What makes you happy?

You’re ambitious, desire success and won’t settle for just any job when you could be doing something meaningful that would make you happy.

To quote Stephen King, who could easily kick back on the beach or drink fancy cocktails by the pool for the rest of his life:

“I always wonder two things about these folks (writers with scanty legacies like Harper Lee — one book): how long did it take them to write the books they did write, and what did they do the rest of their time? Knit afghans? Organize church bazaars?… If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?”

King writes every day, without exception, because it makes him happy. He’s a successful guy.

If you think about success in life and still have a problem nailing it down, listen to Richard St. John. In his “8 Secrets of Success” TED talk, he shares the elements of success he compiled after interviewing 500 successful people:

1. Passion. Though recently a buzzword, it’s also a major happiness factor.
2. Work.
3. Expertise. Get good and own your skill.
4. Focus. Practice it like a muscle.
5. Push. Push yourself through self-doubt and inhibitions. Even great people think they’re not good enough.
6. Serve. Serve people something of value because it’s how you get rich.
7. Ideas. Follow through with your ideas; we all have them. Creativity isn’t magic.
8. Persist. Persistence, according to St. John, is the number one reason for success. Persist through failure and CRAP (criticism, rejection, assholes and pressure).

Does a four-hour workweek fit into that picture? Probably not. Take a close look at those who advocate the passive income lifestyle. They work their butts off and sell the idea for the big bucks.

“Get rich quick” and “do nothing and accomplish everything” recipes are like the Holy Grail. They exist in legends and fairy tales. (Click here to tweet this thought.) But the basis for your decision should be what the easy money advocates do, not what they say. Who walks the talk?

It doesn’t work in reality

The messages you’re exposed to can cause headache and confusion: find your passion, help others, seek fulfillment and happiness. But on the other hand: be smart, delegate all tasks, macromanage, work four hours a week, become financially independent.

What’s the right thing to do?

Listen to your gut and these facts

According to Scott Dinsmore, Tim Ferriss, the author of 4-Hour Workweek, works a minimum of 60 hours a week. And so do other financially successful business people. Business Insider dedicated a section to their schedules and lists by name who gets up earliest and how long they work.

Why would somebody work so hard if they’re already financially free and could do virtually anything?

If the answer doesn’t come easy, imagine you created something. Perhaps you set up your own business or launch an innovative project and, after a tough period when you work hard and see no results, you finally begin to see it catching on.

People start talking about it. There’s interaction, revenue and satisfaction. Even if your idea or creation isn’t a huge hit from day one, you watch it bud and blossom to life. It’s your pride and joy. It’s who you’ve become and how you define yourself.

Then you step down, say goodbye and go trekking through the Peruvian Andes, leaving everything to your employees and a host of virtual assistants.

Even if you’re an inexperienced newbie at the start of your career, you can see that’s rather unrealistic.

The magic behind success in your career lies in the development of your personality. You become someone new, someone who’s fulfilled and has a purpose. It drives and energizes you, and once you’re inspired, new ideas and improvements will come to you.

Another reason why successful people enjoy working longer is the rewards, both financial and social. Your income will rise and people will seek out your expertise. And once you become important and valuable to others, they’ll respect and follow you. You’ll have a purposeful and rewarding life without giving up anything.

And you’ll find the life of adventure and exotic travel even more accessible with your growing income. Everybody needs time to recharge their batteries, and accomplished people desire to develop their personal lives, too. They’re the ones climbing high mountains, dog sledding in Alaska or sailing through the Atlantic because they’ve discovered how great it feels to push your limits.

Sylvia Rytarowska is an entrepreneur, coach and English philology graduate. She is an advocate of making science more accessible to regular readers and is obsessed with psychology, self-development and sports. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook and visit her site here.

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Whether you love your job or it’s just a paycheck, chances are you’ve felt the pressure of our collective drive to work harder and longer and to put our careers before other parts of your life. But what is it that drives us to be workaholics?

According to a recent article by Dorie Clark on Harvard Business Review, the answer is manifold. Whether it’s fear of the competition, a desire to impress others or a mistaken idea of happiness, our perception of work — and our priorities as a result of that — are often skewed.

As Clark writes:

Even when we know working to excess isn’t good for us, it’s hard to cut back. Most of us aren’t as extreme as the investment bank intern who died in London after allegedly working 72 hours straight to impress his bosses. But according to Christensen, we may not be that different, either: it’s a matter of degree, and timing. Overwork may not kill us tomorrow, but —  if left unaddressed — it may kill our most important relationships in 10 or 20 years.

To read the full article, click here.

Are you (or someone you know) a workaholic? Why do you think we work ourselves so hard?

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You know you’re different than everyone else in some way, but you’ve had a hard time putting your finger on it. And it’s not that you’ve got the kind of brain that publishes the next bestseller, drafts a peace agreement, discovers a particle or finds the largest prime number.

People think about intelligence in many ways. There’s that supposedly objective measure called IQ. And there’s the theory of multiple intelligences — the idea that several different types of intelligence (including musical, visual, verbal, etc.) exist rather than a single generalized cognitive ability. And there’s wisdom, usually acquired through experience.

Brilliance is a certain kind of personality that sees humor where others don’t, tragedy where others are tranquil, beauty in the ordinary, and a dullness in the standard. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

And it’s rare enough that you may feel lonely much of the time.

Below are five ways you probably didn’t know you were brilliant:

1. Multipotentiality

This word means the state of having multiple exceptional skills, any of which could make for a great career. For example, in school, you excelled at art, math and the humanities. You may have also been a stellar athlete.

While this can sound more like a blessing than a curse, having too many options can get in the way of deep investment and actualizing your brilliance. As a result, you may not fully understand how amazing you are.

2. High sensitivity and perceptivity

You process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly than other people. You pick up on subtleties, like intonation, facial expressions and minor contradictions. You’re highly empathic and intuitive, and you notice things most people never would.

The flipside is that you’re often seen as too emotional, too nice or introverted, and your skills can be overlooked without a good level of self-awareness and self-advocacy.

3. Insatiable curiosity

You need to know all the things. You have a thirst for knowledge, and when you’re into something, you’ll stop at nothing to understand all there is to know about the topic. You voraciously blaze through books, and your interests may change from month to month.

While your insatiable curiosity can be fun, it can also mean you have an unquenchable need for stimulation. This can feel like unfulfillment when you’re at a job that doesn’t quench your thirst.

4. Perfectionism

You have the highest of standards for nearly everything in your life, and that’s a marker of your brilliance. When you care about something, you have a laser-like attention to detail that ensures what you’re putting out is the best you can offer.

Perfectionism often leads to procrastination and avoidance. When we can’t have it perfect, we don’t do anything at all. The self-aware perfectionist knows how to harness their perfectionism to work for them instead of against them.

5. Entelechy

This is the epitome of your brilliance — perfectionism applied to one’s own self-actualization. It’s the drive to evolve and focus on your highest goals.

There’s no shadow to entelechy, though it does mean you’re not taking the easy path in life. You won’t settle for unfulfilling careers, empty relationships or any kind of stagnation. The drive to shake things up can cause a lot of unrest, and it can be hard for the people around you. But those of us with entelechy can have it no other way.

Tell us in the comments, do these markers of brilliance resonate for you? How could thinking in a new way about your brilliance impact your career trajectory?

Sara Harrier is a life coach who helps intelligent, highly sensitive and unconventional individuals own their smarts, settle the score with pesky inner goblins and build their own life-changing revolutions. She has a master’s in social work, and one of her specialties is working hands-on with clients to map out their next career move or entrepreneurial dream.

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Which is why we’re loving a recent roundup on U.S. News & World Report that gathers together 25 great articles on everything from boosting your savings to getting better products for less.

Check out the full roundup here, then let us know…

What financial resolutions have you made for 2014? And how do you plan on achieving them?

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While there’s no solid defense for taking excessive selfies, spreading hateful rhetoric about a generation you don’t understand is about as useful and savvy as selling used toilet paper. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Here are three solid reasons why GenY haters are truly, frighteningly, off their rockers:

1. They live in a different reality

If you’re not part of GenY, you didn’t grow up with the highest student debt in history in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Maybe that’s why so many Millennials are living in their parents’ basements, unemployed or underemployed.

Let’s get another thing straight. We didn’t directly contribute to any of the following: the Enron scandal, Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 financial market collapse and housing crisis, the 2010 BP oil spill, the Bernie Madoff scandal, Hurricane Sandy or last year’s government shutdown.

Is it possible any of these factors or the combination of them has led to today’s economic realities? Or is it a result of too many Tweets and Facebook updates?

If you graduated from college and found full-time employment with health insurance and any sort of retirement benefit soon after, you don’t know what it’s like to be a Millennial today. And if your college degree was a determining factor in gaining said employment, you don’t know what it’s like to be a Millennial today.

Before you concoct your next diatribe about how bad GenY is for business, try acknowledging that the reality you knew as a young worker isn’t in the same realm as the joyous, carefree utopia we’re living in today, where making minimum wage full-time can’t get you over the poverty line and entire cities go bankrupt.

2. They fail to recognize GenY’s positive traits

In an article published in Time magazine titled, “Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation,” the author cites a study from the National Institutes of Health that found 58 percent more college students scored higher on a narcissism test in 2009 than they did in 1982. Who cares?

GenY cares a lot — about corporate responsibility. A survey by the non-profit Net Impact found that 45 percent of respondents would take a pay cut “for a job that makes a social or environmental impact.” Isn’t caring about what you do to earn a paycheck and wanting to help society more important than the results of a narcissism test?

And let’s clear up the whole work-life balance issue with GenY. The desire for balancing our home and professional lives doesn’t stem from wanting to not work. It’s so we can spend time with the people we love more than our bosses and coworkers.

Maybe this has something to do with previous generations placing so much emphasis on work that marriage was just a precursor to divorce in too many households. Maybe members of GenY want to come home from work at a reasonable hour and have time off to preserve their marriages and foster healthy families. What’s wrong with that?

Furthermore, studies indicate little difference between generational values. A survey by psychologist Jean Twenge of high school seniors taken during 1976 (Baby Boomers), 1991 (Gen Xers), and 2006 (GenYers) tells a compelling story. The results show every generation placed the highest value on intrinsic factors, including interesting work and learning opportunities, and medium emphasis on helping others and society.

That’s an objective survey — one that measures the same values across three different generations, all at the same stage in life.

3. GenY will represent 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025

This one’s simple. If you’re a member of the elite group of Millennial-bashing authors, you’re fighting a losing battle. In just over a decade, we’ll be the bosses at almost every organization, for better or worse.

Surely you know that people don’t work with people they don’t like. Or don’t you know anything about the real world?

If you’ve already published your masterpiece making biased, hasty generalizations about the GenYers you so loathe, best of luck to you in a few years. And if you haven’t written that piece yet, do everyone a favor and don’t… ever.

Seth Carr is a Millennial advocate and author of the soon-to-be published book Post-College Knowledge: How to Not Suck at Your First Real Job. Follow Seth on Twitter.

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Fortunately, blogger Chris Bailey has done the work for you. He recently watched 70 hours’ worth of TED Talks (296 talks total) and distilled the 100 top lessons he learned in a Lifehack post. Grouped into categories like “Productivity” and “Being a Better Human,” his post is a great crib sheet for anyone who wants to gain some TED wisdom without putting in a ton of time. It also links each lesson to the talk(s) it came from so you can dig further if you’re intrigued.

Some of our favorite lessons:

13. The key to becoming more productive and successful may be to fail faster and smarter, especially if you do creative work.

23, 24, 25. Limits are bullshit. Some people choose to not be set back by limits, and at the end of the day, they’re the ones who end up giving TED talks. Like Neil Harbisson, who was born without the ability to see color, so he hacked together a device to hear color. Or Caroline Casey, who didn’t learn until she was 17 that she was legally blind. Or David Blaine, who pushed his body and mind to hold his breath for 17 straight minutes underwater.

35, 36, 37, 38, 39. 40, 41. There isn’t one secret to happiness, but there are a lot of small secrets that will move you in the right direction. Stay in the moment, and be mindful. Spend money on other people, rather than on yourself. Slow down. Take time to appreciate and see the good in what you have. Live a life that’s full of meaning in the short-and long-term. And change how you look at the past, present, and future.

72. It turns out you can use two slices of pizza as a slide clicker, make music with ketchup, and make a piano keyboard with a banana!

You can read the full article here.

What are your favorite TED talks? Share them with us in the comments!

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As employees, business owners, business executives and CEOs, we need our bodies and minds to run as efficiently and effectively as possible. Million-dollar ideas aren’t fed with dollar menu diets. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

One part of being extremely busy is that we don’t have time for non-essentials. We need “get in, get out” workouts that give us the most bang for our buck. As a celebrity trainer with clients ranging from fortune 500 CEOs to busy moms starting up new businesses, these are the keys I found most effective to keeping your fitness routines as vibrant as your career…

Read more at Black Enterprise…

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Credit cards and auto financing cause more serious problems. After graduation, credit card balances can easily balloon as you struggle to get by on skimpy paychecks. Tack on a car loan or lease and you could be looking at big trouble.

With any luck, your post-college financial struggles will ease as you approach 30 and start getting decent salary increases. This is when you should be looking to buy your first home and start seriously saving for retirement.

Strategies for becoming financially fit

To reach your late 20s or early 30s in reasonable shape for your financial goals, you should:

Focus on your career

Your primary source of wealth will most likely be employment compensation. Continue to invest in your ability to earn more money.

Don’t expect to live like your parents

It took them 25 or 30 years in the workforce to achieve their current standard of living. If you’re eating out as often as they do or taking equally extravagant vacations, you’re probably spending too much. (Click here to Tweet this thought.)

Drive a basic, safe and reliable car

The money you’d spend on the high cost of financing, maintaining and insuring a fancy car — whose worth depreciates quickly — should be saved for a down payment on a home.

Handle credit cards with care

Use a debit card, partly because you can get cash back on purchases with some cards. Using a debit card also makes you a more careful spender, because you know the money is coming straight out of your checking account.

If you prefer to use a credit card because you earn frequent-flier miles, every time you use your card, subtract the sum from your checking account balance. That way, when the monthly credit card bill arrives, you know you’ll have enough to pay off the entire bill.

Don’t necessarily rush to pay off student loans

If the interest is low and tax-deductible, your money can work harder elsewhere. Increase the contributions to your employer’s retirement plan to get the full matching contribution and earmark the rest for a down payment on a house

It’s never too early to think retirement

Saving for retirement can be the biggest investment you’ll ever make with your earnings. Start by setting an intermediate-term goal of accumulating retirement savings equal to two times your annual compensation. Once you hit that milestone, the financial wind will be at your back, helping you reach your retirement savings goal.

Here’s an illustration:

Suppose you expect to eventually earn $80,000 a year. Looking ahead to retirement, you estimate that — in addition to Social Security — you’ll need $45,000 a year from your portfolio in today’s dollars. To generate that $45,000, you’ll need a $1 million nest egg, calculated in today’s dollars.

Once you reach a certain level of assets, most of your savings should come from investment returns. The breakthrough occurs at around two times your income. Let’s say your salary has reached $80,000, you’ve amassed $160,000 in savings, you’re saving 15 percent of your pretax income each month and your investments earn seven percent a year.

Over the next 12 months, your $160,000 portfolio would grow by $23,620. Your monthly savings would account for $12,000 of that growth. The other $11,620 would come from investment gains. In other words, you’ll have reached the crossover point where the biggest driver of your portfolio’s growth is now investment earnings, not the actual dollars you save.

But you’re not done yet…

You should keep saving money. That sacrifice will be handsomely rewarded as your portfolio starts to grow. Using the assumptions above, your portfolio would soar from $160,000 to more than $542,000 in 10 years. True, part of this gain would be lost to inflation. But your salary should also rise, allowing you to squirrel away more money.

That still leaves the initial goal of accumulating two times your income, which can take 12 to 15 years. The earlier you start the better. If you’re close to two times your pay by your early 40s, you’re in good shape.

As you strive to amass that sum, your top priority should be funding your employer’s 401(k) plan. In addition to the initial tax deduction and continuing tax deferral, you’ll likely receive a matching employer contribution, which will help speed your portfolio’s progress.

If you can, save outside your employer’s plan by funding a Roth individual retirement account. You won’t get an initial tax deduction, but you will enjoy tax-free growth. A Roth also offers flexibility; you can withdraw your contributions without a tax hit or penalty. Your Roth could double as an emergency reserve or as your house down payment fund.

What are your strategies for staying financially fit?

Mark F. Toledo, CFA is a partner with Chicago Partners Wealth Advisors. Mark has provided investment and wealth management advice to individual and institutional investors for more than 30 years. Mark works with clients to help them define and then achieve their goals through effective wealth management.

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But it’s not always easy to figure out what you want from your career beyond the traditional measures of achievement: a great salary, promotions and professional recognition. What path will allow you to use your talents, enjoy the journey and bring you soul-satisfying success?

Every successful business requires a mission and a plan, and no business is more essential than the business of your life. (Click here to Tweet this thought.) You have a long career ahead of you.

And, like a business, you need a mission and a plan to remain passionately engaged in your work. If the idea of creating a strategic plan for your life leaves you thinking, “I’d rather have a colonoscopy,” rest assured this can be a streamlined, enjoyable process that lets you focus on what’s really important.

