I took myself through a brain exercise to try to understand what I want out of life and how various careers can get me there. There is an interesting dynamic that I discovered that I thought was worth putting down here. This is just an exercise that I thought of myself, not a book or professional guided deal.
Basically I tried to imagine who I wanted to be when I'm successful. It really helps to have a clear personal definition of success for this, which I don't really have. Perhaps that is part of the problem, but nonetheless I attempted to go through with the exercise anyway. I created a mental image of what I will look like, the career path I have followed, and my general lifestyle choices.
Basically I come up with two utterly distinct images of myself, both of which I believe I am capable of. The first, and more traditional of the two, is a high powered executive. I'm not afraid to wear a suit to work everyday and having the ability to invoke strategy across a large business keeps my creative juices satisfied. This image comes with money, a fancy lifestyle, and work is the main focus of life. I certainly think that this could be exciting, but hesitate at the path that might need to be taken to get there and don't really know if I want to live my life in a business (my own or someone else's).
The second image focuses much more on lifestyle and a lot less on career. It is unclear how I stepped into the role, but based on the personality I've assigned myself it wouldn't really matter. This version of me has a grey pony tail and a tattoo sleeve on his left arm. He lives by the ocean and spends time enjoying life. Working is completely non-stressful and he doesn't care too much what people think of him. Money is not a major concern because, although it is much more limited, he just happily lives within his means.
I can tell you immediately that I'd be happier as the second guy. But I'm afraid that I have a drive to do and create things that may not be satisfied in that lifestyle. However, I have problems handling large amounts of stress which would clearly go right with the first guy. I'm sure that optimally I would be a hybrid of the two images, but it is hard to define where that is. The best I can come up with now is to aim to own my own business so that I can do what I want and act like the second guy with some of the good traits that come with the first. Then perhaps I can sell whatever business I would own (or at least no longer directly manage it) and move toward the relaxed lifestyle more.
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No one knows who they really want to be... at work they tell us to have a career plan for up to like 30 years. I think at most to plan 5 years, maybe only 3 years at a time. Steve Jobs had a great quote in his speech to Stanford students: You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking backward.
ReplyDeleteTrue, you certainly can't really know what the future holds and so planning out a career for thirty years would be quite a waste. But I still think deciding on the type of lifestyle you want is worthy to understand. Then I can treat it like a goal to work toward.
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