Mark Silver, who is both a long-time Sufi practitioner and an entrepreneur, makes the argument that instead of focusing on jobs or careers, it’s helpful to focus on what he calls your Jewel – that essence of what you bring to the world.

So long as you’re living from your Jewel, he says, there are any number of jobs or careers that you’ll find satisfying.

So what is this Jewel anyway?

In Silver’s definition, our Jewels are essential qualities. (For him, they’re essential qualities of the divine working through us, but we don’t need to go there in this conversation unless you want to.)

More importantly, our Jewel is something that emanates from us, that other people get from their interactions with us. It’s something central to who we are, rather than what we think or believe.

Here are a few qualities that might underlie your Jewel:

Strength Love Safety Radiance Beauty

Widsom Insight Joy Peace

So how is this helpful again?

We tend to focus on jobs and careers because they’re obvious – we have job titles, we work for companies or institutions, we have responses when someone asks us at a party what we do.

But those jobs and careers have likely come out of something else, a felt sense of something that was meaningful to you.

One question I often ask people is what drew them to academia in the first place, because in the answer lies something very important: what this person wanted, deep down, from this experience.

Another, related, question I often ask people is how they want to change the world. (Yeah, I’m fun at parties.) Of all the injustices and problems in the world, what are the ones you can’t let go of, the ones that rub against you? (This doesn’t mean they have to be Mother Teresa-level problems.)

The meaning at the center

What you wanted to get from academia and the ways you want to change the world are both central to the ways you are your own unique person, related to but different from your family and your fellow academic travelers.

Understanding both of those will tell you something about where you might want to look next.

If you were drawn to academia because you wanted to explore the edges of our knowledge and you want desperately to cure illness, your next step is likely to be different from the person who was drawn to academia because they wanted to immerse themselves in conversation that they found interesting and who wants the world to be more beautiful.

So ask yourself these two questions to help get at the chewy center of your own life and self.

Why was I drawn to academia in the first place? And how do I want to remake the world?