Most people want to do their life’s work. Some people are able to separate work completely from life and be happy doing anything, but this is not the norm. I once knew a man who managed things for a living. He’d managed a restaurant for several years, seen an ad in the paper, and become manager of a print shop. He didn’t particularly like the job, but he didn’t hate it.

And I will never forget what he said, when trying to convince me I could do a better job with my attitude. “It’s just a job. It’s not your life. You have a job so you can afford to have a life when you go home. You come in here, you act like you’re having a good time, you do the work, then you go home and play.”

Well, that may have been fine for him, and I know other people who have their fulfillment outside their jobs—for instance, an apartment complex manager whose real passions are cooking and gardening. She likes her job fine, she’s been there 20 years, but it’s just a job.

I can’t work at “just a job” for more than about six months before my head explodes. I don’t know about you, but I have to have a job that means something to me. I’ve gone through several businesses doing work that was important to me, and I’ve finally found my life’s work in life coaching.

The first meaningful work you find may not be your life work, but I guarantee you that if you’re doing work you don’t find fulfilling, you’re not getting closer to your life’s work. You get there only by trying on things that might be it and finding out they’re not. And working at the Post Office, while it pays well and has good security, is probably not on the track to the work you were born to do.

Take some chances. Take some jobs that feel right, even if there’s a “better” job available. Start the journey to your life’s work and don’t stop until you can say, “This is the work I was born for.”