4 Lessons from Dr. Seuss That Every College Graduate Can Use

After graduation, I was ecstatic to enter the workforce. Needless to say, I wasn’t prepared for the 2008 recession, where my job hunt would chew me up and spit me out. Believe it or not, the first job I landed out of college was as an administrative assistant barely meeting minimum wage. Doing something every day that didn’t align with my core skill set and plan was so painful, but looking back, I know it pushed me to not only become a great job seeker, but a great career coach.

The reality is, your career is a living organism that must change in cadence with an evolving workforce. Robots taking over by 20 million jobs by 2030. A global pandemic causing over 7 million small businesses to face permanent closure. The truth of the matter is that the soft skill of resilience and communication is necessary to make sense of today’s workforce. We live in a world where you can take multiple roads to get to where you want, and sometimes you’ll hit dead ends or realize that the destination you thought you dreamed of isn’t what you wanted after all. I call this a You Turn, the decision to turn yourself around and go into a new direction-- one that is more aligned with the inner compass of your truest self.

Needless to say, if you’re a soon to be graduate, you may already be facing this You Turn. Thousands of student internships have been canceled in the past month, 64% of which weren’t provided compensation or alternative options. Meanwhile, more than 25 million Americans have filed for unemployment as of April 23, 2020, and their original plan may no longer look the same.

Change is the only thing you can count on, and yet, it’s important to question any beliefs you may have that change for you could be a bad thing. 

In these unprecedented times, it may sound silly to think that a children's book could hold the answers and life lessons for college graduates, but Dr. Seuss’ book Oh The Places You’ll Go has me convinced otherwise. A few simple words are often more powerful than we realize.

As an author and poet, I recently reread this famous book and was reminded of 4 incredible life lessons that every graduate can benefit from right now.

1. You have the ability to control the direction you take.

“You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself any direction you choose.” -Dr. Seuss

So often we get wrapped up in this idea that there is only one path, that if you have a business degree all you can do is work in the corporate world, or if your parents are both lawyers, that is the only choice you have to follow. The truth is, more than 12,000 careers exist today, and you have the power to choose which one to pursue.

Lost on where to go? A great exercise I walk my coaching clients through is to maintain a 30 day joy journal. Write down one moment in your journal each day that lights you up, and notice what skill set you’re consistently using throughout those moments by the end of the 30 days. 

Take notice of where you feel yourself expanding or contracting throughout the day. You can use this brain-body connection on a daily basis as well. Recent studies have begun to identify just how closely our brain is connected to our gut. Your intestine has over 200 million active nerve cells sending signals to your brain. It makes sense why you feel a knot in your stomach around someone you like or a job offer you don’t really want to take. In short, if you look at a job title and your chest tightens, it’s probably not the right fit for you. On the flip side, if you feel yourself filling up with energy, this next move on your path may be a more appropriate option to take. The tools of guiding your career, and your life, are already within you.  

2. Part of the journey will include struggle.

“I’m sorry to say so, but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.” - Dr. Seuss 

Every career path will have ups and down and the trajectory to success isn’t typically linear. Instead, it’s often a series of loops and wrong turns and the occasional high speed causeways that propels you forward. Struggles will come your way, there is no denying this. But it isn’t what happens to you that matters, it’s how you choose to face the struggle. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have been faced with a major dilemma, yet it’s the businesses who took speedy action and pivoted that are succeeding. 

Lean on the power of reflection. For each failure or struggle in your career, take intentional time to consider why it happened, and get curious about the lessons you can learn from the situation. Instead of avoiding or neglecting the failure, lean into it and ask yourself the difficult questions:

• What can I do differently in the future?
• What skills can I improve upon in order to be better equipped moving forward?
• Why is this failure so triggering to me? What makes it matter so much?
• Who do I know that has experienced this same struggle? What can I ask them?

3. Get to know yourself.

“Whether you like it or not, alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.”-Dr. Seuss

Outside advice and guidance are powerful messages to seek, however if you rely on this constantly for making decisions it’s a sure sign of one thing: you don’t trust yourself.  

The world is vast and the workplace can be difficult to navigate, yet the more you know yourself, your goals and what you want, the easier it will be to create an authentic vision and execute forward. Knowing yourself simply means taking the time to slow down and make space for that wise voice in your head to speak. Your intuition often gets lost in the noise and requires some silence. 

Use this time to reflect on who you truly are and what you deeply want for yourself. A great way to start this exploration is to spend time asking yourself this single question: What do I know to be true? List out all the things you know about yourself and about what you know you like, or dislike. The more you remove yourself from the mindset of “I don’t know” to “I know” the more clarity and connection you will find with your truth.  

4. Don’t live life in the waiting room.

“You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race...toward a most useless place. The waiting place, for people just waiting.”- Dr. Seuss

It is so easy to sit at home and do research or make lists of possible jobs to pursue, but that alone isn’t what will get you where you want to go. The waiting room isn’t a place you want to spend your time. Although it is important to stop and read the roadmap of what you want from time to time, you won’t get anywhere unless you hop in your car and start moving.  

Don’t spend time wallowing in the uncertainty of your future or avoiding it by aimlessly scrolling TikTok or Instagram. If you’re a new graduate unsure of where to go, simply pick something you may want to pursue and start taking small steps towards it. Clarity comes from engagement; it does not come from thought. Engagement in your career growth could look like joining a networking group or setting up zoom meetings with alumni from your college to learn more about their careers. This can look like establishing a side hustle or offering your unique skill set on freelance portals such as UpWork or Fiverr. Engaging in action is the fastest way to determine what you want to do more of and what path is right for you.

As you prepare to walk the virtual stage and receive your diploma, find hope and excitement for all of the places you will soon go. Remember this: you can always step back onto your path if you stumble, and you can always stand up if you choose to fall down.

Oh, the places you’ll go!