…research shows that people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests…second, people perform better at work when they do what interests them.

Interest is one source of passion. Purpose–the intention to contribute to the well-being of others–is another. The mature passions of gritty people depend on both.

For some, purpose comes first. This is the only way I can understand a paragon of grit like Alex Scott. Ever since Alex could remember, she’d been sick. Her neuroblastoma had been diagnosed when she was a year old. Shortly after her fourth birthday, Alex told her mother, “When I get out of the hospital, I want to have a lemonade stand.” And she did. She operated her first lemonade stand before before she turned five, raising two thousand dollars for her doctors to “help other kids, like they helped me.” When Alex passed away four years later, she’d inspired so many people to create their own lemonade stands that she’d riased more than a million dollars. Alex’s family has continued her legacy, and to date, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation has raised more than one hundred million dollars for cancer research…

When I talk to grit paragons, and they tell me that what they’re pursuing has purpose, they mean something much deeper than mere intention. They’re not just goal-oriented; the nature of their goals is special…the message is the same: the long days and evenings of toil, the setbacks and dissapointments and struggle, the sacrifice–all this is worth it because, ultimately, their efforts pay dividends to other people.

All of us, Terkel concluded, are looking for “daily meaning as well as daily bread…for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Consider the parable of the bricklayers: Three brick layers are asked: “What are you doing?” The first says, “I am laying bricks.: The second says, “I am building a building.” The third says, “I am building a house of G-d.” The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.