Being Good at Something Is Not the Same as Being Right for It
There’s a funny thing that happens in life.
You’re good at something and so, people start telling you - or you start telling yourself - “Hey, I’m good at this. I should do this more. Maybe I can make a living off of this.”
Or, there is something you think might make a decent career, and so you look at it, and explore it, and study it, and eventually realize, “Oh, I’m good at this. I guess this is what I’m going to do.”
Either way, you end up in the same place:
You are doing something that you are good at.
The common thread through all of these, though, is that at no point did the person in question stop to wonder, “Just because I’m good at this, does that mean it’s the right thing for my career?”
It’s easy to overlook that question.
We are so focused on being good at things - at being productive, at performing well, at achieving high grades or other accolades, at making money and living a comfortable life - that we neglect to ask whether the way in which we are doing these things is the most suitable to us at a deeper level.
You could call it soul. Or your core. Or your spirit. Or your calling. I’m not really fussy about which you choose.
In my case, I like to use the word “calling”. I always knew that being a lawyer wasn’t my calling - and others knew it. But, I was good at it.
And, for a long while, I was so good at it, that even as I ignored the question of “calling”, I started to think: “Man - I really don’t like this. But what else would I be as good at?”
That question is a self-made trap.
In the language of psychology and coaching, it’s what we might call a “limiting question.” It might feel like an open question — but it’s not. Because it implies the foregone conclusion that there actually isn’t anything you could do this well.
So, why bother?
I had a friend who used to say this all the time. He was a lawyer (of course). He would often say how much he hated what he was doing — the work, the firm. But the answer to his own question was always, “Yeah, but what else would I do?”
Well, fast forward a few years.
He left law. Tried consulting. Tried entrepreneurship. Found a company he liked. Bought it. Transformed it. Sold it for a hefty sum.
Now, you might be saying, “So what? That could be anyone. Not me though.”
I get that. I said the same thing for longer than I’d like to admit.
It was along the lines of, “Jordan, you’re pretty good at this law thing. Sure, you could do some other things - and maybe even be good at them - but, who are you kidding? No one is going to pay you to do anything else that you are good as much as this.”
But here’s what my friend, and others I know, have figured out: competence at something is not the end. It’s the beginning.
The problem isn’t that you’re good at what you do. The problem is that you’ve let “good at” stand in for “right for.” They’re not the same question. They’ve never been the same question.
Barbara Sher spent decades watching talented people trapped in exactly this spot — not because they lacked ability, but because no one had ever asked them to aim that ability somewhere that actually mattered to them. She was onto something. You’re not broken. You’re just aimed wrong.
The theologian Frederick Buechner had a phrase for the place you’re trying to get to.
“Where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”
Not just where you’re useful but where you feel you’re most alive.
I was asked about this yesterday in a podcast interview actually. What did it mean to be “alive” in my own work? My answer, meandering as it was, ended up summed as follows: it was when I felt like I was just “doing me”. No pretence, no posturing - really, just being myself in my work, noticing that I was continually drawn towards it, and seeing what came of it.
That’s the question underneath the question. Not “what else could I do?” but “where does what I do best connect to something I actually care about?”
So here’s my push for today:
Write down the last three times you felt genuinely good at the end of a workday. Not productive. Not praised. Actually good. What were you doing? Who were you helping? What problem were you solving?
That’s your data. Not a personality test or an assessment (although, if you want to take one, go here). Just your own memory, reminding you of something that you know you already know.
You don’t have to blow up your career to answer the question. You just have to stop letting competence be the only answer you allow yourself.
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