No matter your job title, it shouldn’t be a factor. “What I learned was none of that has to do necessarily with who I am,” Obama said in a 2018 panel with Penguins Books U.K., “not what I want to be.”
Instead, Obama encourages you to think big: What do you care about, how do you want to invest your time, what brings your joy and what makes your sad?
“We don’t teach this in school,” she said. “But I learned to look for it and transform that passion into a job.”
Her life was forever changed when she did this. Why? Because I began asking that simple question to myself: “Not what was I going to do, but who am I going to be?” She said later, adding, “If I start to think, which kind of work is going to bring me joy?” It’s because if that is what you seek, then you’ll be able to excel at your job and all the rest will follow. That was what it worked out for me.