An alternative approach to career choice and development that has attracted some popular appeal over the past few years is to concentrate on the notion of personal mission or purpose. This approach asks you to consider what might be the wider purpose or mission of any work you might do – what good does it do?

It would once have been considered normal to have asked such a question in times when one’s work could be seen as a ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’. In our time, this has fallen out of favour. Yet recent books such as Nick Williams’s ‘The Work We Were Born To Do’ and Carmel McConnell’s ‘Soultrader’ have shown that there can still be value in this approach for some considering career change.

Although this might seem like bringing a religious or spiritual dimension to career development, one doesn’t have to have religious beliefs to find this approach useful. Many people feel it is important that their work contribute(s) in some way to a greater good. The ethical dimension may be more obvious in some types of work than others.

We all have a need to make a living from our work. But as Abraham Maslow observed, once we’ve secured that basic need, our minds turn to other questions, which may involve some of the issues explored here.

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