What Shall I Do With My Life and Career?

Someone I informally mentor asked me a series of  questions that amounted to ‘What shall I do with my life and career?’

He has ideas that he should try and do what he wants to do here in the UK – but that maybe he should try it overseas. He said that he had being trying to get opportunities with companies to little avail.

My first observation was that he wants to do ‘Social Media’ which is a field that the creators of  it ‘just did’. They just did it. What’s more many of the people who are great at it – many of them under 30, many of them under 20 – and many much younger – just do it. So whatever you want to do… what makes you assume that someone else can teach you?

More to the point, do not do anything with the assumption that doing X will bring you Y. Doing X will bring you X, Y may emerge. Even if you achieve Y, it may not last. Nothing lasts. If you are lucky you may have it until your last breath in this human form and then you will part company.

Therefore you must do something that is rewarding in every moment that you do it. Not just at the moments when you get paid to do it.

Ask yourself:

• ‘What would I do if I had everything that I needed?’ Do that.
• What is it that is at the heart of everything you are passionate about? Do that.
• What is it that you are passionate about that always returns to you?
• What is it that is at the very core of your being? Like a trumpet has no choice but to be a trumpet. Like a tree that has no choice but to be a tree.

Your mind may not help you with this but ask it the questions… so that it goes away. It will come back with all sorts…perhaps – but does it last? Does it come one moment inspiring you and by the next day you’re uninterested. That is not it.

Do not be surprised if at some point you pause and look back and see what you really do is what you always have done  – now perhaps it is that you see it for the first time.