The other day I was sitting and talking with a recent college grad, and just like many other recent college grads, he was excited for the future — but he was also a little scared. He asked me,

“What is one thing you would recommend for someone who has just graduated college and is looking to begin their career?”

My reply was, “Don’t think about what you want to do. Instead, think about how you want to live, and then figure out how you can achieve that.”

Billionaire businessman and investor Mark Cuban even goes as far as to say, “One of the great lies of life is follow your passions”.

Society today teaches you to first think about what you want to do, and then from there to figure out what kind of lifestyle is possible. But how is anyone supposed to know what they want to do when they haven’t even done anything yet? It makes no sense, and really is not a fair question to ask someone fresh out of high school or college.

If you were going to go to Australia, would you take a plane or a car?

Obviously a plane, right? Here, you looked at the destination and then chose the right vehicle to accomplish that. With most things in life this is what we do — we begin with the end in mind. So wouldn’t it make sense to do that when it comes to occupation and lifestyle as well?

As kids we all have huge dreams and goals. Maybe you wanted a Ferrari, a house on the beach, to be able to travel the world, or a walk-in closet the size of a bedroom, whatever that was for you. And then as we grow older, what most people do — what society teaches us to do — is to think about what you want to do. So we end up choosing a vehicle that will never let us accomplish our dreams and goals. And in time, we shrink our dreams to match our income.

Society has it backwards.

But if instead you started with how you wanted to live, you’ll figure out the right vehicle to achieve that.

Another way of thinking about this, as referenced in Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why, is asking yourself “Why do you want to do something?” This is because as humans, we are motivated by the why — not the what.

If you decide to go to the gym, you are doing that because you want to improve your health. That is your why. You don’t go to the gym because you are passionate about what it is — picking weights up and putting them back down.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t believe we were put on this earth to spend our lives sitting at a desk.

Even if you do love what you do, after you wake up to an alarm clock, commute to your job, do your job, commute back home, and then do that 5 times a week for over 40 hours a week, year after year after year, chances are you won’t love it as much as you did when you first started. No matter what it is.

But, if you really do love what you do, why not just get finances out of the way and then be able to volunteer your time still doing what you love on your own free will? Or maybe instead of working 5 days a week, you decide to spend more time traveling or with your family, and work for only 3 days a week. Money is not everything, but it gives you choices. Time is life, and money is choice.

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