Here’s an eight-step program to help you create your strategic plan for a balanced life and joyful career:

1. Define your mission

Your mission is where your talents and passions collide with the needs of others and the world. — Matthew Kelly

Step one is to identify your skills, figure out what you love doing and think about how you can combine those to meet a need.

2. Imagine the sweet smell (sound, look and feel) of success

Next, create a vision of what your life looks like when you’re fully using your gifts, doing what you love most and accomplishing what you set out to do. Your personal definition of success should include ingredients that bring pleasure into your day.

3. Name your critical success factors

Once you’ve defined your purpose and what success means for you, it’s time to go from dreaming to doing. To start, make a list of the elements you need to bring your vision to life. This step marks real progress toward creating your personal plan and builds forward momentum.

4. Find your sweet SWOT

With your list in hand, ask, “Do I have what it takes to get there?” Answer by identifying your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to size up what you have to work with — or work around — as you move into action.

5. Set goals for success

A vision is just a pretty picture until you breathe life into it. Determine what you need to do to make real, steady progress toward living your envisioned life. Create a set of prioritized goals so you can spend your time getting the results you want.

6. Perform a time and emotion study

Money can’t buy love or more time. A strategic plan for your life requires mindfulness to spend your limited time on your priorities. In this step, look at a typical day on your calendar and assess:

• How well your current use of time aligns with your goals.
• Where your actions and priorities don’t line up.
• How to clear the clutter and make room for what matters.

7. Select successful strategies

Designing a business plan for your life allows you to live with integrity — where your actions reflect who you are and what you value. Select the actions most likely to help you achieve your goals.

8. Get going

The idea of starting to live the life of your dreams may be so overwhelming you feel paralyzed. Take one small step at a time until you build momentum and become an unstoppable force. Nothing begets success like success.

If you think creating a business plan is too daunting, you’ll be relieved to know it can take as little as a few hours to create. That’s a worthy investment to set your career path in an inspiring, joyful direction. As the Japanese proverb states, “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” With some thoughtful planning, your sweet dreams can come true.

Allison Rimm (@allisonrimm) is a management consultant, executive coach and author of The Joy of Strategy: A Business Plan for Life. She shares her insights and experiences from her years as a Senior Vice President at Massachusetts General Hospital through her Joy Strategies blog and articles for Harvard Business Review and WBUR’s Cognoscenti Blog.

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Your anxiety boils over into a muted hiss, only loud enough for cubicle mates to hear, as you look at yet another social media post with a photo of someone’s laptop with the ocean in the background. It has more than 100 likes and 32 comments. More than any 10 of your photos combined.

Another person who’s living better than you.

Maybe your faith in the corporate ladder has been steadily eroding since you took your first post-college job. Or you just want to avoid the suburban black hole. Either way, you think making your own rules will keep you one step ahead of chronic stress and existential stagnation. Entrepreneurship, location independence, digital nomad — these become the buzzwords of your life.

You sell all your stuff, buy a plane ticket and, after whatever travels your savings will allow, crack open your computer and get to work in your inspiring new surroundings.

Soon, you’re consumed with work. You’ve got to-do lists, clients, deadlines and bills to pay. Before you know it, you’re feeling stressed out again and the anxiety is compounding like interest on your student loan. That bamboo beach hut feels more like a cubicle every day.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. You’re living the dream, yet you’re still the same neurotic, money-obsessed worker you’ve always been. You wonder, “Does the guy with the laptop at the beach and all the Facebook likes feel like this? Or am I missing something?”

The lifestyle design fallacy

Lifestyle design is the idea that you have the power to choose how you live your life — that you’re not tied to the 9-to-5 — and becoming a lifestyle designer implies you will soon be the one posting those amazing Facebook photos.

But it doesn’t always work out that way.

Why did you want to become a lifestyle designer in the first place? Whatever your answer is, doesn’t it come down to how you want to feel? You want to feel fulfilled in some way. We all do.

Lifestyle design can often be an extension of the misconception that tweaking career and location will create lasting satisfaction. It’s nothing more than aimless movement dressed up as progress. (Click here to Tweet this idea.)

But all is not lost

As disheartening as it may be to discover you’re still adrift on an ocean of angst, arriving at this point is cause for celebration. The delusion is over. You’ve always acknowledged happiness comes from within, but you’ve never really accepted it.

Admit it: Your travels were a search for external satisfaction masquerading as “living life on your own terms.”

After accumulating an impressive number of air miles, you can accept there’s no place or thing to be found. You can begin to work on yourself without being encumbered by the illusion that the secret to life is “out there.”

The next step

So what now?

Don’t quit. Nothing in your present circumstance needs to change this instant. Take the same courage you used to pursue your dream and focus it inward. This isn’t easy. To uncover the obstacles between persistent discontentment and inner peace, you need to develop awareness.

Awareness can be tough to describe, so I’ll leave it to the expert:

Awareness is the greatest agent for change. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is. — Eckhart Tolle

Lifestyle design is about creating situations. They’re neither good nor bad and are completely incapable of generating meaning on their own. If you accept that, you can release your expectation that the external conditions of your life are responsible for how you feel.

The location independent advantage

Awareness is available to anyone, anywhere. You don’t have to be a lifestyle designer. But location independence has distinct advantages:

Distance. You’re a long way from home. No one’s watching. Be the person you want to be, free from the scrutiny and judgement of others. You have the space to search, stretch and experiment. Use it.

Location. If you find yourself in a foreign land, dive into the culture. The variety of cultural perspectives is astounding. Much like organisms seek to strengthen the gene pool through genetic diversity, adopt a new point of view and see if you aren’t wiser for it.

Lifestyle design flips some of the rules of society on their heads. But it’s not necessarily a better way of living. Life doesn’t have shortcuts or hidden paths. If, in a clear and calm state, you feel a change needs to be made, then make it. But don’t fool yourself: Making a change as a reaction to feeling discontent will only lead to more discontentment.

Roman Locke is conducting his own lifestyle design experiment at Libertad Apparel. Watch him bring a new concept in travel wear to life, from concept to crowdfunding.

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A survey from Coldwell Banker Real Estate found that parents think 20-somethings can live at home up to five years. After that, it’s back to the real world and the vast unknown — or, you know, the pull-out couch in a buddy’s apartment.

A combination of student debt, the tough job market and a desire to save money have Millennials returning home at a record pace. A study from Pew Research reveals the number of people between the ages of 18 and 31 living with mom and dad rose 36 percent  in 2012.

As we cohabitate, let it be known far and wide — these are the official ground rules for moving back with our parents:

1. We are a family and also roommates. The arrangement may be tricky at times, but we’re all grownups and will make it work.

2. I, your child, will never, ever complain about a (free) home-cooked meal — no matter how it tastes.

3. I don’t need to tell you where I’m going on a Saturday night, and you certainly shouldn’t stay up until I get back. I will, however, keep my phone on if you need me.

4. We can exist in the same space without constantly making small talk. And it’s OK to come and go without necessarily saying “Hi” and “Bye.”

5. You must always knock before coming into my room. Even if the lights are off and there’s no sound. Even if you’re 100 percent positive I’m not home.

6. While I only need five hours of sleep and a Red Bull to function, I realize you need a solid eight to nine hours, so I’ll keep it down at night.

7. I promise to save money because I know my time in our house is temporary.

8. If the grass is getting long, I’ll mow it. If the floors are dirty, I’ll sweep them. If the sink is full, I’ll load the dishwasher. Thanks for letting me live rent-free.

9. The words “curfew” and “you are grounded” no longer exist. I don’t enjoy hearing the phrase “pick your clothes up off the floor,” but I can’t stop you from saying it.

10. You can go out of town for the weekend and trust that, while I will throw a party, my friends have matured and won’t break expensive things like they did in high school.

11. If you need me to chip in for bills or groceries, just say the word.

12. Whether it’s for one week, six months or five whole years, I will never forget to thank you for letting me come back home when I need it most.

This post originally appeared on News to Live By.

Danny Rubin is a PR professional in Virginia Beach. He also writes News To Live By, a blog that shows us the career advice that’s hidden in the day’s top stories. Follow him at @NewsToLiveBy.

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I hated every option I was given. With every fiber of my being, I was opposed to all of the above. Clearly Webster hasn’t added “living the dream” to the dictionary yet! I thought. I’m horrible at managing employees and I loathe fluorescent office lighting. I don’t do corporate structure well due to my Oppositional Defiance Disorder (Google it!), and suits anywhere but at a wedding—no thank you.

My real best case scenario? To be free. I want to do what I want, go where I want, when I want. I want to feel passionate about my work and share in the success of my clients. I want to not need an office or deal with being in charge of employees. I want to collaborate with brilliant people as partners. I want to travel. I want to expense festivals and have it not be a lie. I want to create. And no mandatory meetings, especially before noon.

These obnoxious desires have since become my company culture. But how did I actually get there?

How to build a business for your life (not the other way around)

In 2008, I read a book called The 4-Hour Workweek. In it, Tim Ferriss advocates building a business that supports your life instead of using your life to support a business. I was sold. My mission was to create a business that served as a foundation for achieving my goals, not the other way around.

Focusing on long-term relationships, I built a business that could generate enough income to sustain my quality of living. Since I have no intention of selling or exiting, I have no other shareholders, leaving me with full control and freedom. My focus is usually on high-value projects. And I’ve been successful: My business doesn’t require my constant attention, and I’ve built a brand around my independence. That’s become my personal definition of success.

It hasn’t exactly been as simple as it sounds. I’ve gotten screwed. I’ve taken on more than I could handle, resulting in 100-plus hour work weeks. My fears and anxiety have been debilitating at times. I’ve sacrificed spending time with family and friends. And I’ve had to learn how to hire talent, manage production and utilize contracts—all while fostering client relationships.

In short, I’ve spent years making mistakes and learning from them.

Here’s what’s worked for me:

1. Be ruthless. I focus only on high-value tasks and get rid of the rest. Whenever I’ve found myself doing the same task repetitively, I’ve found ways to automate it. I try to remove myself from the process as much as possible. And I outsource whenever possible, if it makes sense. This allows me to spend my time working on projects that produce an immense amount of value for my business.
2. Do business in the cloud. I’ve learned to utilize a system of cloud-based technologies that allow me to operate as a complete virtual office. Me and my MacBook—along with Freshbooks, Evernote, Dropbox and Boardroom.
3. Hold yourself accountable.  Automating and outsourcing aren’t always the best solutions. Whenever this is the case, I attempt to schedule my time on focused subjects: research, correspondence, proposals, pitches—they all fall on specific days. This helps me stay accountable to myself.

Where I am today

Five years after starting my business, I live between Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New York City and, soon, Miami. I could probably have a fancy address in Manhattan by now. I’m sure my revenue would triple if that were the case.

Instead, I’m focused on my quality of life. In June 2012, I moved my apartment into Public Storage, shipped my car to L.A., and have spent every month in a different city since.

My most recent creation is in the form of an app. It’s a marketing program, activating the cool kids across the globe. Why? For my current lifestyle and desires, it’s a no-brainer. And it’s the future. I took what I do know and created a connection to something I love, and Savvy City was born.

That’s what building a lifestyle business is really all about: You create your own reality.

Alexis Levine is the founder of Savvy Media. Known online as “@c0mplexis,” she specializes in next-generation and experiential marketing.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

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So, what are you doing to get there?

Truth is, many of us want all these things but don’t do much to get started. Essentially, we’re all stuck behind the wheel of our own lives. Or worse off, you may be sitting in the backseat and letting someone else navigate.

I’m here to tell you that it is possible to live a remarkable, story-worthy life you can tell tales about for years to come. It’s possible to stick it to those nay-sayers and get your life started. It’s possible to have what you want.

But, it’s up to YOU to make it happen.

Let’s look at some ways to get started:

1. Stop wondering what you want and figure it out right now

You may not even know what you want out of your life. Think about it: When is the last time you sat down and did some heavy soul-searching to figure out what you want? Been awhile, eh?

That soul-searching is the one-way ticket to understanding what you want out of your life—so get to it, immediately. Understanding what you really want will help to make you happier and more fulfilled… and who wouldn’t want that?

Tip: Call up your best friend and ask them to help you articulate what you really want. Then write up your vision for an ideal life. Leave nothing out.

2. Create bold, out-of-your-comfort-zone goals

What’s the point of being on this journey if you’re not going to be bold?

Now, I’m not saying you have to do anything irresponsible or dangerous. I’m saying you should be daring. You should be ambitious. You should feel scared. Your goals should feel audacious, and you should know that you achieved more out of life. This starts with creating goals for yourself that may be out of your comfort zone.

Tip: Start small. If your goal is to be the President, you don’t throw yourself into a political campaign, do you? You outline how you’re going to get yourself to that level and take the steps necessary to get there. Same goes for your goal. Pick one thing you can do today and do it. Then choose the next one and keep going.

3. Muster up some confidence to drive you to take action

Confidence is a key element to flipping your system. You’ll find that when you muster the confidence to move ahead with your bold goals, you’ll let go of your fears and your vulnerabilities. Plus, when you start having more conviction in yourself, you’ll discover strategies to fill in any confidence gaps that have kept you in the passenger seat of your own life.

Tip: If you’re having confidence problems, find out why. Is it because your goals are bold and you’re scared? Is it because you don’t know where to start? Perhaps you just need someone to help push you in the right direction. Whatever the reason, raising your awareness is half the battle. Taking action to correct it is the other half.

4. Take charge and do the work

No one is going to do the work for you. Sad, but true.

When you’re making major life transformations, getting up and running is key. Any good design takes more than a couple practice rounds—and so does creating the big, exciting, amazing life you deserve. In the end, you are responsible for finding and creating your own happiness in this life. Don’t lose that momentum! Take charge, get out, be your own driver and move forth with the confidence of knowing you can be great.

Tip: If you get this far and drop down, you’re screwed. Find some tenacity! Don’t procrastinate, because if you do, you’re in the same position as you were when you started this journey. And, quite clearly, that’s not where you wanted to be.

You deserve an extraordinary life. I know that, you know that, the world knows that. You just have to take the right steps in order to get there. So keep the above in mind when you begin your journey. Figure out what you want, set specific goals, muster up some confidence and take charge of your life. You got this! Now get to work!

What other steps should you take when pursuing a life you deserve?

Jennie Mustafa-Julock (Coach Jennie) is a life coach who specializes in helping people crank up the volume on their goals, ambitions and missions, transforming them into self-actualized, adventurous, audacious individuals. Check her out on Facebook, Twitter and through her book, Audacity Rules.

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Being in my mid-20s, I knew it was a good time to start thinking and planning for retirement and also saving for it so you’re not playing major catch-up later. (Without doing crazy math here, we’re talking about $500,000 extra in your 60s if you start saving a few hundred dollars a month now, instead of waiting 10 years.) That’s the awesome power of compound interest, my friends!

However, I don’t want a typical 9-to-5; I want to build businesses and work at jobs I love. I’d rather earn less and love what I do than spend 40 years working a higher-paying job I don’t like. Because what is retirement, exactly? Most people consider it a time to stop working the job you don’t really like and to devote your time to things you love to do: volunteering, hobbies, traveling and spending time with loved ones. I definitely understand that.

But I’ve seen a growing trend around me. People who have retired (including my own grandparents) have started businesses doing things they love, like making jewelry or writing books. Or they’ve gotten part-time jobs they enjoy, and not always because of the need for money. Usually it’s because they just enjoy working and staying connected with lots of people. Do they still take time to travel? Yes. Do they still take time to read a lot? Yes. Do they spend a lot of time with family and friends? Yes. (My grandparents have a fuller social calender than I do half the time!) But my point is, must we wait until we’re 65 to have all this?

No, I don’t think so. Instead of waiting until I’m in my 60s or 70s to enjoy these things in life, I’ve taken a different approach:

Money management

I’m still saving and investing for retirement, but it’s more of a second “emergency fund.” We can live really healthy lives, but there is always the chance we may not be able to work at some point for some health reason. It can also act as a “supplemental”-type fund where I can eventually cut back on work and still have enough to continue my lifestyle.

Living life

I’m choosing a different lifestyle to begin with. I’m not doing the 9-to-5 thing. I’m also not taking out tons of loans for cars, houses or other things. I don’t really mess with credit cards much, and I’m keeping things simple in the money department.

I’d rather spend the extra money I’m not using for saving for my retirement fund, paying down debt, traveling or other fun experiences instead of a fancier car or bigger apartment. I’d rather work a little less and have more time for family and friends now rather than wait. (Or read more now, or travel more, or volunteer more… you get the idea.)

Working well

I’m choosing to do work I love now, instead of waiting until I’m in my 60s to be able to devote time to things I love. This may mean weird looks from people when I tell them I don’t have a fancy job title at a big company, and it may mean less money at the moment. But it also means loving the work I do (at least 90 percent of the time) and having that old cliche be true: “Doing work you love means you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

There may come a time when I do want to change the work I’m doing or cut hours in a big way, but regardless, I still am doing work I love, and I’m pretty sure I’m never going to want to stop. In fact, most retirees don’t really stop working, even if they can. So I’m not planning on stopping, either.

