I came across a question recently that stopped me cold: What do you do most of the time? Not what you wish you did or what you tell yourself you should do. What actually fills your days?
The real question beneath it is more unsettling: Are you satisfied with what you do?
It matters. This is not a dress rehearsal. You know that already, so why spend your time doing what you dislike? Yes, there are bills to pay and obligations to meet. I get it. But it runs deeper than that.
Research shows that individuals with an internal locus of control are more likely to have higher job satisfaction. Translation? People who believe they have agency over their lives report greater satisfaction. Job satisfaction correlates with life satisfaction, creating a reciprocal relationship where each influences the other. When you feel stuck at work, that dissatisfaction bleeds into everything else.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: much of what frustrates us is within our control, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
You cannot change your boss’s behavior. True. But you can change your job. Yes, you can. That low performer on your team draining your energy? You can address it. Your intense dislike of winter affecting your mood six months a year? You can relocate or reframe it. These are choices you can control.
Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, discovered something profound in the most horrific circumstances imaginable: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
If Frankl could exercise choice in a concentration camp, what’s your excuse?
I’m not being flippant. I’m being direct because I care about how you spend your finite time on this planet. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught a simple framework: identify and separate matters so you can say clearly which are externals not under your control, and which have to do with the choices you actually control.
Most people spend their energy fighting what they cannot change while neglecting what they can.
So I’ll ask again: What do you do most of the time? And are you satisfied with it?
If the answer is no, then you have a choice to make. Not someday. Today. Because this is the life you’re living right now, and it’s the only one you get.
What will you choose?
