring to choose must every damn day.

Meaning or Happiness?

This is perhaps one of my all-time favorite topics - so much so that I dedicated the first chapter to it in my book. Happiness is not the same as meaning but we often conflate the two.

Happiness is fleeting. It comes and goes, flexes and flops, rises and pops. That double-scoop of pistachio ice cream might melt divinely in your mouth or accidentally fall to the floor, but whichever way it’s gone and so is the momentary happiness it brings. And this makes happiness a moving target, and a very pooer career goal.

Meaning, a close cousin to happiness, is much more astute. The magic of meaning is that it persists through time. We can move to and from meaning again and again because it’s not a destination to which we arrive —but discursively comes from what we give our time, energy, and attention to.

Verdict: As meaning-making beings, connecting to something greater than yourself and discovering an enduring meaningful life is the best bet. For more evidence, take it directly from this positive psychologist.

Path or Paths?

Life seldom unfolds along a linear trajectory. I started my career in the music business. I swept the floors at an independent Californian record label, pushed vinyl on hip Japanese crate diggers from a dingy office in South London, and scouted for new artists with movers and shakers in Cannes.

Then a pivot. I secured a purchase order from a big retailer, got a loan from the bank, and left the music world to start up a fashion company. I had fun, I failed a tonne and learned a lot about myself and what I’m good and not good at.

Are you sensing the theme? When my next fork in the road appeared, I took the path back to school to reinvigorate and retrain. And in many ways (whether it’s a story I tell myself or my truth) I’m still meandering down this trail.

Today only 2 out of every 10 people know what they want to be when they grow up and then actually do that for their life. The remaining 80% have many paths over a lifetime.

Verdict: There are likely many paths for you to wander in this life. Rather than agonizing over the ‘right’ choice, relish the journey's twists and turns. Try out different routes knowing that a detour can enrich your life. And when you find yourself at a crossroads, commit and plunge into change.

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Dive Deeper

Why Purpose Not Passion Should Guide You
Want to Create Things That Matter? Be Lazy
The Crossroads of Should and Must
The Magic of Meaning
The Meanings of Life