I’m not a certified financial planner or accountant, so I’m not an expert on retirement planning. But I have done a lot of research in this area, and this is the plan I’ve come up with that is working well for me so far. Hopefully something similar works for you, too!

How do you plan to enjoy your “Golden Years” now? Tell us in the comments!

This post originally appeared on Levo League.

Ashlee Thurlow is a life coach unlike other life coaches. Certified by the School of Coaching Mastery, Ashlee helps improve the quality of others’ lives and enables them to look around and realize they’re living the lives they’ve always wanted to live.

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The desire to follow your dreams is nothing new. People wish, hope and pray for a better life all the time, yet the idea is something that’s often automatically written off as unattainable by our conscious minds.

Yet the truth is that people follow their dreams all the time. I know hundreds of people who have changed their lives and are living their dreams. They took the road less traveled and succeeded. They thought up something and went after it.

The difference between those who start the process of following their dreams and those who don’t is their perception of reality. If you fully believed in something that could change your life and you knew how to make it real, wouldn’t you do it?

Here’s an action plan to get you in the right frame of mind for turning your dreams into reality:

It starts with freedom

It always starts with freedom. We all want to be free. We want the ability to make our own decisions, choose our own paths and live our own lives without feeling trapped, stuck or imprisoned.

True freedom, though, comes from within. Only from within can it be brought to your outer reality. We are what we think, so why not think of the best way to start following a path that leads you to the freedom you’re searching for?

The first step to making something happen—especially something as grand as the reach for freedom and fulfillment—is waking up.

Time to get out of bed

You’ve got to find yourself. Find the inner motivation to start this journey of trying to bring your dreams to life. Choose optimism over pessimism. If you’re not in touch with and in charge of yourself, you’ll be defeated by the all-powerful ego.

You are not your ego. Your ego is what you think you are. Sometimes your ego takes the wheel and drives you a little too close to the edge, but you can learn to control it. You just need to dig around inside yourself and find your true voice.

It’s the voice inside that screams, “Let me out!” It’s your “why,” as Simon Sinek would say. It’s your purpose, your meaning, your inner desires for something greater. It’s your higher consciousness, the part of you that’s connected to something greater than your perceived reality.

Use this part of you. Try to connect with it as much and as often as you can, and you’ll start to sense a deeper connection with yourself and the world around you. You’ll start to see the possibilities that unfold in front of your very eyes. It’s a feeling of connection, knowing and understanding. It’s something everyone is capable of, but many fail to use.

Once you find your purpose or your “why,” it’s much easier to follow your dreams. Having a purpose gives you something to strive for, something that matters.

Here are a few tips for bridging the gap between your dreams and reality:

1. Let go

Let go of all preconceived notions about what you think is possible, realistic or attainable. The world isn’t as black and white as it may sometimes seem.

If you’re not able to let go of the ideologies that hide the truth about the world, your life and how you should live it, you’ll forever be a slave to your circumstances. If you do let go and open your mind up to new experiences, ideas and ways of thinking, you also open the door to seeing a side of yourself you may not have seen before.

2. Let it in

The more you’re open to the possibility of your dreams becoming a reality, the more you start to believe it. Then you can start to access the flow of positive energy, thoughts and desires that will act as your guide, pushing you towards whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.

3. Persist

Perseverance is one of your best allies. Keep pushing yourself to explore, learn and experience new ideas. Don’t be too discouraged when you face failure. Keep moving forward, and things will come together.

4. Take action

As Robert H. Schuller asked, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”

Most of us would take action on something we wanted if we knew we couldn’t fail. A dream is only a dream until it’s acted on; it’s only then that it starts its slow transformation into reality.

Don’t worry about where the path will take you. Don’t worry about failing. Worry about what happens if you don’t start the journey. You already know what happens if you stick to the status quo. Remember that when you decide it’s time to quit.

The most courageous action you can take is to keep moving forward.

Justin Harmon runs the blog Unplugged Recreated, where he writes about seeking personal freedom, fulfillment, dreams and world change. Find Justin on Twitter and Facebook.

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The shoe salesman glances at the artist’s shoes and asks, “Are those comfortable?”

She says, “I guess so. I mean, they kind of rub my ankles, but all shoes do that. I have low ankles.”

He looks her in the eye and says, “You think you deserve that pain, but you don’t.”

You think you deserve that pain, but you don’t.

Too many of us go through life quietly enduring things that make us unhappy. We tolerate jobs that cut into our well-being. We stay in roles that rub and chafe and wear away at our happiness. In short, we settle.

A few years ago, while eating lunch with my colleagues in our corporate cafeteria, I looked around the room at everyone and then turned to my coworker. I asked, “Do you think these people are happy?”

He replied, “Right now they are.”

“In general, though,” I said. “Do you think they’re happy?”

He stared at me. “Do you really think anybody is happy with their job?”

And there it was.

We grow up dreaming of being astronauts and princesses. We’re told we can achieve anything we want. We’re promised the world and permitted to dream beyond its limits. But at some point along the way, we abandon the concept of happiness completely. We build lifestyles of cubicles and commutes. We do what we think we should.

And then we wake up on Monday morning filled with dread and think it would be ludicrous to expect otherwise.

“Nobody likes their job,” we justify, “so I shouldn’t expect to, either.”

The salesman in the film goes on to say, “People think foot pain is a fact of life. Life is actually better than that.”

The artist’s friend adds, “Your whole life could be better, starting right now.”

Your whole life can be better.

You deserve to face Monday with something more than despair. You deserve to feel excited about something more than Friday evening. You deserve to love your job. You deserve to feel that your happiness still counts. Because it does.

Happiness should be a standard that life decisions are measured against, and any decision that undermines your happiness should be regarded as a poor one.

Don’t bind yourself up in a mortgage if you’re going to use it as an excuse to stay in a job you hate. Don’t move to a city you hate for a job you hate just because it pays well. Don’t arrange your life so that you work an hour from home if you’re going to spend the commute missing your children grow up.

Do not settle for shoes that hurt your feet.

Do not justify a job that pains you in other ways.

Happiness is a basic necessity. Expect happiness—and then figure out how to get it.

To borrow one last line from the movie, “I am prepared for amazing things to happen.”

I deserve it. You do, too.

Krista Goral is an IT consultant by day and doubles down as a writer, blogger and philosopher/doer by night. She explores the everyday human experience on her blog, Response Crafting.

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One key feature of lifestyle design is the ability to choose where you work, and since the concept was popularized, droves of people have packed up their desks, handed in pink slips and set sail to new and exciting destinations. What’s more brazen than quitting that job you’ve hated for years and pursuing one you love that can be carried out from anywhere in the world?

The careers below will set you free from your shoe-box-size apartment and allow you to work from either the beaches of Mexico and Thailand or the mountains of Nepal and Peru. All you need is to become skilled in these fields, pack up your computer, and you too can be on your way.

1. Web and Graphic Design

It helps to have a natural talent in sketching and drawing, but these days, many designers have traded in their sketchbooks for a copy of Adobe Photoshop and Web tools like HTML, CSS and PHP, which are crucial in implementing the stylistic vision for a website.

If you’re the creative type and love to learn new things, then you can either master Photoshop design techniques or Web development languages and start creating designs from a glacier in Alaska.

One case in point who is living out his own fantasy is Mirko Humbert, a Swiss Web and graphic designer. He was trained in Lausanne, Switzerland, and has been freelancing for seven years. While most of his customer base is based in Europe, he lives out his days in Dali, a sleepy little town in the southwest of China.

Working Abroad Tip #1: Explore your bank’s international banking fee structures. Some have partnerships with local banks. For instance, China Construction Bank and Bank of America have a partnership where all ATM fees are waived, saving your hard-earned dollars. Citi and HSBC have good international coverage, but you should still confirm with your branch as account types vary widely. You may want to open different accounts for use in different countries.

2. Digital Marketing

Are you in traditional marketing or public relations and tired of your desk job in the concrete jungle? The good news is that while you were sleeping, there was a digital revolution, and much of marketing has moved to the Internet. If you can master online marketing skills like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media, you’ll soon be able to free yourself from your corporate shackles.

There’s no better example of a marketer on the road than Sean Ogle. After graduating from college, he slaved away at an office job in Portland for two years. When he couldn’t take it any longer, he up and quit his job, moved to Thailand, learned SEO and started his own consulting firm.

Working Abroad Tip #2: Explore your communication options. Computer and smartphone apps like Google Voice, Skype, WhatsApp and WeChat can help you communicate with clients, friends and family around the world for free. Use an app like Speedtest (iOS) to test the Internet connection so you know clients can hear you properly.

If you’re in a country that censors the Internet, consider purchasing a virtual proxy service that masks your IP address and allows you to surf the Web unhindered. Unlock your smartphone or buy a GSM phone so you can pop in a new SIM card in each country you visit.

3. Photography

Got one of those awesome digital SLR cameras for Christmas last year and love taking photos, but never have a chance to use it because you’re too busy? Fancy cameras can be hard to figure out, but once you’ve mastered how to use them, you can take some really stunning photos. And if you have a knack for photography, there are a lot of career options beyond the borders of the United States.

All the photos you see of foreign destinations in newspapers, magazines and online all came from somewhere. But you don’t have to be a photojournalist to get those jobs. Take Jeremiah Thompson, a normal guy from Montana, who took the plunge into photography and international life on a surfing trip and is now a bikini model photographer in Brazil. There’s also the story of Kyle Hepp, an American expat based in Chile. She was passionate about photography but never thought of it as a business—until it ended up becoming her career. Now she’s called upon to travel around the world to shoot weddings.

Working Abroad Tip #3: Consider looking into a virtual assistant service like Get Friday or Brickwork, which will allow your clients to have uninterrupted service while you’re on the road or there’s a significant gap in time zones. Speaking of time zones, invest in a watch with multiple time zones, or add apps to your computer and mobile device that display the time across the multiple time zones where your clients and assistants work, ensuring you’ll stay in sync with the rest of your team.

4. Writing

Did you ever imagine yourself living like a modern-day Ernest Hemingway, sipping cocktails near the beach in Key West or Cuba? It doesn’t have to be a pipe dream! If you have an English degree or natural writing skills going to waste, with a refresher, you could be out discovering the world and writing about it.

The obvious choices would be journalism or travel writing. Yes, it would be cool to work for the Associated Press in Johannesburg, South Africa, or troll travel destinations with Lonely Planet, but why not just write your own book? That’s what Chris Guillebeau did. In fact, he published not one, but three books, all while traveling around the world!

Working Abroad Tip #4: Work the frequent flyer mile system with Flyer Talk and Travel Hacking Cartel (also by Chris Guilleabeau). These websites are devoted to hacking the flyer miles system and can help you rack up miles you wouldn’t have known about, enabling you to travel for free.

If you’re sick and tired of being a cog in the corporate machine, remember: it doesn’t have to be that way. The world around us is changing, and much of the work we do does not need to happen from a desk in a 30-story skyscraper. Throw out the office politics and jump off that corporate ladder you’re climbing, because there are real career options that will allow you to work from a different country every month. Give yourself a little lifestyle redesign, and soon you, too, can be location independent!

Have you found a career that allows you to work from anywhere? Tell us about it in the comments!

Brad Zomick works at SkilledUp.com, the leading source of reviews, ratings and deals on online courses, with over 50,000 courses from over 200 providers available in every subject. Find online courses at SkilledUp.com to get skills and get ahead, and visit them on Facebook and Twitter.

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I’m a freelance writer and have worked from home for nearly six years. I’m able to motivate myself to get the work done and can block out distractions (mainly, the kids). I embrace the freedom it allows and know that if I step away from my desk for a long time during the day to help out at school, I have the internal motivation to work after supper or on the weekends.

But on a recent snow day, my husband was stuck at home and brought out his computer to get his work done. I won’t sugarcoat it—it was a disaster. He was completely out of his comfort zone and couldn’t get a thing done. He was distracted by the kids and the lure of the TV. He couldn’t harness any internal motivation to get his work done.

He proved my point: you need to have the right personal qualities to work from home. With more people doing it now than ever, are you wondering if you can cut it?

Here’s how to figure it out. Are you…

Motivated?

Are you able to get your work done without being watched? If someone says she needs something by Friday, can you get it done without anyone checking up to see how it’s going? Can you work even though the people around you (your family) may be there and doing something fun?

Organized?

Can you keep track of several different projects at the same time? Can you easily keep the files and papers from your business life separate from your personal files? This includes both digital and paper files.

Okay with being alone?

Let’s face it, when you work from home, you’re alone. There are no coworkers to chat with about what you saw on TV last night or the latest celebrity gossip. Yes, there’s social media so you can communicate instantly with other people, but there isn’t that personal touch. You can schedule lunches and coffees, but it’s not something that will happen every day. Several times a week, I may not talk to anyone for six hours or more.

Good with time management?

Even when you work in the office, there are times—maybe even days—when you don’t get a lot done. You may be distracted by something going on in your personal life, or you just feel like crap. When you work at home, it can be harder to get back on track since there isn’t that external pressure (a.k.a. the boss).

There are also other distractions you face when you work from home that you won’t find in the office, such as the laundry and dishes, and you need to be able to say no. I won’t lie and say that I never do laundry during the day while working, but it’s a balancing act.

Independent?

Can you work without getting constant feedback from someone, whether it’s a coworker or a boss? If you have questions, can you find the answers on your own? Can you just take a project and run with it? If you said yes to the above questions, then you might have what it takes to work from home on a regular basis.

Many of us—whether it’s due to a sick kid or a snow day—sometimes have the opportunity to work from home, but the key to long-term success is being able to get your work done day after day, no matter what life throws at you.

Do you work from home? Have any tips to share on how you do it successfully?

MaryBeth Matzek is a freelance writer and editor based in Appleton, Wisconsin. Follow her on Twitter at @1bizzywriter or check out her blog at http://1bizzywriter.wordpress.com.

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That’s because his boss, Marissa Mayer, announced through a company memo that, starting in June, staff can no longer work from home.

From the memo:

“Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussion, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

Everyone who works from home (myself included) will agree that it can sometimes be isolating. That’s why it’s so important to remember this essential tele-working rule:

Over-communicate

Working from home is a modern-day luxury, and we have technology to thank. Smartphones keep us connected to our email, Dropbox and YouSendIt enable us to share giant files, WebEx allows group conversation and Google Hangout puts us in (virtually) the same room.

Still, none of these revolutionary tools work properly unless we do, too. When bosses let us work from home, they expect us to get the job done but also to stay in contact throughout the day, every day.

Here’s the tricky part. The boss might not say outright: “I need you to keep me up to date on your progress.” But that doesn’t mean you have a free pass to check in whenever you feel like it.

Since a boss can’t stop by your cubicle and see how things are going, it’s your responsibility to maintain open and active lines of communication.

When it’s appropriate to over-communicate:

• After you finish a conference call and duties are handed out, send a quick note to your boss or the team and reiterate what you’re going to work on.

• In the middle of a long, drawn-out project and it feels like people haven’t heard from you in a while, over-communicate. Send an email with relevant updates.

• As much as possible, respond to critical work emails. Even a simple, “Thanks, I got it” will let the other person know you’re in the loop. Remember: a co-worker can’t yell across the office and say, “Did you get my email?” You could be 1,000 miles away in another state, so you need to over-communicate.

• If you send an email and a person doesn’t respond in a timely manner, you’ll need to send a follow-up email. If the person doesn’t answer the second time, pick up the phone.

• Lastly, be detailed in your emails. It’s much easier to explain yourself in person — and annoying to type a huge description — but the added specifics help you sound clearer. That, in turn, makes the workday smoother and your bosses happier.

Starting in June, Yahoo employees will surrender their ability to work from home. Cherish your own tele-work situation and never give your boss a reason to think it’s time for a change.

Danny Rubin is a media consultant based in DC. He also writes News To Live By, a blog that shows us the career advice that’s hidden in the day’s top stories. Follow him at @NewsToLiveBy.

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But what about the way some of us look down on those who choose to go the standard 9-to-5 route rather than a non-traditional career?

While we can’t stand people calling us lazy, entitled or unrealistic for wanting to forge our own paths, we sometimes have a tendency to look down on those who aren’t striking out as side hustlers, solopreneurs, multi-passionates or whatever other buzz-worthy titles are currently in style. We suspect that they’re settling. Giving in. Selling out.

(Author’s confession: I am among the guilty. As a card-carrying member of the most idealist strain of Gen Y, I find myself regularly pitying 9-to-5ers as if they’re sad little sheep who haven’t been shown the way. But some of them are perfectly content doing the 9-to-5, and who I am to judge just because it doesn’t work for me?)

Maybe, just maybe, some of the strained relations between parties could be eased if we stepped into our peers’ shoes once in awhile, just like we wish they would step into ours.

Hate the game, not the player

It’s reminiscent of the backlash that occurred from the women’s lib movement.

When women stood up to demand their place in the workforce, those who chose to still stay at home faced judgment from their more “forward-thinking” sisters. Suddenly, you were either a career pioneer or a doormat, perpetuating the stereotypes and injustices of a broken system. If you weren’t donning a power suit and pounding the glass ceiling, you were somehow seen as living a lesser life.

