Find a Purposeful Career: Turn Right

I’ll be brutally honest. I love the concept of Turn Right‘s suggestions on how to have a purposeful career.

 

‘A career is a vehicle for realizing the reasons for your existence while at the same time helping you to reach your own personal goals.’

–Inez Natalia, Turn Right

 

Turn Right is about you. It’s about going on a journey to find your true Purpose in life and which career might be best for you. The answers are not given to you. you must find them yourself. But the book guides you in the right direction towards having a purposeful career.

 

---

 

I loved the fact that Inez told you about herself and her journey from a high school girl with hate for living in her country, Indonesia, the education system and corrupt government. She absolutely just wanted to run away and live a life of luxury in a foreign land leaving her country behind to who knows who?

 

If all the great talents of Indonesia preferred to leave their homeland, who would be left to make Indonesia better?

 

Then she came to a turning point in her life right at the end high school. She realized that she was actually part of the problem plaguing Indonesia. So she decided from that point in time to be part of the solution. Here’s her powerful solution she came up with below.

 

Inez Natalia’s Purpose

 

Enable other people and help them to understand themselves better and, ultimately, to realize their own purpose in designing and living a purposeful career.

 

To me, this sounds very similar to the WHY Statement in Find Your Why but Inez goes about leading you through the three special pages and six other journals and activity pages which help you reach inside yourself to discover your Purposeful career.

 

So, if you’ve read Start With Why, Find Your Why or even The Alchemist, you’ll find this book like visiting an old friend with a new twist.

 

With lines such as ‘The universe would love to conspire to help you out if what you desire to do also contributes toward serving others. It knows that every human being should play a role in the grand plan.’ it all seems very familiar to The Alchemist.

 

You do end up writing quite a bit in this book through the special pages and journal and activity pages which is great for going back to months or years later to see how you’ve progressed in your career and also to see how some or all of your thoughts and troubles have changed and improved over time.

 

Other Good Things About Inez’s Purposeful Career Book

• The writing was honest and it made you feel comfortable while reading through the pages. It’s like you were taken on a journey gently directed by the exercises and flow of words in the book.

• It’s also packed with useful and memorable quotes so make sure to have your pen, highlighter or notebook with you ready to take notes.

 

---

‘As a citizen of this world, you have a duty to take part in shaping its future. No matter how large or small, you want to take action toward building a better tomorrow. You conciously choose your own role.’

‘The moment you acknowledge and accept that life is challenging is the moment you can finally stop asking, “Why is this happening to me?” and start focusing instead on the solutions.’

---

 

• Some people may or may not think it’s necessary to have tasteful drawings on many of the pages of this book. For me, it felt a bit out of place, but none-the-less, the drawings are beautiful and make you feel comfortable.

 

• The other visuals were useful in helping you to visualize your path or purposeful career.

• There were four blog posts from The Intersection Project (Inez Natalia is the co-founder and facilitator, click on the link for more information) originally posted on Medium at the end of some of the chapters. It was nice to have these in the book because it gave you a bit of a break from the rhythm without being disruptive to the overall Purpose since the posts were very tightly related to the message of Turn Right.
• Both Inez and I are proud to be AIESEC Alumni. Although not from the same city or country I still can relate to the life-changing experiences she experienced through being a member of AIESEC.

 

Main Takeaways From Turn Right: A Journey to Purposeful Careers

Finding Yourself

The first and probably most important aspect of having a Purposeful career is knowing who you are. One way of doing that is by asking yourself, ‘How you see yourself.’ and actually taking the time to meditate on that.

 

The second suggestion from the book is by journaling every day if possible. Writing in a journal about anything can help direct your feelings and self-image in the right direction. Even when you don’t feel like there’s anything to write there probably is. You just have to relax and let your mind flow onto the paper.

 

The third way is to picture and describe your strengths, weaknesses and personal views on life. What problems might stand in your way of achieving your overall goals?

 

Fourth is to know exactly why you are on this journey.

 

Having a Fulfilling Life

 

People think about the ‘end’ of the journey; but the ‘finish line’ is not actually the Purpose, it is the destination. Purpose is there in the beginning and throughout the entire journey.

 

You all know life is challenging. It is a fact of life and the sooner you’re able to accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to enjoy and fulfill your dreams. One way you can fulfill your dreams is through a purposeful career.

 

On average, according to this book, people often work more than 96,000 hours in their lifetime (page 37). Some of those people are stuck in jobs they do not enjoy. Maybe even most! Now you think about whether the job you’re at right now is enjoyable to you. If it’s not, why stay? Because of stability? Because the salary pays your bills?

