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Rather than thinking about the job as sort of the central axis of your life around which the rest of your life orbits,

if we can start with our vision of a life where it lives and then think about how our jobs or our career can support that vision,

it can really let people off of the hook.

Hi everyone, I'm Jean Chatsky. Thanks so much for joining me today on her money.

So what is the first question that you ask someone new when you are, say, sipping a cocktail at a mutual friend's birthday party?

As much as we try not to ask it and I try really hard not to ask it,

it's pretty much always, what do you do? I mean, in Europe, this might get you kicked right out of the party.

But in the US, our lives are so intertwined with our work that sometimes it's hard to bring another question to mind as quickly when we meet a stranger.

And that stranger's response, it can completely define the way we think about them and picture how they spend their days.

There's also the concept of the so-called dream job. Many people are obsessed with finding it and holding onto it. Why?

Because we think our lives will be complete once we land it. What are those jobs? Well, financial services company Remedy recently took a look at Google searches for dream jobs.

Number one on the list is pilot, not my dream job, by the way, followed by writer, dancer, youtuber, and entrepreneur.

Interesting that these are creative careers, many of them that don't necessarily equate to making a lot of money. Put a pin in that thought we're going to come back to it.

What's fascinating, I think, about all of this at this particular moment in time is that there seems to be a shift underway.

We saw a dramatic change in our relationship with our jobs during the pandemic, how we felt about them, where we wanted to do them, how much we were willing to give up for them.

Yet many of us still rely on them for our healthcare, our retirement, matching dollars, even a good dose of our self-worth.

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