Things have improved considerably, but the old resentments and stereotypes still linger. Stay-at-home moms still face frustrating reactions like, “Must be nice to have so much time to yourself!” and “I wish all I had to do all day was clean the house!” People seem to have forgotten, in striving towards more options for women, that the freedom to choose includes the freedom to choose the “old” option, which is every bit as deserving of respect, even if it’s not the option for you.

Understanding goes both ways

I’m one of the first to raise my fist and argue that our current work system is horribly broken. The red tape and outdated standards of another era severely limit today’s workers in terms of how effectively we can work, how fairly we’re treated and how much satisfaction we can get from our jobs.

But just because the system needs updating, that doesn’t mean those who choose to stay in that system are inherently less ambitious, less admirable or less intelligent than those who want to push for change.

When our older coworkers were entering the workforce, things like remote work and online entrepreneurship were barely options to consider. You dutifully put in your decades at ABC Corp., whether it was your dream job or not, and as long as you were punctual and lived up to your job description, you got your paycheck and went home and considered it a job well done.

And some of our peers don’t want to be revolutionaries, dedicating their off-hours to side hustles and assuming the risks of starting a business or freelance career. They just want to go to work, come home (where they can actually forget about work) and enjoy the security of a steady paycheck. They maybe (gasp!) even enjoy their hours between 9:00 and 5:00, because they’ve found a job they’re passionate about.

If we demand respect for our preferences, we have to extend the same respect to—or at least attempt to empathize with—those who have different preferences.

Do you ever catch yourself judging others? If you work a traditional job, do you ever feel like the victim of discrimination?

Kelly Gurnett is Assistant Editor of Brazen Life and runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits, where she documents her attempts to rid her life of the things that don’t matter and focus more on the things that do. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook and hire her services as a blogger extraordinaire here.

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We keep reading and hearing about The Plight of the Millennial; it seems young professionals everywhere are struggling with the economy, lack of job prospects and high student loan balances. And that gap between what we envisioned and our reality creates anxiety.

Yet Millennials have a LOT to celebrate in this economy. Here are a few common complaints and how to look at the bright side:

Complaint No. 1: Your dream job isn’t within reach

Had a slow start to your career? Can’t find the dream job you were promised? You may not be developing your career as quickly as you would like, but not getting an offer yet means you have time to explore your options and better define your career path.

When things move slowly, you have time to analyze, respond and redevelop your goals. You have time to find your calling. And, for some perspective, being unemployed at 25 can actually be more appealing than being unemployed at 52. It’s easier to be nimble when you’re starting out, rather than suffering the loss of a job you’ve had for 30 years.

Complaint No. 2: Your student loans are massive

You may have student loans, but do you know what else that means you have? A college education. It’s one thing our parents’ generation largely didn’t have, and it’s one thing they made sure we did.

Neither of my parents got to go to college, and though they couldn’t afford to foot the bill, they did sign their name to the loans that afforded me my education—and for that, I am grateful. You should be, too!

Complaint No. 3: Your savings account is nil

Don’t have any savings? Countless baby boomers don’t, either, now that they’ve lost a lifetime’s worth of 401(k) accounts. And they don’t have another lifetime to start from scratch and rebuild. We do. We have our whole lives to save—assuming we start now.

Complaint No. 4: You can’t afford to own a house

Don’t own a home? Have you seen what happened to homeowners everywhere over the last few years?

Not having a mortgage right now means you won’t go through a foreclosure. Homes aren’t the best performing asset right now. Buy some stocks instead. It’s what you’re supposed to do in a down market. (Did you sleep through Econ I?)

Complaint No. 5: You’re still single

Not married? At least you’re not part of the 40 percent of people who are divorced in our age group. Don’t be in such a hurry to get married; you’ll be a lot more likely to find your partner when you ease up a little and relinquish some of the anxiety around finding The One. It’s okay to be not married at 29.

Complaint No. 6: You live with your parents

We’re called the Boomerang Generation for a reason; lots of us are still living with the ’rents. And while moving out is a good goal, saving some serious cash on rent can work to your advantage in the long run. Just make sure you don’t kick back long enough that you wake up in your childhood bedroom at 37.

I deeply believe in our generation. But we need to get our act together. Being a Millennial in this economy is anything but a misfortune, and we should stop treating it as such. In fact, you could argue that this is the greatest time in history to be between the ages of 20 and 30. We have opportunities available to us that generations before only dreamed of—we just need to recognize and leverage them.

Krista Goral is an IT consultant by day and doubles down as a writer, blogger, philosopher/doer by night. She explores the everyday human experience on her two blogs, Response Crafting and Moments in Notes.

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Since we’re partners in business and in life (we’re both representatives with Avon), we’d like to give you some Valentine’s Day tips on how to keep the love alive if you work together:

1. Be on the same page

Although it may sometimes be challenging, being on the same page and working as a team are key. We constantly discuss our goals and do whatever we can for one another to help accomplish them.

By appreciating the exciting experiences that come with working together, we are able to face life’s challenges not only as a business team, but also as a couple. The successes we have built together have made our family and our relationship happier and stronger than ever.

2. Plan ahead

Planning and preparation are crucial when it comes to our business. This not only helps to ensure a successful event, but also alleviates any unnecessary stress.

For instance, the night before an event, we double-check important logistics such as directions, supplies, etc. Checking as many items off your list in advance as possible will make it easier for you to focus on any last-minute needs that may come your way.

3. Communicate daily

Honest, direct communication is a significant part of any relationship, whether a business partnership or a marriage. If you don’t communicate, it’s not going to work.

Along with communication also comes understanding. It actually took about two years for us to truly understand how to come together to grow our Avon business. Milagros was instrumental in opening my eyes to the opportunities that came along with the business she had been developing for years.

4. Unplug after work

Whether handling multiple roles and responsibilities, working long, undesirable hours or coping with daily pressures and demands, there’s no doubt about it: work can cause significant stress and anxiety. It’s important to not allow the stress of work to interfere with your personal life, as this will just create more problems and put a strain on your relationship.

Set a time each night to unwind together—this ritual is a key part of our relationship. Every night, we sit down and talk about our day. Whether over a drink or a meal, talking and listening to your partner really helps to keep your marriage alive and well.

5. Appreciate the time you spend together

Most couples have separate occupations, so even during hectic and stressful times, a few minutes of sharing and connecting can help keep your bond strong. We’re fortunate because our business has not only made us closer, but also allows us to spend more time together.

Make the time you spend together fun and exciting. With an Avon business, we’re lucky to have flexible hours during the day, which allows us to sometimes take lunch dates on the beach. Remember: no matter your occupation, always make it a priority to spend even a few minutes a day together.

Milagros and Carlos Garcia are Avon Representatives from Naples, Florida. As partners in both business and life, they enjoy the flexible schedule and financial freedom Avon provides, allowing them to spend time with their three children and focus on creating a thriving business.

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The reality of the decade is, it’s often a bit of a stressful b***.

Most young people face serious career, dating and financial worries and the panic-inducing sense that the decisions you make in your 20s will weigh heavily on your future. So it’s easy to understand why 20-somethings struggling to get a precarious perch on adulthood might soothe themselves with thoughts that this is just a 10-year training wheels period that doesn’t really count.

But be warned: experts say that that thought—and several related ideas—is a lie. Make sure you’re not telling yourself these fibs:

Lie #1: These years don’t matter

If you’re telling yourself that your 20s are for self-exploration and fun and don’t really matter, you’re leading yourself astray, according to psychologist Dr. Meg Jay. She’s the author of The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now, and as she recently told Big Think, American 20-somethings:

…are living with a staggering, unprecedented amount of uncertainty. Many have no idea what they will be doing, where they will be living, or who they will be within two or 10 years. They don’t know when they’ll be happy or when they will be able to pay their bills. They wonder if they should be photographers or lawyers or event planners.…

Uncertainty makes people anxious and distraction is the 21st-Century opiate of the masses. So too many 20-somethings are tempted, and even encouraged, to just turn away and hope for the best.

Is reading this description—young adults who respond to sky-high uncertainty levels by telling themselves this life period isn’t really important—like looking in the mirror? Then it might be time to admit that this is the principal lie we tell ourselves about our 20s.

In reality, Dr. Jay says, “our 20s are the defining decade of adulthood. Eighty percent of life’s most defining moments take place by about age 35. Two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens during the first 10 years of a career. More than half of Americans are married or are dating or living with their future partner by age 30.”

In other words, these years DO matter.

Lie #2: Now’s the time for a career identity crisis

Several lies spring from this central one, particularly when it comes to our careers. It’s natural to be unsure about your future career goals when you’re in your 20s, but don’t let that uncertainty develop into a full–fledged career identity crisis that keeps you from starting something now.

“The biggest myth is that the 20s are a time to think about what you want to do. That doesn’t work. You basically know what you want. Just start, and get the best job you can get,” Dr. Jay told Forbes.

Will you change direction? Sure, probably many times. But getting started on something is a better way to determine what suits you than abstract pondering. It’s also important for building skills, confidence and a valuable network.

Lie #3: I just want to have fun

But what if what if the best job you can get is pretty dreary? Given that you’re probably still without many adult responsibilities, like a mortgage or dependents, it’s tempting to imagine the misery you’ll experience in that entry-level gig and decide you’d rather minimize commitments and maximize fun. Maybe later when you’re ready or you find a cooler opportunity, you’ll focus on slogging it out at the office.

Besides wasting valuable career-building time (see lie number two), this approach also often badly overestimates how much you’ll enjoy goofing off. Sure, travel can be thrilling, and everyone loves a great night out, but after a pretty short time, the satisfaction most of us get out of these things wears thin. And then where are you?

As Cracked recently explained in a post that offers wisdom sugar-coated with humor, saying that you’re just not ready to settle down is often an excuse that will bite you in the butt later. Partying is definitely fun, writes John Cheese, but eventually “you start to mature and realize that every second you spend living like that is a second you haven’t spent building your career or securing your retirement or building a legacy. And the longer you put it off, the more of a head start you give your competition for the perfect job or the perfect spouse.”

And, it turns out, you probably won’t even hate that cubicle job as much as you imagine you will (assuming you’re using it to get somewhere you want to go in life). “Some people underestimate the satisfaction of working, thinking they’ll be miserable in a cube. The 20-somethings that do work are happier than those who don’t or are underemployed,” Dr. Jay points out.

Is it possible you’re taking your 20s too lightly? Or should the decade be mostly fun?  

Jessica Stillman is a freelance writer based in London. She writes a daily column for Inc.com and has blogged for CBS MoneyWatch and GigaOM, among others.

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According to Dictionary.com, “balance” is defined as a state of equilibrium, equipoise or equal distribution of weight, amount, etc. “Harmony” is defined as agreement, accord, harmonious relations.

Work-life balance is overrated. We chase after some elusive ideal that someone else has suggested we need, and then we spend our time trying to maintain it. Worst of all, for many people—myself included—work-life balance, as defined by the “experts,” just sucks the fun out of life. For example, there stops being room for spontaneity when you’ve allocated 23 percent of your schedule to exercise and accepting a last-minute dinner invite would disrupt that percentage. And life is a lot less interesting when you have to spend time with your kids because you said you would versus finding a creative way to both engage your children and enjoy yourself.

Work-life harmony is the antidote for folks struggling with balance. Harmony is about intentionality. Harmony is about finding your sweet spot and being okay with it. Harmony is about living out your values—not because someone says you should, but because you want to and can’t imagine living any other way. It’s about exchanging the “should” of work-life balance for the choice of work-life harmony.

A couple of years ago, I decided to stop feeling guilty about how “imbalanced” my life was. I felt guilty for working too much, and I felt guilty when I wasn’t working. I felt guilty for not spending enough time with friends, but I was checking the clock when I was with them. Life felt restrictive—like an ugly sweater that’s two sizes too small gifted to you by that aunt who insists on seeing you in it. You feel like you should wear it, but it’s itchy, uncomfortable and straight-up ugly.

Once I signed my own permission slip to live a life that felt right for me, I found myself happier, more productive and more connected to the people in my life. I wasn’t constantly in my head berating myself for the wrong thing or granting gold stars for the right thing—I was just living my life in a way that was aligned and grounded.

I adopted three philosophies that began to inform my attitude and actions that other entrepreneurs can benefit from:

1. Make values your centerpiece

Anyone who’s ever lived in accordance with their true values can attest to how incredible it feels. You feel on purpose. Time stops. Brilliance surfaces. You thrive. Values are guides for helping us make choices that will bring the highest levels of fulfillment. Values help us intelligently avoid trading what we want most for what we want now.

The easiest way to uncover what your values are is to look at how you currently spend your time and money. These two assets reveal so much about what we believe and what’s important to us. If I were to ask you what your values are, you might say things like “family” or “health.” But if I scanned your calendar and bank statement and found you spending more time and money on work, friends and hobbies, I’d call you a liar.

And that’s not a bad thing. Values are personal. It’s not important what your values are as much as it’s important that you fully own what they are and change them when they’re not reflective of what you want in your life. Complete the exercise to find out where you are and determine where you want to be. When values are the foundation of your life, it becomes much easier to make important decisions in every quadrant of your life. Because you have a set of meaningful principles that you’ve chosen, there’s nothing to feel guilty about.

2. Identify what drains you and what feeds you

Life moves fast, especially for entrepreneurs. Sometimes we’re so busy making each day happen that we don’t stop to check in with ourselves. We’re not aware that the project we’ve been working on since April drains every ounce of joy and motivation or that the ride home on the train has oddly become the best part of the day.

Self-awareness is the friend of anyone who wishes to truly be happy. The more you’re willing to check in with yourself and be completely honest about what you experience, the easier it is to eliminate or minimize the things that drain you and enhance or expand the things that feed you. Life is too short and too long to lead a haphazard existence. Part of the process of living intentionally centers on making bold choices on your own behalf.

3. Know what your priorities are

Living in alignment with your values is just as easy as living out of alignment with your values. In many cases, the issue is not that we aren’t clear about our values or how we feel about what’s happening in our lives. The issue is that we haven’t selected priorities.

Although they change with the seasons of life, priorities give us clarity. They remind us of our values and inspire us to choose what we want because we can, not because we have to. Priorities should be contemplated regularly, revisited often and adjusted as necessary.

With each new year, it’s easy to resolve that we’ll be happier or manage our time more wisely. I recommend a different kind of resolution—a resolution to live a values-based life, make powerful choices that support those values and keep the most important things at the top of your mind.

The balance of your life may shift and sway; the harmony of your life is a fluid expression of who you are.

Try something different this year.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

Lisa Nicole Bell is equal parts artist, businesswoman and motivator. Lisa is the Founder and CEO of Inspired Life Media Group, where she and her team meld art, social change and commerce to create economically viable media properties.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

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You might be known as the “diplomatic middle child” or the “leader of the pack,” roles so kindly assigned by our parents, siblings and friends and then unquestionably absorbed by our young minds. Well into my 20s, I self-identified as a “perfectionist” without ever stopping to actually think if that truly described who I was. That’s who I was growing up, so that’s who I assumed I was as an adult.

As social animals, we create roles and titles to make sense and order out of our complicated social circles. We know little outside the dynamics of our family and small social group when we’re young, so it seems there is no other option than who we are in those groups. Our roles become second-nature, a given, in our lives.

Then a funny thing happens: We grow up and strike out on our own.

Suddenly, we have the opportunity to see the world through a new set of eyes, with a new set of rules and new groups surrounding us. It starts to make us question the things we knew so surely of ourselves. (“Am I really that diplomatic?” )

It’s a strange and potentially unnerving sensation to really look at what we’ve thought to be unquestionably true and realize it may not fit anymore. It’s also empowering to realize that what you’ve been and done in the past does not dictate who you can be in the future.

So, how do you break free from old roles and take on new roles that fit and serve who you are now? You simply declare it.

Four steps to declaring who you really are:

Step 1: Identify the roles and titles you have unquestionably maintained for yourself

What are some words you use to describe yourself that may just be a carryover from childhood? Examples could include: diplomatic, perfectionist, quiet, loud, sharp, judgmental, analytical, stubborn, nervous, silly, forgotten, leader, follower, etc.

Step 2: Decide if those roles and titles are:

• Accurate. Do you truly see yourself in that way? Don’t worry about what other people think; they can have their opinions. This is about you.
• Serving who you are and who you want to be. Does the role or title currently serve you? Will it help you reach your goals?

Step 3: Identify who you want to be

What roles or titles would you like to use to describe yourself? How would you like to be viewed by others—in your career, in your entrepreneurial ventures, socially, etc.? Remember: it’s your choice.

Step 4: Keep what you want; leave the rest!

At this point, you get to leave the past in the past and move forward with a repertoire of titles and roles that serve who you are and who you want to be.

Don’t forget that it can be quite difficult to separate yourself from the past. Many times, family and friends from your past hang on to how they see you. That’s okay; those are their opinions, and nothing more.

From this point forward, practice self-identifying in your new roles. If you have a setback or struggle because of pressure from old friends or family, simply remember this exercise: place “WHERE IS IT WRITTEN….” in front of any of your old roles or titles.

