Fifteen years ago, entrepreneur Mark Albion had all the trappings of success-or so it seemed: the high-paying, high-prestige job, a brand new Jaguar, and an expensive house he was thinking of trading in for an even fancier one in a gated community. As a wunderkind professor at Harvard Business School doing research on the use of brand names, he was profiled on CBS's 60 Minutes and his growing celebrity also allowed him to command $5,000 a day in consulting fees. But when a family crisis gave Albion a major wake-up call, it dawned on him that the fast track was actually the "trap" of an inauthentic life.

He found a way to free himself, create work he loves, and now his mission is to help others bring their livelihood and personal life into alignment. "Like me, most people dream of a noble purpose, to make a difference," says Albion, "but need courage to make changes."

The author of "Making a Life, Making a Living: Reclaiming Your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life" (Warner Books, 2000, 273 pages, www.makingalife.com), Albion is the founder of You & Company, a career management firm, a columnist for Fast Company magazine and CNN, and the producer of "ML2," a free e-mail newsletter that covers social responsibility and work/life issues. He speaks extensively at leading business schools, and has mentored scores of both undergraduates and MBAs.

As one who has walked the walk of "seeking his truth," Albion believes that we all have the potential to create a career we love. So how do we get started?

"When you look at making changes in your life or work, you have to realize that the seeds are already there," says the dynamic, upbeat Albion, who's based in Dover, MA. Albion, for one, didn't have to look far for the "seeds" of his present writing and counseling career: his childhood.

"I used to write short stories and sell them door-to-door for three cents apiece instead of doing a paper route," says Albion. His second business, reminiscent of Lucy's advice stand in the comic strip "Peanuts," involved counseling kids about their sibling problems for a nickel.

"We put our childhood dreams in a box, then we end up living by 'shoulds,' Albion says. "Instead, remember what you loved to do as a child and try to weave it in to your present life."

In speaking to MBA's, most of them in their late twenties, he's found that few of them know what they really want to do. If they do know, they have no idea how they can follow their dreams and still earn a living.

"After I changed gears, I learned again that I love to write. But these changes come from deep inside-they don't happen overnight," he says. "It took me two years to leave Harvard, and ten years to formulate a new worklife, to find out what I love to do."

Creating a new life, Albion tells us, is not without its costs -- as his own rocky path demonstrates. When he left his high-profile career at Harvard, "the screen went blank"-the phone stopped ringing, the speaking engagements dried up. But the good news is, it didn't last forever.

"New friends resurface," Albion emphasizes. "To start over was about me being clear about who I was, and what I want to do, which is to create a more just, sustainable world."

One of his first steps was to help launch a non-profit foundation to mentor young MBA's. "They cared about making a difference," he says. "These young people got me re-energized." But Albion's new life didn't really take off until a 1996 appearance at a United Nations conference, when he decided to toss out his prepared text and speak from the heart.

"The ancient Swedish term for business is nårings liv, which literally means 'nourishment for life,'" Albion says. And with his U.N. speech, he found the meaning and nourishment he'd been seeking for what he calls "my fourth career" as a writer, teacher and speaker. What's more, he now has the opportunity to live one of the values he treasures: welcoming his kids home from school (which he did during this interview).

One of Albion's favorite pieces of advice: "Don't get really good at something you don't want to do." "When I'm speaking to groups and say that, I see the lights go on," he laughs.

"Having a meaningful work life is not about skills, it's about values. If you know who you are, what your dream is, you'll build the skillset you need for the work you want to do," he says. "If your values don't mesh with your work, if there's a lack of harmony in your life, you won't wholeheartedly be involved in your job-which is 99 percent of us."

That may be hyperbole, but Albion quotes some grim statistics: 70 percent of U.S. workers don't like their jobs. And the likeliest time for having a heart attack is Monday morning-as soon as people get to work.

Albion remembers one experience that sums up the problem. Speaking to a group of 400 college seniors a few years ago, he heard one thing over and over from the students: "I don't know any adults who are happy."

"If we're doing work that isn't a fit for us, we're not modeling for our children," he says, adding that far too often, a myriad of compromises and rationalizations keep people in a career they don't like. Not surprisingly, money is one of them, as Albion is the first to admit.

Several years after he made his break, he faced some real downtimes. He thought at one point that he and his wife would lose their house. "But the fact is, you won't need as much money when you're doing satisfying work. Once you take the money crutch away, you can figure what's holding you back, and what's important."

However, Albion stresses that he's not saying "if you don't like your job, then quit." What he is saying is that if you're not yet ready to transition to another career, you can be more flexible by paring down your lifestyle. Too, make sure you don't build the kinds of expectations that can keep you from considering a new career. And once you're ready to start a career move, having friends and activities outside the workplace, and nurturing an identity outside of work, creates the supportive environment you'll need.

Albion also emphasizes that although we still have to operate in the realities of the business world-"We're not here in Shangri-la," as he puts it-we do have options for staying put while enhancing our present job and employability. If you have ideas you'd like to try or projects that are important to you, first do them on your own, he advises. Then build support for these new projects among your co-workers. The next step is to take your ideas to management, and show how they can boost the bottom line.

"The language of business has always been financial," Albion says. "But business has always been open to new things 'if you can show us how to max out.' Focusing on the 'soft areas' of business can have a positive financial impact."

OK, so you've started to identify your values, and you're thinking that there could be other avenues out there for you. Next, Albion says, create opportunities to move time and energy in that direction, even if it's just in little ways. But he points out that all too often, it doesn't work that way.

"There's a tremendous disconnect between what people say their values are and where they put their time," says Albion, who often hears people say their family is the most important thing in their lives, yet they work 16 hours a day.

Conflicting values or not, people are hungry for resources to help them revamp their lives, contends Albion. Some convincing evidence may be the three-quarters of a million visitors to his site in September 2000 alone. He quotes Stephen Covey, author of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," who says, "What do I see out there? I see a lot of pain."

But the way Albion sees it, most people aren't able to turn their lives around on a dime. "Real change comes when a major crisis forces people to change," he points out. "They don't change until the pain of not changing is greater than their fear of change." And when the source of pain is a life that's too small for your dreams, you have to put your values front and center.

"You can't unleash your potential if you don't like what you're doing," Albion says. "If you're not connected at a heart level, you're wasting your time, wasting a precious gift-the gift of life."