Stop Letting Your Job Choose Your Life

There was a time in my life (I won't name any names, early 2000s...👀) when certain characteristics made me feel like I'd hit some sort of success benchmark:

• Enduring these-> 👠 for nine+ hours/day

• A closet dominated by Ann Taylor Loft 😳

• Swanky🍸🍸 on Tuesday nights

• Arriving in style 🚘 to Sunday brunch

I used to think success meant climbing the career ladder, no matter where it led me. It was all about my work, and not about other really important factors of my life.

Fast-forward to now where heels are hard to find in my Chaco and Hoka-dominated closet, and success to me is now measured by things like: the length of my mid-week bike rides; the number of times I get to hear "HI MAMA!" at 4:02pm each school day; the substance of conversation I have with friends and neighbors; the laughs I share with my husband throughout the day.

Maybe I'm a slow learner, or maybe these things didn't use to bring me as much joy as they do now, but there's a growing trend I can point to when I ponder how I have so much more joy in my adult life than ever before: I'm making life choices based on all of these things- not just on work.

I believe joy in life comes from six key drivers:

1. Health & Wellness

2. Financial Peace

3. Meaningful Work

4. Our Ideal Location

5. Inspiring Community

6. Personal Growth

   
   

I've started thinking of this as The Joy List. Work is on this list! But it's not the only thing, and not even the most important thing. And yet- it's what we typically lead with when we make some of the most important decisions of our lives. Most of us choose work first, and let that determine where we live, how we spend our time and money, and who we're surrounded by. When work drives everything else, joy becomes accidental.

Most of us live lives that are shaped around one or more work-based decisions we've made.

All of that "success" in my 20s wasn't bringing me joy. I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to do, but the reality was that I was choosing work, and accepting the default state of everything else. That default state wasn't all that bad- it just wasn't ideal. And I wonder what it could have looked like if I really led with other factors rather than focusing solely on my job.

Instead of asking "What job can I get?" and letting that cascade through location, time, and finances, what if we started with "What combination of these six elements would create the most sustainable joy?" and then define our ideal work to support that vision.

What if we first chose:

✨ The community we want to be part of

✨ The place that energizes us

✨ The time sovereignty we need

✨ The health we want to maintain

✨ The growth we want to achieve

...and THEN found work that supports that vision?

If we made holistic decisions in our lives that weighted factors of the Joy List as much as work and income were weighed, we would create more sustainable growth and joy.

In my late 20s and into my 30s, I began to take a deeper look at each of these things. I became acutely aware of how my job had shaped so many of my choices- but I was able to make tweaks to cater to the non-work factors of my joy.

When Ryan and I discovered the exact place that energized us, and the community we wanted to be a part of, we started to make a plan. Still, it took us several years to relocate there, because we wanted financial peace first.

I've written before about our ideal working decades. I think it's reckless to say "forget the job- just live where you want!" as that is not a feasible solution for everyone. Ryan and I had our decades of grinding before we landed in our dream place, community, and balance of work/play/family/growth. Now, we're living out our dream decades before maybe pivoting to more work focus, or something else, down the road.

Perhaps our early working decades is the time to prioritize work- but that doesn't mean we should neglect our other joy factors in the process. Incorporating these factors into work-related decisions could even have growth potential- not just for our careers, but also for us as individuals. For instance:

• You might choose a location based on community potential and lifestyle fit, then seek work that allows you to thrive there, even if it means less income initially. As you thrive, work would be likely to follow suit.

• Or, you might prioritize time sovereignty and health, leading to work that preserves energy for relationships and personal growth, which could in turn maximize your future growth potential.

• Or, if you intentionally curated your community first, it could create a growth catalyst- surrounding yourself with people whose values and ambitions inspire you. Rather than letting community happen by default based on your work (we do this often when we outsource one of our primary joy sources to whatever random collection of people our job situation delivers), intentionally building community first could create a growth catalyst, by surrounding yourself with people whose values and ambitions inspire you. Imagine how this potential could play out in your work, in addition to your personal life.

An important challenge to keep in mind is that it takes time and experimentation to find the right answers to our joy list. Many times, we have to strike out before we learn what kind of community we really want to be a part of, or what kind of time sovereignty we actually need. And these things continue to change as we do. So the key is not only asking ourselves these questions, and making decisions with the answers in mind- it's being flexible enough to allow our answers to change, and then making the changes in our lives to honor the new list.

I challenge you to think about your joy list. What decisions would you have made differently if you had led with this list, rather than your job first?