For example, if you’re considered the “responsible firstborn” by your entire family, but you’ve decided to be less risk-averse, your parents may be shocked when you decide to leave the comforts of the cubical and start your dream business. They may even be upset. That’s okay. If you feel self-doubt or concern creeping in, simply think to yourself, “WHERE IS IT WRITTEN that I always have to play it safe?” You will soon realize it’s not written anywhere but is simply a pervasive belief that you can leave in the past. Mom and dad can have their opinions, but you know who you are and what you want for your life.

It may feel empowering, nerve wracking and a little confusing at first, but taking the time to decide who you are and who you want to be will pay dividends. Your life and your career will benefit greatly when you leave old, non-constructive titles in the past and fully step into your new self.

Steph Gordon (a.k.a. The Side Hustle Coach) helps Gen Y cubicle dwellers start their own dream business while working their 9-to-5. Join Steph’s Insider List for weekly side business strategies and advice delivered straight to your inbox!

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Add that to the difficulty of trying to balance spending and saving, and you’ve got a recipe for financial disaster. It gets overwhelming fast!

While growing my own financial blog, I’ve made it one of my goals to filter through all that noise and focus on the blogs that really help me and my readers reach our goals. The result is this list of must-read sites that will help you organize your financial life and make sense of your money in the working world:

1. Young Adult Money (David Carlson)

We make huge life decisions every day and are forced to juggle many things at once. Sometimes the financial aspect of it all is both scary and thrilling. Thankfully, David teaches you everything you need to know about saving money, increasing your income, handling debt and finding the right career for you!

2. Young, Cheap Living (Kraig Mathias)

Young, Cheap Living has everything you need to get ahead and stay ahead with your money—all without ever falling back on debt. Teaching new ideas about money, Kraig shows through his own finances how to live cheaply, reach your financial goals and stop relying on debt so you can do what you really want with your life.

3. Moneylicious (Ornella Grosz)

This blog is the anti-penny-pinching blog. It’s all about tips and strategies to make your money management fit your lifestyle. Geared for Generation Y, Moneylicious has topics on everything from careers to the psychology of money, all filled with humor. Ornella also wrote a book to help give Gen Y a financial clue.

4. Thousandaire (Kevin McKee)

“Let’s see what happens” is NOT a good financial strategy. But, sadly, it’s how many people coming out of high school or college—with zero money and mountains of debt—tend to think. Kevin entertainingly teaches the average 20-something to be a Thousandaire now, so they can grow to be a millionaire later.

5. Money Spruce (Jeffrey Trull)

Jeffrey is all about challenging his readers to consider less traditional ways to deal with money and finances. Through his personal story of quitting his job to follow his passion, he provides sound strategies and advice to create your life on your terms. If you’re ready to be self-employed, live the dream and improve your financial life, this is the place to start.

6. The Debt Movement (Jeff Rose)

The Debt Movement is a project started with inspiration from Jeff’s dad, who struggled with debt his entire life and was always a slave to lenders. Jeff started this campaign to give people (young adults in particular) the tools and resources to succeed. This movement is all about “working together to pay down $10 million of debt in 90 days.”

7. Get Rich Slowly (Multiple Authors)

Originally started by J.D. Roth, this site is geared towards all aspects of personal finance. What really sets it apart is that you can add your own voice through the “Ask the Readers” section. You’ll get answers to specific finance questions and advice from experienced members of the community.

8. Budgets Are Sexy (J. Money)

J. Money is open and upfront about his money and net worth—that’s partly why Budgets Are Sexy is known as an “edgy” financial blog. Sparking motivation, spreading ideas, learning and growing as you go, J. definitely shows that budgets can be sexy!

9. Money Ning (David Ning)

The best course of action when it comes to the path of financial freedom is the common sense you already possess. David helps young people struggling to become debt-free change their perception of how financial decisions affect their lives. This blog covers everything from investing to the job market to frugal living.

10. Punch Debt in the Face (Ninja)

“Ninja,” the alias behind Punch Debt in the Face, is freaking hilarious. Grammar mistakes, stick figure artwork, personal stories, bad spelling, lame jokes. What more could you ask for in a finance blog? Ninja draws you in with his personal money journey, making you want to read more and learn that finances are FAR from boring.

11. Frugal Beautiful (Shannyn Allen)

Wanna be a rock star? Then Shannyn’s story will not only inspire you to take control of your life, but empower you to think outside the small box that being broke might have put you in. Being a broke grad student herself, she shares awesome tips for getting the most bang for your buck while still looking fabulously beautiful.

12. PT Money (Phil Taylor)

When you’re a young adult, you want to know how to make more money and stay on top (or eliminate) all of your debt. PT Money covers all those topics, along with tips for buying your first house, keeping a positive net worth and spending your money wisely.

13. Young Adult Finances (LaTisha)

More focused on the wealth-building aspect of finances for young people, this blog offers steps for starting a budget, how and where to start investing and increasing income, as well as creating personal and financial success.

14. The Daily Muse (Multiple Authors)

Not exactly a financial site (though it does have a money section), The Daily Muse is more a resource for living the good life—yet it’s full of advice for young adults to learn about money, technology, health and even how to land your dream job. This one-stop spot truly has it all.

What’s on your list of favorite personal finance blogs?

Carrie Smith is a financial strategist who empowers freelancers and entrepreneurs to change their lives through her blog Careful Cents. Find her on Twitter @carefulcents.

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Maybe you’ve been thinking about trying to get two or more part-time jobs to earn the same amount of money you’d earn with one full-time gig. But beware: this can be more difficult than you might think.

Here are some pros and cons you need to think about when it comes to part-time work:

Pro: Part-time job hours can be flexible

It may be that you’re only able to work during morning hours or on weekends. In this type of situation, you may be able to find one part-time job to fill your morning hours and another part-time job on Saturdays or Sundays. Most full-time positions don’t offer this type of flexibility, so working one or more part-time jobs may provide you with the work-life balance you need and want.

Con: Extra commuting

One aspect of a 40-hour-a-week job is you normally go to your job at a specific time of day, stay there for eight hours and then go home at the end of your shift. With two or more part-time jobs, it’s likely you’ll spend a considerable amount of time commuting from one to the other (unless you work from home). The time it takes to get to and from numerous part-time jobs can significantly extend your work day.

Pro: If something happens to one job, you still have the other

You may have greater job security if you have two or more part-time jobs instead of one that’s full-time. If you work several part-time positions and you lose one of them, you will still retain a portion of your income while you look for a replacement for the other.

Con: Switching gears

Besides the extra time it takes to get from one part-time job to another each day, working more than one part-time job in different industries can be hard on your body and brain. It can also be difficult to concentrate on one job while thinking about the other.

Pro: Gaining broad professional experience

Don’t be discouraged if you’re working one or more part-time jobs to make ends meet while searching for a full-time position. You can absolutely succeed professionally by working this way. One benefit of working several part-time jobs is that they will expand your professional skill set. Additionally, you may be able to use multiple part-time jobs as leverage against each other if any of the employers eventually offers you a full-time position.

Melanie Fischer is a writer for AllStarJobs.com, a website that contains more than 1,000 career descriptions and profiles, career-related articles and a job board that lists thousands of current positions open across the United States.

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The people who often inspire us to dream big and follow our passions are the ones who dare to blaze the trail of the unknown, fueled by their dreams.

In a candid interview with Amanda de Cadenet on The Conversation, Lady Gaga said that she dropped out of school at 19 and worked three jobs to support her passion for singing.

What if she’d been too scared to go for it?

Pursuing your passion may not be an easy road. Oftentimes, it’s the hardest thing you will ever do. You question your talents when things don’t go your way. You feel like you’re in a wrestling match with yourself, and you’re losing. But you keep going because you’re fueled by your passion, and you know the reward is great once you get there.

Here are nine ways to help you move forward and say YES to your dreams:

1. Learn to embrace your fears

If you’re scared to do something, it’s a sign you’re headed in the right direction. Recognize that when you have fear, it’s because you’re scared to get out of your comfort zone—and that’s exactly what you must do to grow and stretch yourself. No matter what happens, you will have been better off going for your dreams and not succeeding than if you never tried at all.

2. Surround yourself with positive people who have your back and bring out the best in you

Have you ever heard the saying, “You are the average of the five people you most often surround yourself with”? Make sure to always surround yourself with people who support you and have a bigger vision for you. They will keep you motivated and inspired to keep moving toward your dreams, even when you’re scared and every obstacle stands in your way. Reach out to them when you need them.

3. Stay open and flexible about your vision

It’s important to have a clear vision of where you want to be, but it’s important to also be ready for that vision to change. Whatever idea or vision you start off with can evolve into something bigger than you ever imagined if you just stay open, flexible and don’t get overly attached to any outcome.

4. Network for your dreams

Find people who support you and are on board with your vision. Collaboration, partnership and mentorship will get you further toward your dreams than you ever imagined. Networking is key to getting anywhere you want to go in life, so make sure find and connect with the right people who can help you get to where you want to go. This is not the time to be shy or be afraid to speak up for what you want.

5. Practice radical self-care

It’s sometimes necessary to work even harder toward the pursuit of your dreams, but you can quickly burn out if that’s the only thing you do. Make sure you take the time to care for yourself, including sleeping well, eating a whole foods diet, properly hydrating, keeping a mindfulness practice, exercising and incorporating time for play. Remember that when we take time to enjoy life and what we’re creating, we’re more inspired.

6. Stop asking for permission from anyone

Worrying about what others think will stop many people dead in their tracks and prevent them from living their dreams. Don’t do it. Most dreams that are unconventional and outside of the box are scary to pursue, but if you don’t do it, you’ll always regret it. If you wait for someone to give you permission to do something, you give them power over you and your life.

7. Be grateful for where you are right now

It’s important to be grateful for where you are now on your journey to realizing your dreams. For example, you might be sitting in a job you don’t like, but you can be grateful that it’s helping you pay your bills and fund your vision.

When we cultivate gratitude for where we are in the present moment, it elevates our spirits and leaves us feeling good. And when we’re feeling good inside, we’re in a better state to attract the people and the opportunities that will manifest our dreams.

8. Trust your intuition

Your intuition is the most powerful gateway to getting where you want to go in life. When you silently go inward and learn to connect with your inner voice, you won’t need to struggle to figure out which direction to take.

The hard part is learning to listen to it. Practicing a mindfulness technique like meditation will help you learn to tune out the distractions in life so you can hear the sound of your inner voice and then boldly act on it.

9. Take consistent forward action

No matter what you’re doing now, including that day job that just pays the bills, you need to take consistent action towards your dreams. Remember, Lady Gaga had three jobs to pay her bills while she was pursuing her singing career.

Create an action plan, and take baby steps each day if you have to, but keep moving forward. Often people give up inches before they’re about to reach a major breakthrough in pursuing their dreams. Don’t let that be you.

Eva Werk is a career and lifestyle expert who works with women to discover their life’s passion and transition to do the work they love through one-on-one and online coaching programs. To learn more about her work visit Unleash The Brilliance Within and follow her @theworkyoulove.

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In case mom and dad are still bugging you for your letter to Santa and you have no clue what to ask for, consider these Brazen-approved gift ideas, all meant to take your career to the next level:

1. A tablet

Whether you’re an Apple or Microsoft fan, both tech giants have new tablets for sale this holiday season. The Microsoft Windows Surface comes with a built-in keyboard, USB port and, as an added bonus, complete access to Microsoft Office programs. Apple’s latest tablet, the iPad Mini, does everything a regular iPad does, but in a slim 7.9-inch display. Both products are perfect for work AND play.

2. A pair of sneakers

Did you know that people who exercise make more money at work? It’s true; according to a recent study from the Journal of Labor Research, employees who exercise earn nine percent more than their lazier counterparts. So if you want to up that paycheck, consider asking for a new pair of sneaks and get ready to hit the pavement to shed those unwanted holiday pounds.

3. Membership to a professional organization

Have you been wanting to get involved in a professional organization related to your career field but don’t want to shell out the cash to join? Now’s your chance to have someone else pay your dues and still reap the benefits. Think about your career path and research the organizations that most closely align with your goals. For example, if you’re a PR professional, consider the Public Relations Society of America; if you’re a journalist, try the Society of Professional Journalists.

4. Spa gift certificate

Picture yourself wrapped in a cozy robe, sipping tea and catching up on a good book before indulging in a heavenly 50-minute massage. There’s definitely something to be said for total relaxation to de-stress, recharge and kickstart your creativity at work. Who wouldn’t be a better worker after some time off to get pampered?

5. Coffee

The gift of caffeine! What motivated young go-getter wouldn’t appreciate a little extra boost of energy in their day? I’m partial to my Keurig (this machine has seriously changed my life), but you also can’t go wrong with a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts gift card. Many coffee shops even sell reusable coffee mugs that make buying that daily buzz cheaper and greener.

6. Practical gift card

If you must go the gift card route, consider asking for one for something practical like gift cards for gas or groceries. It may seem boring, but let’s face it: most young pros aren’t exactly rolling in the dough. It pains me each week I fill up my tank or fork over $40 at Trader Joe’s when I could be spending my own hard-earned money on something a little more fun.

7. Magazine subscription

Even though e-readers are all the rage, receiving a magazine in your mailbox each month is definitely still something to get excited about. Plus, consider reading magazines as research! There are plenty of business- and career-related publications out there. And if you want to land your own freelance article in a publication, the best way to perfect your pitch is to understand the magazine’s writing style.

8. A beautiful painting or print to decorate your office space

Need to find a little inspiration at work? In this Forbes.com article, Kelley Moore, the author of Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space from Drab to Fab!, suggests that because you often spend more time at work than at home, designing your work space can inspire you to be more productive. I personally find great inspiration in my framed print of the word “hope” using photography of nature turned into letters, similar to these Alphabet Photography prints.

9. Pandora One upgrade

If you’re as sick of those pesky Pandora ads interrupting your music (and workflow) as I am, you may want to ask for the gift of a Pandora One upgrade. For $36 per year or $3.99 for a one-month subscription, you can eliminate ads completely, enjoy higher audio quality and remove the daily 12-song skip limit. Happy listening!

What gifts are you asking for this holiday season to take your career to the next level? We hope you’ll share with us in the comments!

Jessica Lawlor is a public relations professional and freelance writer in the Philadelphia area.

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I’ve decided to pursue a life teaching English, German and whatever other languages I’ll master in the future. There is little to no prospect of “moving up” since I don’t plan to stay anywhere permanently, and I’ll probably spend a lot of time working for far-below-average pay.

So why would someone do something so ridiculous? Here’s my argument for abandoning the career ladder and instead pursuing a so-called “dead-end” career:

If You Have the Right Job, You’ll Love Working

Our society likes to say that a well-adjusted person “works to live” and doesn’t “live to work,” but I say that’s totally backwards. If the part of your day that you spend at work doesn’t count as “living,” then half of your life will be irrecoverably lost.

Instead, find the life you want to live and then figure out how to make a living from it. As a linguist, I’m obsessed with figuring out the systems and semantic intricacies of languages, and nothing fascinates me more than going off and studying them wherever I go. My career choice gives me the ability to do what I want to do for fun, and to get paid enough to live for it.

Getting to Be Different

There’s something appealing and satisfying about leaving behind the pursuit of social status and trading it in for the pursuit of personal perfection. Beware, though, that abandoning the eternal hunt for power and wealth can make you look rather alien in an increasingly suburban world.

The End of Performance Anxiety

I am not ambitious. There—I’ve said it in the simplest terms. I’m considerably more interested in making my work acceptable to myself than I am in making it impressive to my superiors.

Refusing to kiss up to one’s superiors is a luxury reserved only for those who’ve resigned themselves to the place where they are now. Luckily, I’m already there. I don’t need upward mobility, because my current momentum will already carry me to or beyond where I want to be.

Financial Independence

How can making less money give you greater financial independence? The answer lies once again in social status. Many of the most expensive things we buy (like nice cars, large houses with big, green lawns and entertainment items) are luxury items that serve as a black hole for our incomes.

There is, of course, a certain level of income needed to live while being financially independent, but that number rises and falls depending on where you live and your own perceived social status.

What do you think? Do you see the benefits of pursuing a “dead-end” career?

Micha Boettiger is a linguist, blogger and writer. Read his observations and opinions on a variety of topics at his blog, http://www.mindpeeler.com/.

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We don’t necessarily believe these things should be free, but we think a normal person who works for a living should have certain things and be able to afford to do certain things.

Yet some of the things we think we’re owed end up leading us into debt—things we might actually be able to live without. Here are a few examples:

Vehicles

At some point, a car went from being a long-distance transportation device to being a substitute for legs. We don’t just use the car to visit relatives 30 miles away; we take it to work a couple of miles away or to the grocery store down the street.

If we find ourselves without a car, we feel trapped. We consider it to be a “fixed cost” of life, so we figure we’ll just have to take out a loan to buy one. We now care more about the ownership of a car than its intended use, which was to facilitate necessary (relatively) long-distance travel. Sure, cars allow people to commute further to work, but those of us who don’t actually go far for work, or don’t get paid enough to make up the cost of the vehicle, might just be throwing money out the window.

Food and Health

Americans eat out more than any other people on earth, and as a result, we’re also the least healthy. We think being hungry is occasion enough to go to the nearest burger joint and drop $10 for a meal that probably racks up another $10 in medical bills in the long run. Not only do we think this is acceptable; we think it’s normal.

