At 23 I had a bright, shiny journalism degree...and a strong desire to not be a journalist. (Gulp!) So I started my career with the same sense of panic that many young people have when they graduate.

I'm a scrappy optimist, so I worked my shitty part-time job for a few months until I scored a job working as a recruiter — something I wasn't trained for and never planned to do. To my surprise, I loved it! I worked my way up, getting promotion after promotion until I was managing a team of my own. I got my first masters degree. I felt proud and successful.

But then I stopped growing. I didn't want my boss's job. And I couldn't see anywhere in my organization I wanted to go. And did I even want to stay in this field I'd stumbled into, anyway? Time for some soul searching.

I decided to leave my job with great pay and benefits to become a professor. I quit, got a second masters degree, enrolled in a PhD, and scored a gig as a prof at a business school. Major victory, right?! I mean, what an accomplishment!

I hated it. I loved teaching, but I haaaated conducting research (which is, like, 80% of a professor's job). So I did what most people do when they've worked hard to get where they are: I tried to push through and not think about it.

I started having all kinds of "unexplained" health problems (um, it was the job.) One day I finally broke. I had a breakdown in the middle of a crowded Starbucks. We're talking one of those floating over your own body watching in horror as the whole thing unfolds kind of breakdown. I couldn't do it anymore. I quit the next day.

Since then, I've devoted my life to helping people get happier at work — to helping them get unstuck so they can do work that actually feels good. I've written about feel-good work at places like Forbes, Inc., & Entrepreneur. I talk about it on national TV. I've written bestselling books about it.  Ten years in and thousands of happy humans later, I still feel a pinch-me level of delight that I get to help people find their way to feel-good work.