Hoping to land in the middle someday.

Just came across this great diagram on share some candy. Have you seen this yet?

This is a fantastic framework for thinking about your career and how to be happy with what you do. When I saw this, it just made sense to me, the idea that the ideal situation is when what you want to do and what you do well and what you can get paid to do, all overlap.

When you think about the people who seem truly happy with “what they do”, they exist right in the center of this diagram. They like what they do, they’re good at it, AND they can make money off of it. But they are few and far between.

The majority of us fall elsewhere on this spectrum. Either we like what we do and are good at it – but we aren’t making money off of it. Or we’re good at what we do and are making money off of it – but it’s not what we want. Or we’re making money off what we want to do – but we’re not very good at it (the easiest to fix, in my opinion).

This concept has been bouncing around my brain for months now but Bud Caddell just boiled it down beautifully in what he calls the “How to Be Happy in Business” diagram. For me this gets right to the core of the “being true to you everyday” stuff I was going on about the other week.

Existing in the middle of this diagram? Not easy to do. I think people live their whole lives without ever getting there. But it’s a goal for me. And I’m glad I came across this visualization of the goal tonight.

(To be honest, it was just what I needed after the funk the evening news put me into. Holy Moses, people, what is going on with our world? Where’s the love? Where’s the respect for our fellow humans? Argh! The whole thing upsets me. So let’s focus on the good (and ps. I accidentally just typed “food” instead of “good” there. We can focus on the food too.).)