We assume that growing fresh food in the backyard is for “granolas” and gardening hobbyists. Cooking is a rare skill only held by people who studied that sort of thing, and eating vegetables is for rabbits and vegans. We demand to subsist on processed corn derivatives and pulped animals because they’re “tasty.” The result—besides a food bill that’s five or six times higher than that of someone who cooks their own food—is a lifetime cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in over-the-counter pills and more serious medical treatments for our failing livers, hearts and arteries.

Entertainment

Many of us spend our time at work trying to make the world more efficient. We work to make systems work better, to add new innovations, and to remove dead weight where we can.

Yet when we leave work and come home, we leave that philosophy behind. Somehow we consider things like a big-screen TV, the latest video games, cable service and an awesome sound system to be required in the same way that a dining table, chairs, and a frying pan might be. We never consider that we might better substitute things that could actually save us money, make us healthier, or help us become more competitive as employees. This is surprising since the list for such pursuits is incredibly long, including anything from playing sports to gardening to studying a foreign language or starting our own business on the side.

Education

This is a big one; we think going to college is our right. We don’t really worry about how much it costs or how much money our degree will help us make later in life; we just sort of assume the cost will take care of itself and someone will hire us and give us lots of money for our ability to drink 15 PBRs and still flawlessly quote Voltaire.

No one bothers to consider that the four years you spent in a drunken stupor could have been spent learning a useful trade and contributing to society. As an experienced plumber, you could have a permanent job making $50,000 a year, with zero debt and a nice chunk of change already saved up in that time; yet somehow an unemployed graduate with a degree living in destitution, massive debt and with no employable skills at all has the nerve to look down on such people.

If we were to let go of our ridiculous ideas about what we’re entitled to and what’s “normal” for us as Americans, we could begin to shake off the shackles of our creditors. If you don’t borrow money, you don’t have to pay interest, which is why the quickest way to debt-free living is not to take out major loans in the first place and to match your standard of living to your income (or beneath it).

Alan Brady is a passionate blogger who spends his time researching and writing about the economy, recent job market trends and business. He is currently writing for the labor lawyers locator attorneys.com.

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Over at Switch and Shift, a site that focuses on finding a better, more “human” way of doing business, Ryan Eggenberger recently wrote a resignation letter that perfectly sums up Gen Y’s frustrations when it comes to the traditional way employees are managed.

See if any of this sounds familiar to you:

I want to thank you for the opportunity of working in your traditional, corporate office.

You see, my coworkers here at the company are great. Every morning after clocking in, John, Suzie, and I drank coffee together at John’s desk, checked the latest Facebook gossip, and caught up about last night’s episode of the Bachelorette before we actually did any ‘real’ work. It was a great way to waste two hours before you finally arrived in the office around 10…

…My favorite thing about your traditional office was when I was done with my work at 2pm, but you made me sit there until 5pm. Or if you were having a good day and I wasn’t afraid to ask, you generously let me leave at 4:45pm. Your flexibility in wasting my time fit the old-school office template to a T.

And lastly, there were blue-jean Fridays. Whoever thought of that should get an award. Wearing jeans on Fridays was a great way to show your appreciation to us for our hard work, and it showed us what a cool company we were!

Click here to read the full letter.

What do you think of Ryan’s points? Can you see yourself in this letter? (More importantly, how many of you would love to be able to send this letter to your boss?)

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Then I went ahead and bought new clothes, paid for a two-week European vacation, maxed out my Roth IRA and topped off my emergency fund. You see, my side job pays me what some people make in an entire year.

Here’s the story of how I got my side job:

I met my side job boss at the dinner party of a mutual friend. I liked his company and started following it. A few months later, I saw that he put out a full-time job announcement, so I contacted him and said I could do everything he wanted as a consultant, and for only three-quarters of the salary he was offering. Oh, and I didn’t need benefits.

He signed my proposal.

You can and should take a few lessons from my story: network your butt off, provide massive value and ask for what you want and for what you’re worth…But you know that already, don’t you? You’ve probably heard that again and again.

I hope so. Because the lesson I want to share is one you probably haven’t heard already:

If you want to earn more, you need to change your money mindset.

Let’s be honest. If you don’t change how you think about finances, you’ll never make drastically more money than you do right now. You’ll never pay off your student loans, you’ll never have an emergency fund, you’ll never have enough retirement savings and you’ll never get to eat spaghetti in Rome with your boyfriend until your lips meet.

Before your brain will allow your heart to take action, you need to change your paradigms about money. Whatever you think or believe you know about money, give yourself the permission to start over.

Here’s what I mean:

For most of us, passion and money are mutually exclusive. We don’t really believe that Wall Street execs love their jobs, nor do we accept that do-gooders actually want to get paid for their bleeding hearts. The stories we tell about money are, in general, abysmal. Money is emotional and messy when it comes to needs, wants and desires. Money is the root of all evil and yet necessary for survival. Its reputation, lacerated by these competing ideas, scares us from managing what money we do have, let alone starting to think about how to make the most of it.

To earn more, I had to realize I am no less deserving of wealth than the next person. I’ve had to let go of the ideas I heard growing up, like “the rich get richer.” And I’ve had to internalize that it’s actually realistic for me to make loads of money.

These lessons are particularly difficult for Gen Y to swallow.

We’re a do-gooder generation. We’ve seen wealth corrupt and businesses go bad, and we want no part of it. We rebel as artists, nonprofit fundraisers, bakers and freelancers. We protest in part as a response to corporate greed, and in part because we graduated into a recession with no other choice.

That’s a lot of baggage to carry around. It’s going to take time to get rid of it. But letting go means you’ll carry less shame around your finances and you’ll earn more money with confidence. Change your mindset around money, and you’ll change the direction of your bank account, permanently.

Do you have mental barriers that keep you from earning more? How can you change them?

Rebecca Thorman’s goal is to help you find meaningful work, enjoy the heck out of it and earn more money. Her blog Kontrary offers career, business and life advice that works. She writes from Washington, D.C.

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Do you imagine she was asking about your occupation—about whether you plan to be a bricklayer or a doctor, a teacher or a chef, a policeman or a scholar? Was she asking whether you plan to spend your life flipping burgers or settling lawsuits, writing reports or writing code?

Something tells me occupation was not what she had in mind.

And yet when most of us think about our futures and about our life paths, this is the approach we take.

We’ve been raised in a culture that’s obsessed with occupation, with doing.

And so we grow up believing that if only we could figure out our occupation—if only we could figure out what we wanted to DO with our lives—then we will finally be fulfilled and come to know who we are.

“What should I do with my life?” we ask ourselves over and over and over again. We pull our hair out in the agonizing search for that one perfect occupation, that one thing we think we’re  ”supposed” to do.

I think we’ve got it all wrong, guys.

After all, it’s ludicrous to think that our fulfillment in life or our sense of who we are is wholly dependent on what we end up doing—on whether we find ourselves teaching arithmetic or doing taxes, walking dogs or waxing eyebrows.

In fact, placing sole and dire importance on doing is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes we can make, because what we spend our lives doing matters very little unless it is first preceded by the far more important, far more elemental question of being.

Oliver wasn’t interested in the specifics of our “doing.” Instead, what I think she was concerned with (and what we ought to be concerned with, too) was simply this:

WHO will you spend your one wild and precious life being?

Will you spend the minutes and hours of your precious life being who you really are, or will you spend them living someone else’s life, living up to someone else’s version of who you ought to be?

Will you show up fully? Regardless of what your hands are busy doing, regardless of your job title or your responsibilities or your level of income, what qualities of being will you embody? And how is it that you’ll choose to live this one wild and precious life of yours?

When seeking your truest career path, here’s where I suggest you start: try replacing the question of “What do I want to do when I grow up?” with “WHO do I want to be when I grow up (and who am I already)? How do I want to show up in this world?”

The question of being is the primary, fundamental, elemental question.

The question of doing, then, comes second, and it sounds something like this: “Under which circumstances can I most fully be myself? What type of occupation (and people and culture and environment) best support and facilitate my ability to show up fully as who I am?”

Because in the end, your truest occupation is not to do anything. Rather, your truest occupation is simply to be. Your truest occupation is to become the greatest, grandest, truest version of yourself—to live and breathe and become that person you were born to be.

Everything else is just secondary.

Therese Schwenkler wants to help you become your awesome self and discover your truest career path. Learn how to do this by visiting her blog, The Unlost.

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My last blog post was written almost two months ago. The one before that was two weeks earlier.

It took me about two solid years of blogging several times each week to crack the five-digit monthly traffic I was proud of. So why haven’t I posted more than once a month for the past half-year?

Instead of checking comments and obsessively tweeting during the past six months, I’ve:

• Managed two website builds from start to finish.
• Run the Facebook pages of five major New Zealand brands.
• Become an active member of the Auckland couch surfing community.
• Gone through an intensive 200-hour yoga teacher training program.
• Visited Australia for the second time with my best childhood friend.
• Traveled across New Zealand via campervan, motorcycle, train, plane and boat.

I wish I didn’t have to give up blogging to make those things happen. I wish I could work full-time, be awesome at my job, study to be a yoga teacher, travel across this stunning country and be part of couch surfing, all while being a hotshot blogger.

But something had to give. While I want to be the kind of Gen Yer that can do it all, my blog had become validation instead of a tool. And I discovered that sometimes dropping something you love—even if only temporarily—can help you experience so much in the real world.

I can’t pretend I don’t feel guilty about abandoning my blog. But this hiatus has taught me three major things:

1. Real-life relationships are priceless

While I can’t deny how amazing social media has been for my career/making friends/meeting new people/finding leads, if you’re ever given the choice between going to a networking event or attending a Twitter chat, think long and hard about the kinds of relationships you want to make during that hour.

2. You can always come back online

I thought blogging was like Hollywood—you disappear for a bit and everyone forgets about you. But my content is there for good. It’s not going anywhere, and I plan on picking right back up where I left off… eventually. Despite a hiccup in my posting schedule, no one gives that much of a crap about what I’m spewing on the internets. There are billions of blogs out there to entertain your readers. They’ll read you when you get back.

3. Blogging is 100% awesome

I wouldn’t trade the past few months’ experiences for the world, but I do know that going forward, I need to make time to write every day. I feel more creative in my daily life when I write on a regular basis. My passion for writing hasn’t waned; it just hasn’t taking priority. Going forward, it needs to.

So, how do you know if you should maybe take a blog hiatus?

I’m not going to give you a checklist of things like “You tweet while you’re eating instead of talking to your partner,” because that’s corny—and if that’s actually the case, you’re acting like an a**hole.

What I will tell you is this: Prioritize your real life over your online life. Always.

Marian Schembari is a blogger, traveler and all-around social media thug. She’s based in Auckland, New Zealand, hails from Connecticut and blogs at marianlibrarian.com.

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Are you struggling to find your dream job—the one that really fulfills you and makes you happy?

If so, it’s time to consider whether you’ve gotten stuck in wouldn’t-it-be-nice mode rather than proactively seeking a change.

Are you being practical about your next step, or are you mired in fear or complaining?

Are you keeping your head in the clouds, wishing you could have something better but doing nothing about it?

If those questions hit home, it’s understandable. It’s human nature to resist change—but you have to be willing to change to get where you want to go. No one ever became successful by sitting around his or her house saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if….” They went out there and made it happen.

Yes, they encountered obstacles. Yes, they fell down sometimes. But that doesn’t mean they gave up. They kept going.

A coach once pointed out to me that the word action is a part of the word attraction. It’s a great visual reminder to stop dreaming and get practical.

Here are some ways to apply this way of thinking to your job search:

1. Be practical and realistic

You want to land your dream job now. Understandable! But sometimes you need a job just to pay the bills. If you can’t get into your ideal career right away, find something you can enjoy while you work on it from the sidelines.

There is nothing wrong with accepting a job to take care of yourself and then using that stability and experience to move toward what you want to do long-term. It may seem like a step back, or that you’re not moving forward. In reality, you are moving forward, because maintaining some level of financial stability is critical to achieving your goals.

2. Find your happy place, then think outside the box

If financial realities require you to get a job at all costs, consider expanding your viewpoint. Are some jobs related or similar to your dream job? Can you find a job that will later let you move toward what you’d ideally like to be doing?

Taking this approach is not selling out or giving up. If a job is similar to what you want to do long-term and keeps you happy and stable while you pursue the dream, it’s worth it.

3. Land a “bridge job”

We often need what you’d call a “bridge job” to gain additional experience in an industry where we want to be—and also to pay the bills. View that job not as a compromise, but rather as a stepping stone toward your long-term goal.

For example, one woman I worked with wanted to be a grant writer or marketing professional for a non-profit organization. She was a human resources director and was able to find a different human resources job that involved writing and producing the company newsletter. She then moved into corporate communications. Her next step is to shift into communications for a non-profit organization.

4. Get off the couch

If you’re feeling frustrated by your search and disappointed that you haven’t found or achieved that dream, complaining won’t help. Channel that frustration into positive energy to propel you to take action. Don’t waste precious time and energy focusing on why you’re unhappy now. Use it to focus on what you want instead.

Dream big. Decide on a career path that will fulfill you. Then, get moving toward that goal. Quit complaining and obsessing about why you don’t like where you are in your career. Move toward fixing it instead.

It’s time to stop talking and start doing. After you take a step in that direction, you’ll figure it out as you go.

Hallie Crawford is a certified career coach and founder of Create Your Career Path with www.HallieCrawford.com. She is regularly featured in the media, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, US News and World Report, Fox Business News and Entrepreneur magazine.

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But Thought Catalog has published a list of things you shouldn’t do: 15 Ways 20-Somethings Ruin Their 20s.

Much of the list focuses on personal and life choices, like letting yourself get out of shape (cue The Biggest Loser), staying involved in destructive relationships and “taking pride in being widely considered a b-tch or a d-ck.”

But No. 6 relates directly to what we talk about here at Brazen, your professional life. The author writes:

6. Settling for a subpar job that makes you miserable

Hard work and dedication, no matter who the employer, are admirable traits. If you find yourself performing unhappily at a place, be certain that you’re just doing so as a means to get by until you can pursue your personal goals. Every opportunity to take a shot at your dream career should be greeted passionately by you. Too often people forget that the 20s are an ideal decade for trial and error. Test things out, then fail or succeed.

The last bullet is pretty great, too:

15. Spending large chunks of time dreaming about a utopic, perfect world in which everything is just peachy

Having high hopes and aspirations for the future is a great thing, it’s just important to draw the line of frequency somewhere. Picturing a fantasy land in which you own nice things, are surrounded by beautiful people and have Uncle Scrooge sized piles of money isn’t going to bring those things to fruition. The dreaming is the easy part, it’s the living that requires some heavy lifting and effort.

Here’s the full piece if you’re interested in the other 13 common ways to ruin your 20s.

What do you think? If you’re watching any of your friends ruin this Brazen decade, how are they doing it?

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Do you want to be a Ringleader?

No, not the whip-cracking, lion-taming kind. I’m talking about being the captain of your own ship. About taking control of your future through leadership.

In 2010, I went after my dreams—the big ones—the reach-for-the-stars kind of dreams. Yes, I made a movie. It was scary and euphoric and lonely and exciting all at the same time. And while I don’t pretend to have the wisdom of Oprah or Donald Trump, this experience taught me a thing or two about professional success.

So, here’s my take on how to be a Ringleader, for both your career and your life:

Prioritize laughter

Take a chill pill and laugh at life once in a while.

There’s a direct correlation between the number of times you laugh in a given day and personal success. Okay, so I haven’t done a scientific study on this, but I’ve run a few tests on my own and here’s what I’ve found: people are more willing to help you if you break the ice with a laugh.

Back in college, I spent my summers door-to-door fundraising, and on one particular day I decided to test this theory. I knocked on 50 doors and made it a point to throw in a laugh during half of the conversations. Not only did the laugh significantly contribute to my monetary success that night, but it also resulted in a number of free meals and water bottles.

As humans, we long for connection. That connection doesn’t have to be established with some in-depth discussion of Picasso’s blue period. Just smile and laugh and good things will happen.

Value education

Unless someone is asking you for advice, you should approach every conversation as a student.

This is especially crucial if you’re looking to change career paths. When I decided to make my first film in 2010, I already had a B.A. and J.D. under my belt, as well as a significant amount of business, sales and leadership experience. But entering this new field meant taking my ego out with the trash, and here’s why: people prefer to give advice over favors.

Give others an opportunity to feel important, and doors will open. Also, if you’re open to learning, well, you might actually learn something.

Seek adventure

Think outside the box. I’m not telling you to reinvent the wheel, but if you’re looking to find a job, change jobs or move up in a job, don’t forget there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

In 2009, I decided to graduate a semester early from law school to pursue my dream of making a feature film. This was UNHEARD OF in academia, but by thinking outside the box, I not only moved forward with my legal career, I also learned how to make a movie through trial and error.

If two roads are “diverging in a yellow wood,” don’t be afraid to take the one less traveled by. It really could make all the difference.

Breathe your dreams

Dream big. Dream often. Dream in detail.

When you’re young, it’s completely normal to answer the “what do you want to be when you grow up” question with: astronaut, professional soccer player or Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Once we’re adults, however, we’re expected to be more realistic with our life goals.

