From the New York Times-bestselling author of Life Is in the Transitions comes a bold new road map for finding meaning and purpose at work, based on insights drawn from hundreds of life stories of Americans from all backgrounds and vocations
When Bruce Feiler completed his last book, which introduced readers to his idea of the "nonlinear life," he realized that the greatest source of change in the world is work. Unprecedented numbers of Americans are quitting their jobs, rethinking their routines, breaking away from stifling preconceptions.
The most stifling iron cage of all is the premise that each of us must have a "career." We must follow a linear path of success, choosing a dream early, locking into a trajectory, always climbing higher, until we reach "the top." Few ideas have created more misery, squandered more human potential, or ruined more relationships. Feiler has resolved to help all of us imagine better.
The result is another milestone, an urgent cry for each of us to follow our own individual dream of success. The culmination of thousands of hours of interviews with an extraordinarily diverse and inspiring group of Americans, The Search assembles a mosaic of stories truly representative of our time. From this collection, Feiler has distilled a powerful new vision for how to think about work—and how to live accordingly.
He shows that our lives are upended by a stream of "workquakes" on average every two-and-a-half years. Sure, some people set a goal and stick with it, but Feiler produces overwhelming evidence that far more of us revise our passions, change our directions, rethink our priorities. Feeling lost and ashamed, we resent being forced to grab someone else's gold ring. The time has come to melt down those rings, and this book brings the heat.
After dismantling "the three lies about work," Feiler lays out the one truth: that each of us must write our own story. Using the fundamentals of any good narrative, Feiler introduces the six questions to ask in times of change—Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How—that allow us to perform a meaning audit, tapping into our truest selves and our deepest hopes to create the meaning we crave.
Both timely and timeless, this book arrives as the world questions our basic assumptions about work—and shows that the answers involve not following another supposed expert, but giving yourself to yourself, learning to dial into your own inner voice and turning the volume all the way up.
