What are you doing with your life?
Posted on June 24, 2015 by Drew Lichtenberger, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Young woman just graduated from college, yet wondering why she's a waitress.
“I just graduated,” my waitress tells me as I’m sitting in a college town restaurant.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
She gives me this glance of disappointment, looks down at her server apron, then glares back at me. Then I explained how I was writing a book for people in her situation and defined what she was going through as the Twenties BeatDown.
Her eyes widened with an expression of relief and she said, “That’s totally it.” She explained to me how she thought everyone else in college had “their thing” with a plan except for her.
Yet I cross-examined, “Do you know if their plans are working out or did you just assume that? Some of them could be in the same situation as you.”
Slightly puzzled she said, “I don’t know.”
Clearly, she was having a crisis of what to do with her life and it was compounded by social comparison. By the end of my lunch I could tell she did have some dreams and a sense of purpose yet I wish I had given her this exercise that I use as a coaching tool. (So if she visits my blog, I hope she finds this).
I try to extract what’s innately within someone and have them create a Lifetime Wish List. It may seem like a bucket list at first, but that is not what this is. The purpose of this exercise is to draw out some of the unique dreams and desires buried deep within you. It’s a great activity to not only get to know yourself better, but it also serves as a wonderful way to attract a mentor when you share your list with others. I made my first list when I was 24. Some items are so outlandish they’ll probably never happen, yet others have already come to pass.
Stop and think. People spend more time getting haircuts in a year than they do in life planning.
I encourage people to make a Lifetime Wish List—contact me for instructions on how to make one drew@prepareafuture.com.