Get rid of that mindset; that’s for people who are risk-averse and afraid of change. If you’re not happy with your professional career, figure out what you want (no matter how “silly” it may seem), write it down and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom. Then every week, no matter how small, do one thing that brings you closer to that dream.

Go at it with energy. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.

If there’s a will … there is a way.

Make time for relationships

Period. No “I have a deadline to meet” or “you live so far away” or any sentence that starts with “my boyfriend…”

I don’t know anyone who has been successful in business without the help of at least one other person. Success isn’t about working hard. It’s about working hard and knowing the right people. The ONLY reason my film tour has been successful this summer is because my friends on the East Coast were willing to help me book venues, advertise and house us for free. These weren’t business relationships; they were friends—people I played beer pong with in college or met briefly while hiking the Appalachian Trail. Yet through them, I’ve made business connections and booked a full-fledged, 35-venue tour.

Make time for friends. It will pay off professionally, and more importantly, it will increase your personal happiness ten-fold.

It’s never too late to go after your dreams

In 2006, I didn’t know any filmmakers or lawyers. Four years later, I passed the Illinois bar exam, hiked the entire Appalachian Trail (that’s 2,178.3 miles) and made a movie. Dreams really do come true—if you can find the courage to be a Ringleader.

Katherine Imp is a lawyer, filmmaker and outdoor adventure enthusiast living in Chicago. She also works part-time as a business and travel consultant, blogging regularly at http://ringleaderkate.com.

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But it has also created a constantly connected world where the concept of work/life balance can sometimes seem like a fairy tale. How do you reclaim a little “me” time (for both your health and sanity) when you feel like you’re always on call?

Try these tips for a start:

Turn off your phone

*GASP!* Can she really mean that?

Yes, I do. Turn that sucker off. And not just the ringer—the whole freakin’ thing. Have a cutoff time at which you will no longer be available for whatever emergency someone decides to punt your way.

It also helps to have designated “no phone zones,” like meal times or date nights with your significant other.

Allow yourself a mind dump

Listen to some particularly cathartic music on the commute home. Allow yourself half an hour when you get home to watch that completely mindless reality show you love. Take your dog for a walk and focus on the sights, smells and sounds of being out in nature.

If your s.o. is willing to be your sounding board, allow yourself to vent about the day unrestrained for 10-15 minutes when you get home—and then promptly shut off all further thoughts about work and everything connected with it.

Whatever you do, allow yourself some time to clear your mind of all the work muck and transition into the personal part of your day. Don’t dwell on the stupid mistake you made on that report or the catty thing your arch nemesis said in the break room. It’s bad enough you have to endure the stress and frustration when you’re at work; don’t let work win by allowing it to ruin your personal time, too.

Have glorious, distracting hobbies

The sort of hobbies you love so much you get lost in them. The sort that make it a little easier to get through the work day knowing you have them to look forward to.

Whether it’s exercising, doing crafts or even working on a side hustle, it’s important to have things that bring you happiness and fulfillment in your personal time. They take your mind off work stress, remind you of what really matters and help put all the crappy stuff that happens between 9 and 5 into perspective.

Compart-mentalize

Visualization exercises really can help. Picture your mind as a series of rooms, each one dedicated to a significant part of your life. There’s a room for thoughts about your family, your friendships, your work and any other major parts of your life.

When five o’clock hits, give one last wave to everything that’s in the “work” room, and then picture yourself closing the door firmly and sliding the latch across it. No peeking inside it in the evening; no reopening it till the weekend is over. That part of the day (and your obligation to devote mind space to it) is over. Clearly visualizing that can help make it stick.

Learn to stand up for your time

This one is the most important of them all. You can have all the tricks in the world for separating yourself from the office, but if you aren’t willing to defend your time when the office tries encroaching, you’re doomed.

Put an away message on your work email letting people know that you check your inbox between the hours of ____ and ____ and will get back to them then. If you’re a freelancer or a remote worker, make it clear to your employer(s) when your office hours are—and stick to them.

If you start making exceptions to your own rules and allowing your time to be hijacked, your time will be hijacked.  It’s that simple.

If you feel guilty saying “no,” just remind yourself you’re not only standing up for your own time; you’re protecting your ability to get your work done. A burnt-out and stretched-thin employee makes mistakes, gets sick more often and can have horrible morale (which counts for a lot in job performance).

You have every right to some “you” time. If anything, it makes you a better worker when you are at work.

What tips do you have for leaving work at work?

Kelly Gurnett is Assistant Editor of Brazen Life and runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits, where she documents her attempts to rid her life of the things that don’t matter and focus more on the things that do. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook and hire her services as a blogger extraordinaire here.

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Most Americans expect you to have a schedule and tasks imposed by company policy. They expect your “work day” to be clearly distinguished from your “time off.” They expect, perhaps most of all, that you’ll leave the house to do your work.

Has your grandma ever questioned why you sit at home with your face in a computer all day? Has your eight-year-old nephew ever wondered why you couldn’t just “call in sick” to get a day off so you can go to his baseball game?

Have you ever witnessed your parents trying to explain to friends and family members what you do for a living — and watched them fumble and shrug their shoulders?

What do you say in those situations? You can keep quiet, smile politely and think, “They just don’t understand.” You can launch into a righteous speech about the revolution of the workforce. You can blush and quickly spew a list of tasks that proves how hard you work all day. You can take a knee and attempt to explain to an eight-year-old how your lifestyle fits into the fabric of our society.

Or you can simply respond with the same confidence your sister displays when she tells people she’s a third-grade teacher. YOU know your choice of career is legitimate and normal, even if it’s not what everyone else is used to. Becoming defensive, altruistic, or preachy about it will only perpetuate the belief that it’s unusual. And you don’t want that.

You can also help “normalize” your work/lifestyle by answering questions in terms your friends, family and acquaintances will understand. When your mom invites you out to lunch in the middle of a writing session, you don’t have to reply, “I’d really like to work on this manuscript, because I haven’t met my word count goal all weekend.”

Instead, tell her, “I’m working today, but we can go tomorrow afternoon.” It might be difficult for her to understand why it matters when you write, or that you write at all, especially if you aren’t being paid for it (yet) or working for anyone else (yet). But she can relate to the necessity and obligation of “work.”

Chances are, your friends and family want to understand what’s so special about what you do for a living. They probably even respect you for having the guts to do what you love even if it means not making a lot of money. They just don’t know how to talk about it.

Don’t make them try so hard to understand.

You don’t have to ruin family reunions and cocktail parties with your mission to spread the word about the slasher lifestyle to the masses of unaware Americans. Just live it like it’s normal, and they’ll come to understand from your example.

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a freelance journalist and indie author. She shares writing tips and anecdotes for dreamers in search of a path through her blog and the DIY Writing Newsletter.

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But it made us wonder: Does GenY even WANT the 40-hour week back?

Or do we enjoy throwing ourselves into our startups, traditional jobs and adding a side hustle to our work load?

What do YOU think?

We’d love to hear from you in the comments: Are you in favor of bringing back the 40-hour work week?

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I often felt the same way, so I decided to solve the problem. I figured the best way to work out regularly was to find a way to do it at home before or after work. After a lot of research, I found that workouts typically geared for elite athletes were the perfect solution.

The workouts? They’re called complexes. Once you try them yourself, you’ll see how they’re as good as or better than any workout you may do at the gym. I know, because I used these exercises to lose 70 pounds in six months and now work as a trainer.

What are complexes?

Complexes consist of doing three or more exercises with a barbell, dumbbell or kettlebell. The key difference between complexes and a typical strength training workout is you don’t rest or adjust the weight you’re using between exercises.

Complexes are the brainchild of Olympic strength coach Istvan Javorek. He uses them to help elite athletes quickly build muscle and improve their overall fitness in the offseason. The results speak for themselves: after three to six months of training this way, devotees regularly gain several pounds of muscle, lose fat and double their strength. I’ve seen the same results in the fitness clients I train.

You don’t have to be an elite athlete to do them or achieve similar results. All you need is to commit 20 to 30 minutes, three to four days a week.

The Workout

The exercises in this complex are squats, one-arm shoulder presses and one-arm swings. I recommend using a kettlebell to perform each exercise. Its design makes the workout more challenging than when using dumbbells, which means you’ll progress faster. You can buy one at better sporting goods stores. If you don’t have access to a kettlebell, use a dumbbell instead.

Performing a complex with these exercises trains practically every muscle in your body. Your legs, core (abs and lower back), upper back and shoulders get an especially good workout. You’ll even feel it in your biceps and triceps. My arms got significantly bigger after doing this complex two to three times a week for a month. I wasn’t doing any other exercises for my arms like curls or triceps push-downs, either.

Here is a description of each exercise. I recommend mastering one at a time before you do them as a complex.

Squats

1. Stand holding a kettlebell at shoulder height. Your feet should be shoulder width apart.
2. Perform a squat by bending your knees and moving your butt back. Your weight should be over your heels.
3. Continue to squat down until your thighs are parallel with the ground. Your heels should never come off the ground.
4. Return to the standing position. Push up from your heels.
5. You’ll finish in the same position from which you started this portion of the exercise. You’re now ready to perform the one-arm shoulder press.

One-arm shoulder press

1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart holding the kettlebell at shoulder height. The kettlebell will rest against the back of your hand.
2. Tighten your abs, breathe in and press the kettlebell over your head until your arm is completely extended.
3. Lower the weight back to the starting position of the exercise.
4. Return the weight to the starting position of the next exercise, the one-arm swing.

One-arm swings

1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and hold a kettlebell in one hand with your palm facing away from you. The kettlebell should be between your legs.
2. Bend your knees and waist slightly. The kettlebell should swing back between your legs.
3. Once the weight has swung between your legs, pull it forward explosively. Push from your heels onto your toes. Keep your arm straight and extended throughout the movement. You should be on your toes as the kettlebell approaches chest height.
4. Driving with your hips, pull the weight up until your arm is chest high.
5. Return to the starting position and repeat for the desired number of repetitions.

Sets, reps and rest periods

Begin with five sets of three repetitions for each exercise. Add one repetition per set every week until you can do five sets of eight reps. Once you have achieved this goal, you can decrease the amount of rest you take between complexes to make them more challenging.

How often should you do this workout?

You should do this workout three to four days a week on nonconsecutive days (i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Friday). This will allow you to reap the most benefit and ensure your body recovers completely.

If you’re new to lifting, start by doing it two days a week. Add extra workouts after one to two months of regular training.

After doing it for three to four months on a regular basis, you can make the program more challenging by adding additional exercises to the complex. Just make sure you follow the general rules of the workout, which means no putting the weight down or stopping between exercises until each is finished. Some exercises you can add on are: lunges, bent-over rows, stiff-legged deadlifts and good mornings. You can learn how to perform them correctly at ExRx.net.

You now have the tools to conveniently get an excellent total body workout in 20 to 30 minutes. Who says you can’t find time to work out when you have a full-time job or are starting your own company? Do complexes regularly and you’ll be bigger, fitter and stronger in no time. The additional energy these workouts produce will help you get more done at work, too.

Curt Pedersen is the founder of Stayfitcentral.com, a website that helps people build the body they deserve. Get a free copy of this eBook Fat Loss Confidential for cutting-edge diet and workout tips that will help you lose fat and get into great shape fast.

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This post originally ran on Harvard Business Review.

As you wait for the elevator to arrive after another mediocre day at the office, you give yourself an all-too-familiar pep talk. “I’m better than this, and I’ve completely had it with this job,” you tell yourself. “I’m outta here for good.”

As you ride the elevator to the lobby, you visualize your last day at the company. You fantasize about walking into your manager’s office, tabling your resignation letter, and cleaning your forsaken cubicle for the final time. You flash your trapped colleagues a half-sympathetic smile, but you’re barely able to contain your excitement at the new direction you’re about to take. By the time you exit the elevator to the ground floor, the fantasy ends, and your once-slumped shoulders suddenly stiffen with resolve. You’re actually going to resign tomorrow!

Does this sound familiar to you? If so, did you end up quitting like you knew you should have?

Chances are, the answer is no. Since writing “Why You Won’t Quit Your Job” earlier this year, I’ve been inundated with all kinds of public feedback, personal stories, and follow-up questions from people looking to overcome the psychological biases that trap them in unsatisfying roles and prevent them from doing work that matters. While these senior executives, 20-something bankers, and mid-career marketers, analysts, and lawyers all knew that they wanted to leave their current roles, executing their plan proved to be a perennially insurmountable challenge. In fact, the most common question I got was, “How can I overcome the hurdles to quitting and actually quit?”

Here’s the cold truth: Deciding you want to quit is usually just the first move in a sometimes long and arduous cerebral chess match you’ll play with yourself. The reasons that over 70% of Americans stay in jobs they hate might surprise you. I’ve found that people’s inability to quit their current roles had little to do with the perceived riskiness of their new professions, their financial situation, or general economic conditions. The real barrier for most of us is not external. It’s our own psychology: We overthink decisions, fear eventual failure, and prioritize near-term, visible rewards over long-range success.

So how are the smart and savvy ones able to break free? After conducting a series of follow-up interviews with my original research subjects — the late 20- and early 30-something professionals I studied while writing both Passion & Purpose and my previous post on this topic — three takeaways stood out that explained how those individuals were able to overcome the psychological barriers and finally quit with conviction.

Quit for a better long-term trajectory, not a quick win.

The first step in making the leap is to recount your career goals and visualize a life-changing leap forward, not an incremental hop. One consultant said, “I don’t want to be a serial quitter, so I’m very focused on the long-term goodness of fit.” Why the emphasis on a long arc? Studies have shown that we overvalue near-term growth and are irrationally receptive to relative improvements in position. If you’re looking to quit your job just so you can avoid that micromanaging boss or break free of a tedious daily task, you may be shooting too low. Quitting your job for minor improvements could leave you equally dissatisfied a year in. To avoid this potential cognitive dissonance, take a longer term (5+ year) view of the professional mountain you actually want to climb. Map out what the journey might look like, and make sure you’ll value its rewards. You get an average of 10 chances to quit in your lifetime, and each career step should bring you significantly closer to your true passions.

Quit after hitting calendar milestones, not performance-based ones.

Once you accept that you’ve been conditioned to work inside a system of variable reinforcement schedules, you’ll understand the power of timing your resignation around calendar milestones, not performance-based ones. For example, one analyst quit on his one-year anniversary with the firm, which “created a clean break in my mind, and allowed me to position my time as a one-year stint.” If you wait until you’ve been rewarded with a “pellet” — commendations, promotions, or other rewards — you’ll risk catching a case of adaptive preference formation, the phrase psychologists use to describe how our preferences unconsciously shift with changes in context. Put simply, you’ll look at your job with gentler eyes after receiving that big-time bonus (“Maybe this isn’t so bad after all!”), and before you know it, you’ve talked yourself into staying until your boss drops the next pellet. How do you avoid this endless cycle? Commit beforehand to quit on a particular date, not after a reward.

Quit discreetly and avoid the Facebook fireworks.

While it may feel gratifying to post a dramatic Facebook status update announcing your departure, hold back until you put proper roots down in your new role. Changing jobs or starting a company both contain different elements of risk, and if you falter or fail, word will spread fast (thanks, social media). Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, psychologists agree that social recognition is a crucial component of happiness, and you don’t need your friends and connections gossiping behind your back at an already tense (but hopefully exciting!) time. One banker summed it up: “I don’t want to rub it in people’s faces. I’ll keep it on the down-low until I know my new job fits.” Offset the social pressure and quit quietly. Settle into your new role privately, and gradually update your friends in person, not over Facebook. If you don’t share it, they can’t spread it!

How did you quit your job? What tips can you share with those looking to make the leap?

Daniel Gulati is a tech entrepreneur based in New York. He is a coauthor of the new book Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders. Follow him on Twitter at @danielgulati.

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Most pessimists like to fancy themselves “realistic.” They think optimists are deluding themselves, glossing over the tough parts of life and tricking themselves into seeing things as much rosier than they really are.

To put it in a way those pessimists can relate to: this is a load of crap.

Eeyore is presented with a perfectly lovely reality plenty of times—his friends build him a new house to shelter him from a rainstorm, for example—but he barely notices because he’s too busy muttering about how he hopes it will at least hold up until the next hurricane comes.

Real optimism isn’t about forcing yourself to fake cheerfulness or being the annoying Pollyanna everyone can’t stand. It’s about choosing to hope for the best, even while being prepared for the worst. It’s about seeing the potential in life, acknowledging the challenges and deliberately allowing yourself to believe things can turn out right (and that you have the power to make that happen). And it’s why an optimist will thoroughly kick a pessimist’s tail, every time.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the ways optimists stack up against their glass-half-empty brethren:

Optimists are more in control.  With a “can-do” spirit and the ability to see the bright side of things, optimists feel (and are) more in control of their lives than those who see themselves as victims of an unfair world that always lets them down.

Pessimists are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, low self-confidence and depression—and even when things do go right for them, they’re likely to brush it off as a fluke and discredit any role they had in making it happen.

Optimists are more resilient. If you believe the world is against you and anything that can go wrong will, chances are you’ll have trouble bouncing back from a disappointment or setback because you just don’t see the point.

Optimists are better able to roll with the punches because they believe that, ultimately, things will work out for them. They’re more likely to see setbacks as temporary and to not beat themselves up over mistakes.

