If you want to create your dream job and have the freedom to live a purpose-driven, fulfilling life doing creative work that matters, you need to get really clear about 3 things:

Who are you?: Your personal, professional and educational background.

Why are you here?: What you are really passionate about doing.

What can you offer?: How you can use talents and skills to provide value to others.

Just as dream jobs are rarely found by sending out conventional resumes and cover letters, dream careers are rarely created by formal education alone. To find your calling, you need to be a self-directed learner who is actively exploring your talents and interests to discover what you enjoy doing the most. Then you need to dedicate yourself to constantly improving and refining your talents and skills.

Studies show that the highest performers who feel they have found their calling are doing work that they are “intrinsically” motivated to do. Intrinsically means that they work hard and dedicate themselves to their craft out of a deep sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose they get from what they do. These high performers derive so much enjoyment and fulfillment from their work because they are able to regularly get in a highly focused and creative state that American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “Flow”.

Flow is defined by Csikszentmihalyi as an “optimal state of consciousness where you feel your best and perform your best.” It happens when you’re doing work that you are intrinsically motivated to do and when you’re fully focused and immersed in a challenging problem that you feel totally empowered to solve.

High performers who rise to the top of their respective fields such as entrepreneurs, ground-breaking scientists and gold medal athletes perform at such a high level because they are able to achieve stream of consciousness-like flow states where they are totally immersed in what they do. This allows them to be more focused, productive and creative than their peers and gives them the ultimate competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced world.

To unpack what motivates people to become top performers in any field or industry, one needs to understand the crucial difference between being managed by a boss and being self-motivated and your own boss.