By any standard, I'd made it, but I couldn't truly exhale. I had the career, the money, the house, and the holidays to places that looked great on a postcard. But sitting still on a beach was impossible. My mind was completely unsettled. I knew that the path I was on was wrong, but I didn't know how to resolve it.

The day that changed everything was unremarkable. I was in yet another airport after another win on my way back to London. I was counting my bonus and pretending to walk on air. And a voice began to whisper, "pay attention." Leaving wasn't immediate, but eventually I mustered the courage to leave my twenty-five year career in finance.

For What It's Worth: In Search of a Good Life is not a plan to fix your life and it will not tell you what to do. It's the story of one life that stopped working and a reflection on the seven character traits—contentment, wisdom, belief, integrity, courage, discipline, and perseverance—that enabled the discovery of true purpose. Through my own story and the stories of others who embodied these character traits, I offer a map that isn't perfectly detailed and a compass whose north only you can fix. A path that is not easier, but certainly more fulfilling.

Aristotle said that happiness is the purpose of life. He also believed that most of us look for it in the wrong places. This is a book for listeners of David Brooks, Arthur Brooks, Oliver Burkeman, and Richard Rohr, written from the inside of the life everyone describes as perfect. It is short enough to finish in an afternoon, but one you are likely to return to multiple times.