 

Whatever your reason may be,  it might be time for you to consider searching for a job which fits your Purpose. In fact, in my opinion, everyone has the ability to create their own job. To be their own boss. Only the right career can be found within yourself.

 

This lifelong journey will require a high dose of positivity, courage, and exitement in learning endlessly, as well as persistence along the way.

The Three Components of a Purposeful Career

Passion – What you really love to do

• Passion is not to be blindly followed but should be used as a channel.
• You have multiple passions in your life, but it’s impossible to turn all your passions into a career. You should think carefully about which one can actually be monetized.
• Passions can change over time.

 

Your passion is a tool which can be used to reach extreme happiness and accomplishment while working. It is a key to understand what actually drives you and how you can use that drive to your advantage.

 

As you grow, you will become happier and happier with your situation on your journey to a purposeful career.

 

Talent – The potential you have, even if it has not been unleashed

Every person has talent. There are no exceptions.

 

Talent is hard to define sometimes because talent doesn’t actually come from your heart like passion does. Talent is your natural ability to excel at a certain skill set which can give you a huge advantage. This doesn’t mean that you won’t succeed if you don’t have a talent in a particular area you’re passionate about. It just means you’ll have to work harder.

 

How do you find your talent if you don’t know it?

1. Explore the hell out of your life. Meaning experiment and take note how well or how bad you do.
2. Listen to others around you. Let them tell you whether you’re good at something or not.
3. Listen to yourself. Sometimes you’re the best judge of your own talent.

 

Any knowledge can be learned and skills developed through hard work and practice. Having, or not having, any particular talent is not the ultimate factor for success, but having a particular talent would make the learning process faster.

 

Contribution – The part you desire to play that aligns with the needs of the world.

 

The world’s biggest problems equal the biggest business opportunities. 

–Peter Diamandis, Bold

 

Contribution is something you do for others in order to see an improvement in their lives. In order to achieve contribution you need to understand how the world has countless problems and needs your help.

 

By looking closely at your passion and your talents you can figure out which problem you will have a higher chance of solving no matter how small or big it is.

 

This is the most important building block in your path to a purposeful career, but without passion or talent included, it’s still doable but you’re more likely to fail. So, in reality, you need all three components in order to be happy and personally successful on your journey to a purposeful career.

 

Another fantastic thing about contributing to a cause is the joy you receive from the personal connection that comes from seeing your deeds bring smiles to other people’s faces. Nothing is better than making other people happy. It’s contagious.

 

If you are able to see the result of positive change due to your own work in your own lifetime it is the idea of altruism. You have done good to others and made your contribution toward making someone else’s condition better. That makes you feel good about yourself. It gives core meaning to your everyday life. Contribution is the essence of Purpose.

Conclusion

If I had read Turn Right one or two years ago or even right before I read Find Your Why just in last October 2017, I would have been wowed by it. Nonetheless, I still had a wonderful time reading it especially to hear Inez’s stories. Just those alone made the book worth reading and telling other people to read it too.

 

After reading it, and even from the title, I can tell this book is for three different types of people.

1. People who are stuck in a career they do not enjoy and need a solution to get out into a career they love.
2. People who are in a career they enjoy but don’t know exactly what their Purpose is. This book will help you find it.
3.  High school or university students who haven’t even started working yet but are already thinking about it.

 

I’ll leave you with this quote from Inez Natalia:

 

A purposeful career is what you continually do in life. It is not the title you hold nor the name of a job position that is assigned to you. It is about the allignment between what your heart wants to fight for, and the exploration of ideas, resulting in the concrete actions as the output. It is about what you create through the collaboration of your soul, your mind, and your concrete actions.

 

Bonus Material: Book Review of Turn Right on BookMattic’s YouTube Channel

If you want to know more about Inez Natalia and her work, follow the links below.

Inez Natalia’s Instagram

Inez Natalia’s Facebook

Inez Natalia’s Twitter

Inez Natalia’s Goodreads

Inez Natalia’s Medium

If you want to know more about The Intersection Project or buy Turn Right, follow the links below.

The Intersection Project’s Instagram

The Intersection Project’s Facebook

The Intersection Project’s Website (or buy the book)

Or buy Turn Right from Amazon!

Join all the others and you’ll be on your way to success. Never miss a blog post on how to become a more well rounded and motivated individual by entering your email address below.

Always remember to share what you’ve learned with the people you care most about.

First Name Email Address Free Insights