February 11, 2025
by Stephen T. Messenger
Peter was wrestling with his inner demons. He had been working for the company as a purchaser for two years now. He was good at it, comfortable, and made decent money. The problem was that he wasn’t fulfilled.
Every morning, he had to drag himself into work. Peter’s alarm would ring, and he would pull the covers over his head, hoping he didn’t have to show up today. The drive to work was just as painful. The thought of spending eight hours in front of a computer buying supplies did not excite him.
What did excite him was his plans for after work: trading on the stock market. Over the past year, he had made a small nest egg in day trading, and it became his hobby. He majored in finance and only took the purchasing job because it was local, available, and safe right out of college. Sometimes he wished he had cast his search wider.
Half working and half dreaming of day trading, Peter was jolted back to life as Bryan walked by Peter’s cubicle, laughing. Bryan truly seemed to love his job. “Hey Bryan!” Peter called out. “What’s so funny?”
“Just Denise’s joke about a flower. What are you up to, Pete?”
Peter considered being vulnerable for a moment and slowly said for the first time out loud: “To be honest, I was thinking this job may not be right for me.” He explained his downtrodden mindset.
Bryan’s face became both concerned and caring. “Well, are you living in the sweet spot of life?” he asked, grabbing a dry erase marker.
The Sweet Spot
Let me draw a big circle on the left and let it represent our talents. Every one of us has things we’re good at such as math, writing, sports, music, cooking, or talking to others. It doesn’t matter whether we were born with them or developed them over time, only that we’re good at it. When I need someone to buy something, I come to you. You’ve got the financing down. You’re always fast. You ask the right questions. You have a talent for doing it.
Talents are interesting because if we’re good at it and practice over time, we become great at it. Consistently working on our skills makes us an expert.
Denise is really good at gardening, as you’ve seen from the plants in her office. She told me she was practically raised in a flowerbed with her mom and learned how to garden from an early age. She even has a blog to help others. She found her talent.
This big circle I’ll draw over here on the right represents our passions. These are things we love. Hopefully, we’re pursuing these things in life. Many people go to college to develop their passions in art, music, business, religion, medicine, marketing, or hundreds of other disciplines. Again, we were born attracted to these things, they developed over time, or both. However it happened, the point is we love doing them.
Passions are things that we’re going to do whether we get paid or not. It’s a hobby, game, discipline, or something we could see ourselves doing in retirement.
I mentioned Denise loves gardening. She goes home and works on her flowerbed, spends the weekends mulching, and brings in flowers all the time to people in the office. She already has a plan after retiring to buy more land and grow more flowers.
Naturally, some things we’re passionate about but not talented at. Some things we’re talented at but not passionate about.
The interesting part is where these two circles overlap. If we can find something we’re talented at and passionate about, we have a pretty cool hobby. For Denise, that’s gardening.
But let’s look at the true beauty of this diagram. I’ll draw a final circle below these two. This circle represents opportunity.
Opportunity is when life offers us an opening to do something. It’s when we have a chance to try a new thing. It could be a new career or a new hobby. In the past two months, I’ve been asked to play on the company basketball team, go to trivia night, cook for a potluck, and join the church choir. I’m not passionate or talented at any of these four things and turned them all down. But I’ve had the opportunity.
Now look where these three things intersect. I call where talent, passion, and opportunity come together on this Venn Diagram the “Sweet Spot” of life. Here’s where we get to do something we’re good at, love to do, and have a chance to do often.
Back to Denise, she’s good at gardening, she loves to do it, and she’s creating opportunities now in her spare time and in the future with a retirement plan—the Sweet Spot of life.
But to get back to your question, Peter, it sounds like you’re talented at your job and have the opportunity to do it, but you’re not real passionate about it. That’s two out of three circles. Based on your experience with the stock market, your financing degree, and passion for investing, a better fit may be volunteering to manage the company’s 401K program. You sound good at making picks, enjoy doing it, and would have the opportunity at work to do it while getting paid.
In order to be fulfilled at work, we need to be living in the Sweet Spot. This is where we’re doing something we love, we’re good at what we do, and we get paid for it. Sometimes that’s simply asking around our current job to find tasks that fit in our Sweet Spot. Sometimes that’s changing jobs altogether.
When these three things align, we thrive in life. Living here is not a destination, but a journey. The Sweet Spot is not about external success, but it’s where our external achievement mirrors our internal growth. Here we can fully embrace our potential, fulfill our purpose, and live the life we dream of.
Peter looked at the three circles on the board. “Well, I’m definitely not living in my Sweet Spot here, but you’re right, I see ways to get there. By the way, what was Denise’s joke?”
Bryan smiled, “What do you call a country that only drives light red vehicles? A pink carnation.”
Authors Note: I’ve been blessed to live in the Sweet Spot of life with my military career. I have always felt talented and passionate in this opportunity life has presented and love going to work. For two years, I worked at a Fortune 500 Company that offered me the opportunity of a job that I was pretty good at, but in no way passionate at. I was miserable.
It is critical to find your Sweet Spot of life.
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