Choosing to Thrive in Your Career

Editor’s note: This essay explores one of the central questions behind Cultivated’s work — how to build a career that grows without hollowing out who you are in your life.

Choosing to Thrive

For years I assumed careers simply happened to us.

If you worked hard, stayed busy, and made yourself useful, things would somehow work out.

They often don’t.

I’ve met too many capable people who did everything “right” on paper and still found themselves exhausted, cynical, and quietly lost.

Thriving, I’ve learned, is not an accident.

It is a choice.
Not a dramatic one. Not a single moment.

But a series of small, conscious decisions about what kind of life your work is meant to serve.

How this became personal

Early in my career I met a man at a conference who frightened me.

Not because he was incompetent — he was clearly smart — but because he was bitter.

He hated his job, his industry, his organisation, and seemed to carry that resentment into every conversation.

I met many versions of him over the years.

Bright people. Successful people. Deeply disengaged people.

I realised, quietly and uncomfortably:

This could be me, one day.

So I went home and wrote a list of what I wanted from life.

Then, like most people, I pinned it to the wall — and carried on as before.

Years later, after becoming a parent and confronting how fragile everything really is, I returned to that list.

This time, I understood something I had missed:

No one drifts into a meaningful career.

You have to choose it.

This essay can also be explored in audio form. You’re welcome to listen — or continue reading below.

What it means to thrive

To thrive is not to maximise status or salary.

It is to grow without shrinking the rest of your life.
It is to stretch without breaking.
It is to build a career that supports who you are becoming — not one that slowly displaces it.

Over time, ten orientations have guided me.

Not rules. Not hacks.

Ways of standing in the world of work.

The orientations

Decide to thrive.
Meaningful careers begin with intention, not momentum.

Build real relationships.
Work moves through trust, not just systems.

Let work contain some joy.
Sustained joylessness is information, not weakness.

Trade your values carefully.
Occasional compromise is life. Chronic compromise is erosion.

Ship value, not just activity.
Direction matters more than volume.

Embrace difference.
Careers are ensembles, not solo performances.

Keep learning.
Stagnation begins when curiosity ends.

Be effective and human.
Results without care damage. Care without results drifts.

Step beyond your job title.
Growth happens at the edges of responsibility.

Put family first.
Work matters. People matter more.

A quieter definition of success

Thriving does not arrive one day, complete.

It emerges slowly, from the way you choose again and again:

What you prioritise.
What you protect.
What you refuse to sacrifice blindly.

Careers are not ladders.

They are lives in motion.

And the moment you stop postponing meaning, the direction begins to change.

Video

Editor’s note: This essay grows from an earlier exploration in another medium. The thinking remains central, even as the format has changed.