Do you feel as though your time at work is time taken away from your real life? If your rich Uncle Bob left you $1 million tomorrow, would you quit your job? If you answered yes to one or both questions, you probably aren't doing work that aligns with your values.

Searching for Meaning

More and more people of all ages and at all career stages are searching for meaning in their working lives. There are several reasons for this heightened search. A lifetime of guaranteed job security with one employer is a thing of the past. People are changing jobs and careers more frequently due to such factors as shifts in the global economy, downsizing, and the increased use of technology, as well as the elimination of middle management positions. Increasing numbers of workers soon come to understand the importance and necessity of managing their own careers. The act of switching from one employer to another offers you the chance to assess interests, skills, values, and other qualities and align that information with your career decisions.

Learning New Skills

Another aspect of this increased search for meaning is that it motivates people to improve and expand their marketable skills. Stagnating in one place, working with old technology, or using archaic skills can make it much harder to find new opportunities and challenges at work. People need and desire new experiences, and that need compels more workers to seek out careers where they can grow, learn, meet new challenges, and use their abilities in significant ways. That kind of work is never boring.

Following Your Spiritual Path

Spirituality and the search for meaning are increasingly seen as part of work, not separate from it. Trend-tracker Patricia Aburdene calls the focus on spirituality and its convergence with business “today's greatest mega-trend.” Career professionals often hear clients express a need to get more than just a paycheck out of their jobs. Author and motivator Stephen Covey offers the analogy of spending your entire life climbing a ladder only to get to the top and find out it's leaning against the wrong wall. Don't let that happen to you.

Defining Success

Finally, the definition of success is no longer as linear, clear, or obvious as it seemed previously. People want to create their own definitions of accomplishment that link their values to their work. For some, earning a huge salary may be well worth the inability to spend time with family and friends. For others, the lure of prestige may pale in comparison to the opportunity to help others who are less fortunate. Every day, people accept promotions or resign from high-powered jobs in order to pursue careers that they perceive to be more rewarding based on their own criteria. In 2006, Bill Gates announced that in 2008 he would quit his daily involvement in Microsoft to head his charitable foundation full-time. The motivating force for such people is their values and the desire to fit into a workplace where the values mesh with their own. As values coach and author Michael Henderson writes in Finding True North(HarperCollins), “It is our values that give us meaning in life, and meaning, in turn, provides us with strength, motivation, and willpower.”