Optimists are better at facing challenges. When confronted with a tricky dilemma or an overwhelming problem, optimists are more likely to try to find ways to break it down into doable steps and see what they can do with it.

Pessimists, on the other hand, tend to shut down when faced with a challenge, seeing it as even worse than it really is and deciding ahead of time that any effort they make will probably fail.

Optimists are more open to opportunities. True optimists are perfectly “realistic” about the pitfalls and risks they face; they just choose to not let them get in their way. They’re more willing to embrace a new opportunity, and to embrace it with the kind of attitude that will enable them to make the most of it.

Optimists get more opportunities. All other factors being equal, who is a manager more likely to eye for that new position that just opened up: Employee A, who accepts every project with a smile, works hard at it and gets along with his coworkers; or Employee B, who moans every time the copier breaks, sighs heavily whenever he’s handed an assignment and has that desk everyone skirts because they don’t want to be caught up in its doom and gloom atmosphere?

Regardless of whether Employee B is perfectly capable at his job, Employee A is much more likely to get the promotion because you can trust that he’ll give the work his all, won’t fall apart if something goes wrong and (just as important in an office environment) won’t bring everyone else around him down.

Optimists are healthier. Numerous scientific studies have shown optimists live longer and enjoy better health than pessimists. This could be for any number of reasons: because optimists tend to have lower stress levels and lower blood pressure, because they have stronger support systems, even because they’re more likely to take proactive care of themselves.

Pessimists, who are more likely to suffer the physical effects of stress, anger and worry, set themselves up for a bad mood because the worse you feel physically, the harder it is to look on the bright side.

Optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Attitude really can mean everything. For better or for worse, the way we approach the world influences the way the world appears to us. And once we’re set in either a positive or a negative worldview, the way the world reacts to us is influenced, too.

It’s a little thing called “confirmation bias”: whatever lens you chose to see things through, it will show the evidence that supports your perspective. If you go into a day confident it’s going to suck, you’ll be more likely to see only the bad things that happen, thus making yourself more miserable and causing people to react to you differently than they would if you were in a good mood. The cycle of feedback seems to justify your perspective, so you settle even deeper into the bias you’d already decided on having.

The Good News

Fortunately, while we’re all wired to some degree towards certain personality traits, pessimism can be un-learned, just like you can learn to quit smoking. It’s all about reconditioning your brain to respond to circumstances in a more positive manner.

How have you tried to teach yourself to respond positively? Do you find it challenging to be optimistic?

Kelly Gurnett is Assistant Editor of Brazen life and runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits, where she documents her attempts to rid her life of the things that don’t matter and focus more on the things that do. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook and hire her services as a blogger extraordinaire here.

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There’s an old proverb that says, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” In other words—everyone has a dream, so what makes yours so special?

Many professionals get so hung up on the concepts of “dreams” and “destiny” that they think a successful career will materialize before them simply because “it’s meant to be.” But if that were so, then (to bring the phrase into the 21st century) beggars would be CEOs of multinational corporations, right?

Although it might seem like an overgeneralization, the answer lies mostly in the fact that many of us simply don’t put forth the effort necessary to make our dreams a reality. But you can! Here’s how to avoid some of the common pitfalls of those who have failed to build a successful career on a dream:

Phase One: Discovering the Dream

The first phase may seem fairly obvious: to follow your dream, you have to first be able to define what that dream is.

Are you following a career path simply because you’re good at it or is it something you genuinely enjoy? Although you might have heard the question a million times, you should be able to thoroughly answer—in the most idealistic manner possible—where you’d like to see yourself in 10 years. Whatever answer you come up with is what career path you should be following NOW, rather than waiting to start working toward your goals.

Never underestimate the value of practical skills or professional training. But turning a dream into reality also requires an additional ingredient: passion. If you have a dream you feel passionate about, you’re already well on your way toward making it a reality.

Don’t be afraid to dream big. Even if writing out your dream makes it seem out of reach, make your plans equally big to get where you need to be.

Phase Two: Breaking Free From Excuses

For many dreamers, the excuses stage is an eternal limbo that keeps their professional lives tethered in an unfulfilled state year after dreadful year.

The excuses stage is so named because it features all of the natural defenses that come with dreaming big. Fear is mostly at the root of these defenses, but they come about in the form of phrases like “I’m too busy,” “I don’t have enough money to accomplish my goals,” “my ideas aren’t that great,” and the list goes on.

Economics professor Larry Smith says personal relationships are the greatest bane to successful careers because they offer a socially acceptable rut for professionals to settle into when they want to give up on their dreams. Fortunately, it’s still possible to break through the excuses stage and move on to the final phase.

Phase Three: Going for It

Most dreamers never make it to this final phase because they get too caught up with making excuses or finding other reasons not to follow their passions.

After defining the dream and leaving behind burdensome excuses, professionals have nothing left but to go for it – by transforming their passions into action. The best part about this phase is there are no real rules for making your dreams a reality, because the best plans approach the process in an entirely unique way. So once you get past the “maybes” and “buts,” going for it becomes a fairly easy endeavor that can transform the lowest beggars into the most successful entrepreneurs.

No matter what opportunities and obstacles life has placed in your path, a fulfilling career is still within reach as long as you have the ability to dream. To adapt another common saying: “Man does not live by dreams alone.” Your dreams may act as the foundation to your success, but they won’t come to life on their own without a lot of hard work, sacrifice and the courage to kick excuses to the curb.

Dawn Altnam lives and works in the midwest, and she enjoys following the business and career worlds. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often.

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Commentators were quick to point out that the struggles of working women (particularly working mothers) are nothing new, so why did the age-old observation that work-life balance exists only in brochures suddenly catch the attention of thousands overnight?

Simply put, Slaughter’s frank admissions broke the silence on what had become an Emperor’s New Clothes kind of situation. With one of the nation’s most accomplished women admitting to her own struggles, it’s suddenly OK for us to admit to ours. Struggling to balance our personal and professional lives isn’t weakness; it’s reality, and it’s high time we stop blaming ourselves alone for it.

Individually, at book clubs and over coffee, women were whispering the truth: that sometimes we struggle. But Slaughter’s personal confessions broke the unspoken rule of our role models that admitting publicly to the struggle was somehow anti-feminist.

In her article, Slaughter confesses that“[w]omen of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with, even as our ranks have been steadily thinned by unresolvable tensions between family and career, because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation. But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating ‘you can have it all’ is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.”

And talk we did. Within hours of being posted, the article went viral with shares from across the country, ranging from colleagues to classmates to cousins. The second wave of responses hit the web mere days later. Response was so staggering that The Atlantic issued a special report of responses to Slaughter’s story, covering the renewed debate from every angle imaginable, like a giant collective exhalation of pent-up frustration.

Although I couldn’t agree more with Slaughter’s suggestions about how to make work-life balance a real possibility, the biggest takeaway from this debate isn’t any particular policy prescription. It’s the opened door to having an honest discussion about what’s wrong now that we can finally admit there might be something wrong.

For all the messages GenY women have received our entire lives about self-reliance and working hard to achieve our dreams, at some point our struggles go beyond our the simple sum of our individual choices and personal ambition. Slaughter herself acknowledges the conflicted message we’ve been given. “I’d been the one telling young women at my lectures that you can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you are in. Which means I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).”

Now, Slaughter is giving us permission to cut ourselves some slack. If we’re exhausted and still not where we want to be in our careers and/or our personal lives, we don’t have to just blame ourselves. Like the famous scene in Good Will Hunting, someone is saying—and allowing us to believe— it’s not our fault. 

Of course, the roots of this problem run deep, and there’s been more than a little backlash. Many critics have oversimplified the problem by challenging the dedication of those willing to own up to facing hardship. Certainly even in a perfect world, hard work and compromise will always be part of the formula. But until we create that perfect world, this discussion is helping a lot of young women accept the challenges we face in knowing that it’s not all us, and we’re not in it alone.

Has Slaughter’s article opened up a can of worms at your workplace or with your female friends?

Rebecca Barnes is an attorney who lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

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The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, says it’s impossible for women to give their families the attention they want to give while also thriving in a high-powered career.

She writes:

Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with, even as our ranks have been steadily thinned by unresolvable tensions between family and career, because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation. But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating “you can have it all” is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.

We pulled together some of the best commentary around the piece, so you can get a sense for all the different opinions on this topic:

• Elite Women Put a New Spin on an Old Debate (The New York Times)

• Fine, Women Can’t Have It All. Isn’t That Called Compromise? (Slate‘s XXFactor)

• Can Modern Women Have it All? (Salon)

• Photo response to the cover art (Jessica Valenti)

• Thinking Through The Atlantic’s Women Can’t Have It All Essay (Hey Elise)

• Interview with Anne-Marie Slaughter on Family and Career, and Actually Having Both (The Hairpin)

Have you read other thought-provoking responses to this piece? Leave us a link in the comments!

Or tell us what YOU think. Can women (or men!) have it all?

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Who doesn’t get the most work done with their pants off? When you’re at home, able to brew your favorite cup of coffee, sitting on your own couch and feeling comfortable?

Not only are you physically comfortable when you work at home, you’re mentally comfortable, too. You don’t feel that pressure of a boss looking over your shoulder or having to show up in the office before you’re really awake—factors that stop us from feeling free, ultimately killing our creativity.

Employers are starting to realize the benefits of allowing employees to work on their own time, when they’re most inspired, motivated, comfortable, and able to think and problem-solve creatively. That’s why for some companies, flextime is becoming the route to increasing productivity and employee happiness.

Other workplaces are slower to adapt. If that describes your workplace, and you feel you’d be more productive working your own hours in your own home, read on for some tips and tricks to help your work and life move in that direction.

First, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does your position allow you to work from home?  Flextime might not be a good option if you’re in a client-facing role where you need to be in the office for client interaction or frequent meetings.

2. Do you like your job enough to stay focused on work even when you’re not in the office? Do you have the discipline to work on your own?

3. Where and when do you think best and come up with your most creative ideas? For a lot of people, that may actually be in the office with varied hours.

Selling the idea to your boss

Once you’ve answered the questions above and determined that yes, you would work better at home and on your own schedule, you can start selling the idea to your boss:

• Schedule a time when you can present a flextime execution proposal that should include why you think you would be more productive working different hours and working some days from home, when you would be working, why your position allows you to work from home, and why your responsibilities do not require you to be in the office all day.
• Also present a case showing that you have the technological capabilities to work from home, such as Skype, a PC with Internet access, scanner, etc.
• Provide examples of the stellar work that you have done for the company.  This will prove to show that you are dedicated to your position, motivated, and really care about your job.

Other action items that will help you succeed

• Create a working environment for yourself where you can constructively, positively and actively think about and brainstorm for your job. That might mean creating a home office or finding the best café in your neighborhood.
• Do work when you feel inspired. Wherever and whenever you feel motivated, take a seat, write it down and start working on it as soon as you get a chance.
• Hang out with friends who are in your industry so you can brainstorm and toss ideas around in an environment where you’re relaxed and most likely to get your creative juices flowing.
• Buy a planner and schedule your tasks to ensure that you cover all your bases. Don’t plan for the day, but create a work outline for your week.

Shifting from 9-to-5 to flextime is a long-term process that rests on building trust with your employer and excelling in your role. Once you’ve proven you’re excited by your work and committed to your company, your employer will be more likely to seriously consider the option.

Just don’t forget to put your pants on when you’re back in the office.

Andrea Chester is an Associate Manager at Partners-International, an human resources consulting firm. She focuses on leadership, work/life balance, and women in the workplace. You can follow Andrea @Partners_Intl.

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Most definitely. Aside from the obvious reasons, your credit can affect many not-so-obvious areas in your life… including your employment.

If you’re in college or just getting your career off the ground, it’s absolutely imperative to debunk these myths now rather than later.

Myth #1: You don’t need to build credit if you don’t borrow money

Let’s be honest: college students and credit cards don’t always mix well. As a result, many forgo them altogether. If you go this route, you’ll be in for a rude awakening after graduation.

Why? Because even if you pay cash for your car, clothes and the kitchen sink, you still need credit for things like:

• Utilities – No credit history? Don’t be surprised if your cell phone provider requires you to pony up a deposit. The same holds true for your home’s electric, cable, gas, etc.
• Insurance Policies – Whether it’s fair or not, in the vast majority of states, insurance companies can factor your credit into the pricing. According to one study, if you maintain good credit from age 25 to 65, you will have saved $23,000 on car insurance.
• Employers – Just like insurance companies, many states allow employers to use credit history as part of their hiring and promotion decisions.

These are all good reasons to start building credit now – in a responsible way.

Myth #2: The more you use your credit cards, the better

Actually, the opposite is true. Using your credit cards too much can backfire.

The Credit Utilization Ratio (CUR) is the percentage of a limit that’s used. For example, if you have a card with a $10,000 limit and use $7,000 of it, that’s a 70 percent CUR.

Why does that number matter? Because having a high CUR can actually hurt your credit score.

FICO, the most popular type of credit score, actually favors a lower percentage. It’s usually best to keep your CUR below 30 percent on a given card. Some credit experts recommend an even lower amount, at 10 or 15 percent.

So contrary to popular belief, you might actually be better off using your credit card less rather than more.

Myth #3: Not using credit means you have good credit

Many people wrongly assume that everyone starts with “good credit,” and only mistakes mess it up.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Having little to no credit history basically leaves you with a blank slate. It’s not “bad” in the sense of having derogatory info on your report, but it’s still bad nonetheless. Without having a history to look at, how are banks supposed to gauge your worthiness?

Start building credit now, not later. This especially holds true if you hope to buy a home in the next few years. But even you don’t plan to buy, keep in mind that most of those credit card offers you see with 5 percent cash back and good fuel rewards will require an established and robust credit history to be approved.

If you don’t have student loans or any other credit accounts, start out with an entry-level card from Capital One or your ask local bank to help you get the credit ball rolling.

Myth #4: Your demographics affect your credit

If you pass the bar or get a Ph.D. will that help your credit? Nope.

Your education, income, gender, race, location, nor any other demographic data matters when it comes to credit scoring.

The only demographic component that could maybe affect you is your age. It has no direct impact, but since the age of your accounts factors in, your age could indirectly affect your credit. After all, you can’t be 22 years old and have a mortgage that goes back 25 years!

Myth #5: Small delinquencies won’t matter much

Know that parking ticket you’re ignoring? Procrastinate for too long, and it may come back to haunt you later.

Make no mistake about it, major delinquencies will hurt more. But small ones can muddle things up, too.

Fortunately, FICO recently tweaked their formula to ignore small-dollar “nuisance” collection amounts. But that doesn’t mean you’re off scot-free when a real human analyzes your report. I’ve heard from a couple people who were denied a mortgage because of “nuisance” collections; only $10 and $50 charge-offs.

Mike Dolen, editor-in-chief of Credit Card Forum, is constantly on the hunt for great cash back cards to milk money from.

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Whether you’re moonlighting, setting up your own business or organizing your best friend’s birthday drinks, where do you find the time? On the commute to work, while drinking your chai soya latte or on sneaky time during your workday?

Your could just let things slide, like Victoria Beckham did when she drove to school one recent morning…. without her son in the car.

Or you could stay on top of everything, managing to get your work done and make headway on your personal projects.

Here are some tips to make you a multitasking guru:

No wandering

Throughout your busy day, keep your mind on the job at hand.

This sounds obvious, but it’s more difficult than it appears, especially if you’re thinking about a side project. How often do you start doing one thing, only to find yourself doing another?

Make a list at the start of the day and stick to it. Keep trucking, keep your important appointments and hit your deadlines. If you accomplish what you set out to do, you’ll feel more in control at the end of the workday and better equipped to deal with your personal projects in the evening.

Treat your personal project with military precision – but not on work time

You’ve got to make time (yes, make time) to sort out your personal projects. Whether that’s updating your blog, planning a going-away party or starting your own business, get it done after office hours.

Skip that happy hour with a friend after work, or call people in the early morning, on your commute or on your lunch break (if you get one). But do everything in your power to avoid getting ahead on that project during work hours.

Rope in a friend to help

If your side project is becoming too much, share the load. Don’t force yourself to organize your entire wedding on your own; get your other half to do something or god forbid, your mother and mother-in-law will be too happy to help. Just ask them to keep their status updates until the evening or weekend; no one likes your mother’s urgent calls at 2 p.m. to discuss fuscia floral arrangements.

If you’re planning a reunion, friend’s night out or soccer match, remember there are other people involved, and share the load. There’s always someone less busy than you who is likely willing to help out.

Use the force

Well, not exactly the force, but technology is here to help you. Catch up on your emails on your commute or during your lunch break. If you’re organizing events, use social networking invites, so everyone knows where they stand and you can see who’s in and out in a flash. (Maybe don’t use Facebook invites for your wedding though.) And find other sites (like Evernote) that will help you stay on top of everything.

Remember, doing personal stuff on work time is not cool. It’s not appreciated by your manager or the business that’s paying your salary. Besides, you don’t want to be known as the chick (or dude) who brings all her personal stuff into the office, do you?

Elaine Knowles writes at Working Sirens, a career advice blog for ambitious 18-to-34-year-olds. You can also find Working Sirens on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

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