Hi, I'm Lucia Knight, your Joy at Work Summit host. Join me as I share my journey from a 19-year career filled with slow-growing dissatisfaction to discovering a formula for lifelong joy at work. After a pivotal realization at 43, I pursued a master's in psychology and interviewed 100 professionals who made successful career shifts after 40. Through their stories, I developed a three-part formula: use your unique superpowers daily, solve problems that matter to you, and earn enough to live the life you want. This episode offers insights and a Venn diagram framework to help mid-career professionals design a deeply satisfying work life. For those interested, I also introduce my Life Satisfaction Assessment, a 30-minute program to evaluate and enhance your joy in 10 areas of your life.

Dig a little deeper:

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/derailed

Hi, I'm Lucia Knight, your Joy at Work Summit host.

So here's how I discovered the formula for a lifetime of joy at work.

I stumbled into my first career and stayed there for 19 years.

The last few years felt like a slow, dripping tap of dissatisfaction.

Drip, drip, drip.

No, it wasn't terrible.

But it wasn't joyful either.

I felt a bit greedy, wanting more.

But if I was going to spend 60 percent of my waking hours at work I wanted

more satisfaction, more fun, and to make a bigger impact on the world.

After all, life's too short, and I've known way too many wonderful

people who didn't make it this far.

So this desire for more soon turned into a need.

I feared losing my zest for life, love, and work if I didn't take the

reins of my career into my own hands.

But I was too old for a leap of faith and too burdened with responsibilities

to jump without a safety net.

The scientist in me needed proof.

I knew no one who had made a career shift after the age

of 40 and was happier for it.

In fact, I knew some who had taken the leap.

And ended up worse off both financially and emotionally.

So I did what I always do.

I learned more.

At the ripe old age of 43, I went back to university to pursue a

master's in psychology to see if I could understand how other people

in the world find joy at work.

I wanted to stop galloping from my first career and start sprinting towards the

second half of my career, I delved into the components of life satisfaction, which

is what psychologists called happiness and identified where I'd gone wrong and

looked for opportunities to design a different feature for myself and others.

But my network was full of people who had done the same

thing for their entire careers.

So in 2015, during a chat with a friend at a pub, I had an idea.

I challenged myself to find and interview 100 people who had made

successful career shifts after 40 to understand the patterns.

Now it took time, but eventually I find and interviewed 100 professionals

through friends, colleagues, various publications, et cetera.

But I learned from their successes and their mistakes and shared

their stories and their secrets.

From these interviews, I developed this formula for a lifetime

of satisfying, joyful work.

And I know that reducing years of research to a simple formula is risky.

Consider it a big picture starting point, uh, a frame of reference,

if you will, from which to analyze your own joy at work levels today.

So imagine a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles.

Circle one, use your unique superpowers daily.

These are the activities that make time fly, that energize you, that light you up,

that you find difficulty to stop doing.

Now, most people struggle to articulate their superpowers, but

discovering them can help design deeply satisfying work days every day.

Circle 2.

Point your superpowers at super problems for others that excite you.

Some people call this purpose.

Now, I see purpose as a deliberate decision to solve problems you care

about, giving your work life meaning.

Circle three, learn to market yourself, to earn what you

need to live the life you want.

And this is a super dynamic area and it's influenced by the decisions

in the other two circles, but it's also a skill that can improve

with age experience and learning.

Now I've met starving artists who use their superpowers to solve exciting

problems, but they don't earn enough to live the life that they want.

I've also met Millionaire law firm partners who use their superpowers

sparingly and burn out ultimately, unable to live the life that they deserve.

And I've met inspiring non profit leaders who do purpose fueled work, but don't

earn enough and arrive home exhausted with little left for their loved ones.

Cracking two elements of the formula just isn't enough.

You need all three for sustainable.

Long term, deeply satisfying, joyful work.

the magic lies in combining all three.

In summary, use your superpowers daily to solve problems for others

that matter to you, while earning enough to live the life you want.

Only then can you experience sustainable, long term joy at work.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment.

It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas

of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you time.

I call it D.

It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.