I’m reading a book that talks about how college students invariably choose careers based on income potential. The author stated he tells everyone to choose a career for love not money and that no one listens to him.

The author gets one thing right: happiness leads to success. It’s not that when a person becomes successful they’re happy.

The secret to life is that you can be happy doing what you love earning a livable salary. You might have to work two jobs yet in my estimation that’s better than sitting home watching TV for two or three hours every day.

My view on this is as strong as the other author’s: do what you love. Do what you love. Do what you love.

Selling your soul is not the answer. In another book the author talks about how people who chase money and the things it can buy often have poorer health and smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol more than other people. They’re not any happier and I would say I doubt they’re truly successful in terms of what matters most.

The clothes on your back don’t love you back. An iPhone won’t cheer you when you’re depressed.

This goes into a second book I’m writing. I help people all the time with career searches. I helped a college student take the CareerMatchmaker quiz that I talked about in an early blog entry here. One of the careers he was interested in showed up in his Top 40 careers list.

As a practical matter selling your soul to earn money will only leave you in an emotional poorhouse.

I advocate for choosing wisely what you want to do with your life. I advocate as I have now going on nine years for doing what you love and seeing how you can earn income from this.

I could sound like a broken record claiming that buying into the myth of having status in society as a JD or MD is not the way to go. Not for creatives. Not for a lot of people whose parents push them into being super-achievers.

I don’t view any person as low-lying fruit. In my view everyone has gifts and everyone has something positive to contribute to society. Regardless of whether they earn a ton of money doing this. And regardless of whether they have an actual job or not.

Thus my famous position about valuing the services of a cashier at Rite Aid.

I’m going to sign off now. In coming blog entries I’m going to return to a focus on health and nutrition.