Moving the Needle: Get Clear, Get Free, and Get Going in Your Career, Business, and Life!

Chapter 3Get Clear with Your Life Mission

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

—MATTHEW BRODERICK, from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Of all the talks I've given since publishing Networking Is a Contact Sport, more than two dozen have been on university campuses. The more I talk to students, the more I hear anxiety in their voices. Often, they can see the finish line of graduation, but they can't see beyond the tape. In challenging economic times, they fear having to take a job they won't like—or not finding a job at all.

I tapped into their pain and anxiety when I gave the commencement speech at Cardinal Stritch University, a four-year Franciscan university in my hometown of Fox Point, 10 miles north of Milwaukee.

I gripped the podium and looked out at a sea of black-clad graduates with their mortarboards, sitting politely inside the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee. About 1,000 students were graduating, and several thousand family members were in attendance that Sunday afternoon in the middle of May.

“So, what are you going to be when you grow up?” I asked.

I observed the knowing looks that the fresh-faced students shot each other. I cleared my throat and continued.

“You have probably been asked what you want to be when you grow up a thousand times. When you were younger, your answer might have been, ‘I want ...