Doing What You Want versus Doing What You Are Told

It is important to have a career that makes you happy, rather than pursuing a career simply because you or others think that you should. Life is too short not to be doing the things that you really want to do with your life. If you do not yet know the kind of work that makes you genuinely happy, you need to go and find it.

To reflect on this pursuit, I’ve recently read about two individuals who changed to find happiness. Here is their story!

Two men who worked in New York City, each of whom made millions of dollars and immediately quit their jobs, taking up completely different careers as gas station owners in New Jersey.

• One man had originally been a financial trader with a bunch of Ivy League degrees.He made his fortune by selling some trading system he had developed for $10 million or so.
• The other man had been an attorney with an impressive pedigree as well.One day, he won a huge settlement and made around $5 million.

These men did not know each other and were of no relation, yet they both ended up migrating into the same profession.How does one transform from being a person with incredible qualifications to a person who simply owns a gas station on the New Jersey turnpike?

Once these men made the move, they were incredibly happy after leaving their careers and taking on new positions as gas station operators. Running a gas station that sees a lot of business can be very profitable. Most gas station operators make around 10 cents a gallon in profit from every gallon of gas that they sell. In addition, they make a lot of money on the concessions that they sell inside the shop. Also, a lot of customers pay with cash, and the gas station owners often do not declare and pay taxes on their cash sales.

Owning a gas station is much different from being a Wall Street lawyer or trader. You report to work in jeans, not a suit. You often work with people who are not highly educated. Selling refreshments and gas is something, it would seem, that almost anyone could do. Why, then, did these men both plan such a drastic change in profession? Here are some likely possibilities:

• They wanted to be happy.
• They enjoyed working in the gas station.
• They could earn decent money in the gas station business and could maintain a high quality of life.
• They wanted to be independent, and having their own businesses allowed them this independence.
• They realized that much of what is going on and is expected of people in the working world is just complete nonsense.
The idea has always fascinated me: If you could rise up through the ranks in your company and become incredibly successful, hypothetically making enough money to retire–would your very next move be to purchase a gas station? Most people would probably not do this. Instead, they would choose to keep on doing exactly what they had been doing before. It takes a lot of courage to walk away from a prestigious job to do something viewed as much less prestigious.

One of the most interesting things that I have seen in all my years, and as someone who has personally worked with hundreds of people, is that many people out there seem to have been brainwashed into doing certain types of jobs and living certain types of lives. Most often, these people want to have the jobs that are considered the most prestigious, which pay the most, and are perceived as offering the most security. At the same time, the people who end up following all the rules to obtain careers and lives like this are often the most unhappy.