A friend of mine was recently asked, “If you could have any career you wanted, what would you be doing?” My friend said, “After all I’ve done in the last 20 years, I still have no clue what career would make me happy?”

My sage advice to him, and to anyone trying to answer this question, is to think back to the period in your life when you weren’t responsible for generating an income, say from ages 6 to 22. What did you like to do when nobody was telling you what to do or what you SHOULD do? When did that tuning fork go off in you heart? When did three or four hours pass so quickly you didn’t even look up? When were the times you surprised yourself and your peers that you could do something not everybody could do? For me those activities that resonated all had something to do with communication to an audience — writing, speaking, advertising, “slaying the great dragon of ambiguity” to help define and clarify something. What dragons do you like to slay?