A lot of people of my generation and those after mine are eager to develop, earn more money and be recognized for their success. However, what ends up happening a lot of times is that some of them gain the habit of waiting for opportunities instead of creating them or, at least, chasing them, and they never understand what is important for them..
During my experience, and also speaking for myself, what I noticed is that it especially happens when you don’t know exactly what you want to do or where you want to be professionally in a few years. This makes it really hard for you to have a clear plan or know exactly where you need to spend your energy. And I came to the conclusion that this is an obstacle we create for ourselves.
When I think about why we create that obstacle for ourselves, it isn’t hard to understand. A lot of the narratives that influence us online or in more conventional media are based on these stories of people who always knew what they wanted to do and proved to everyone that they were exceptional at it. Writers who always wanted to be writers, musicians that sold everything to pursue their dream since they couldn’t do anything else or people that created IT companies that turned into millions when they were teenagers. I mean, the pressure is huge! Unconsciously, the following question starts growing inside our brains: “why don’t I know what I want to be?”
If we think about it even more, it starts when we are kids. Everyone asks children what they want to be when they grow older, as if they had to know already or, at least, have a desire to become something specific years and years away. And the answer always has to be specific, like “a doctor” or “a firefighter”. I wonder what our reaction would be if a child answered us something like “I want to be someone who encourages other people to improve and gets to have direct contact with people in my everyday routine”, focusing their answer on what would be important for them, rather than what the profession needs to be.
I always struggled with this dilemma myself. “What do I want to be?”. I really liked writing and reading. And when I looked at the conventional jobs’ list, journalism seemed like a good fit. So, I put a lot of energy into it and spent 5 years in the university studying. However, when I got to experience what it meant to be a journalist in the real world, only part of the job really fulfilled me. Journalists need to go to a lot of events, press conferences, places where things are happening that need to be covered and I realized that a job where I had to be physically moving all the time was not something I enjoyed. Journalists need to be able to go to a place and recognize all the people that need to be interviewed, sometimes, from a distance. I always had vision problems, which made it hard for me to do this in crowded places. Finally, journalists in Portugal, in general, have low incomes and I realized it was important for me to earn more to be able to have enough money to travel, to go out for dinner or buy a house.
With time, I understood how important it is to focus on the things that are important for you and not on the job title you should have. And you only learn about the things which are important for you if you challenge yourself and if you put yourself out of your comfort zone. I started exploring other opportunities. I worked in sales, I did administrative tasks and I worked in customer service. All these experiences allowed me to understand exactly what I liked and what I didn’t like. And today, more than wanting to be something specific, I want to find opportunities to work on something which includes everything I realized was important for me.
Not all jobs will fulfil you completely. All of them will have things you like and things you don’t like. What you should be thinking about is how you can turn these experiences into learning experiences and find opportunities inside your workplace to find the things that are relevant to you and will make your experience a lot better.
André Vidal 