In the past, prior generations were taught to judge their personal worth at certain professional stages based on salary. The ultimate form of extrinsic validation, salary, is a number that symbolizes clout in the world economy and their own communities. Of course — spoiler alert– that story is false, and it always was false. I am so glad that this generation of my colleagues and peers has come to realize en masse how wrong this story is.

However, as I see a flood of job seekers embrace a more impact and climate change-focused career, I have concerns about the method. I fear that in pursuing careers and jobs with more impact, we have simply swapped one extrinsic motivation for the next.

I meet with students weekly and coach them. And in this work, I so often hear the questions “what technologies will have the most impact” and “what companies will save the world?”

To be clear, I think these are absolutely fantastic questions to ask, and I do not judge anyone, including myself, for asking them. However, these are questions for grantmakers and investors. Job seekers should proceed with caution when you notice yourself asking these questions.

When I went through several major life changes that left me feeling as vulnerable as I’ve ever felt , I decided to make a theory of change. Not for any organization, but for myself and for the kind of impact I wanted to have on the world. The idea was that by defining my vision for the world I wanted, I could work backward to define the things that I could influence with my time, focus, habits, choices, and leadership. I’ve been wanting to blog about how important and profound that has been to share the idea more broadly for some time.

But the thing is though, as I find myself referring to the document weekly over the last 2 years, I realize I look most at a tiny section of the document called “my values”. I look at my values when I am angry and can’t figure out why. I look at my values when I feel alone and need ideas for where to find support. I look at my values when I feel unappreciated or triggered or stuck. It keeps me grounded. Occasionally I have a clarifying moment to see there’s something about my values I’ve learned, and I change them right there in that Google doc. It turns out that to be grounded in the impact I want to have, all I need to guide me are my values.

Our values drive our choices. The sooner we can spend the time to challenge and see and name our values clearly, the sooner we can have the groundedness required to enjoy a career of both impact and fulfillment. If we don’t take the time to do this, our definitions of success will still be linked to something outside of ourselves. And that’s dangerous. In that scenario, we risk familiar social-norm choices blindly guiding us all down the path of rat races, egos, and burnout, just this time it’s in the name of climate. That doesn’t help. The earth still goes up in flames if we all individually burn out en masse.

What if instead, in pursuing ways to spend our time and make money, what if instead we spent the time to think about where we came from and what those people and places taught us about work? What were their values, and how do we carry that with us? Where have we departed from our earliest lessons on worth and individuality? How could we pause before we make a choice that might be a default value of someone else, not ourselves? What if we spent significant time to reflect on who is doing it right, who do we aspire to be like, and what are the values we see in those inspiring people? What if we focused on surrounding ourselves with people who reflect our own values? And what if we resolved to be those people for those who will come next? Knowing what drives us is what drives the real change.

So, let’s rewrite the story. I value connection, so I allow myself to define my success to be based on the teams I build and what they achieve. I value kindness, so I allow myself to define my success as always showing up for my people again and again and always having their back. I value joy, so I allow myself to define my success as looking for the glimmering moments of joy and having no guilt in enjoying them. Let’s normalize talking about how we individually define success and write our career stories accordingly. Your turn.