Doing work you love means living your values and using your talents to help others. When people dedicate themselves to meaningful work, like Gandhi and Mother Teresa, they tend to thrive even in old age. While work takes up most of life, choosing a career based on passion rather than just money allows one to avoid feeling like a slave and to express one's true self. Discovering your purpose involves addressing human needs and finding work related to your deepest concerns for others.

1. Doing The Work You Love
Think of the times when you’ve felt happiest and best about yourself. If you look
carefully, you’ll find that most of the time it was because you were in some way giving to
others. People who are truly dedicated to their work – people like Mahatma Gandhi and
Mother Teresa, – continue to thrive on into old age. Human life, by its very nature has to
be dedicated to something. Giving your gifts to others is, in a very real sense, giving to
yourself. You may think you are giving to others, but you are really giving yourself a
chance to be your best. You’re giving yourself a chance to live your values, express your
talents, and share your love. Since you spend most of your time working, isn’t it worth
the effort to arrange your life so that what you do to earn a living is what makes you feel
best about yourself? Isn’t that a gift you owe yourself? I think the person who takes a
job in order to live – that is to say just for the money, has turned himself into a slave.
Doing the work you love means living your philosophy. It means putting your values to
work by determining to make what you do reflect who you really are. The only thing that
is necessary for the triumph of evil is for the good men to do nothing. Your purpose is
your particular response to the needs and aspirations of humankind. The things of the
world you find most troubling, painful, or upsetting, the aspirations and longings of your
fellow beings –these are powerful keys to the discovery of your life’s work. You don’t
have to be religious to believe that you’re here for a reason, that there is a purpose for
your existence. You have only to consider the alternative. What if your life has no
purpose? Are we to believe that we are just so many ants rushing to a fro until it is our
time to go?
Dr. Laura Schlessinger