Every Step in the Journey

Stay gold, Ponyboy. - The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

Humans are not stagnant.

People change. Who I am today is much different than who I was 5 years ago or even one year ago. It's not a superficial change either. My outlook has changed: how I interpret the world around me. My "in-look" has changed: how I view myself and who I want to be. I don't want to delve too much into the religious sphere and talk about having a soul or existing – in either – beyond this life; however, if how I perceive the world and myself has changed, how much of 5-years-ago me is still there?

A lot, it turns out. I wouldn't be here if I didn't go through those 5 years of experience. I'd still be the "old" me. I like to liken who we are as individuals as a pyramid or triangle (s/o to my high school teacher Mr. E for envisioning history in a similar way). We are at the top of the pyramid and everything below us is our past experiences. As we experience more and add more bricks, our pyramid grows taller changing our perspective ever so slightly. It's harder to grow taller as we get bigger and amass more and more experiences, but it is far from impossible. I think a lot of us try to nerd pole straight up and grow really quickly without having to add to our base of experiences, but this doesn't create a lasting change to who we are. We either have to add support to our thin structure or take down a few blocks and try again.

My last analogy for this section comes from Spanish, ser vs. estar. For those of you that haven't taken Spanish or a language with this distinction, ser and estar are two translations of "to be". Ser is used for permanent attributes of an object: identity, time (permanent at that point), characteristics (tall, red, etc.). Estar is used for temporary attributes: mood, location, illness, opinions. Humans are much more estar than ser. Who we are is temporary and temporal. We are in a constant state of change.

But sometimes we do feel like we're in a rut. I'll talk about this more in a later section, but don't feel alarmed if you feel this article doesn't apply to you. Bricks will not be added at a steady, predictable rate; but we can change our behavior if we feel a little stuck.

Mad World by Gary Jules

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places
Worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere
Going nowhere

Human journeys aren't stagnant.

Before I delve into this section, let me clarify what I mean when I say journey in this post. Journey is the entire story from start to finish, cover to cover. Most likely, we are neither at the start nor finish but when I say journey I mean everything that has happened and will happen. I'm mostly focused on the personal and professional journeys, but needless to say there are many other types of journeys one can go down. Since I am using this broad definition of journey, I do not mean a specific path. Journeys are made of many paths. For instance, neither of my parents are using their college degrees extensively in their current professional lives. This doesn't mean they are on a different professional journey, but that they have taken different paths as part of their journeys. This is expected as humans are ever-changing ,

Here's a quick exercise to show how journeys develop. Imagine you're explaining to someone how you got where you are currently. What events occurred in your life that got you the job you're at or program you are in? This could go all the way back to how you were raised, what subjects your teachers told you that you were gifted in, where you went for college, and what jobs you've held. It will also likely include key influencers in your life. Really take a minute or two and think about explaining this to someone. Hopefully, it doesn't seem too difficult. When you really lay it all out there, it makes complete sense why you are where you are. And really the main reason it's relatively simple to show our journey up to this point is that we are starting at the end of the maze. We can see what event led to take us where we are because we know where we are.

The second part of the exercise takes more imagination. Imagine yourself 5, 10, 20 years ago (depends on how long you've been in your current step). At that point, could you tell you were going to be where you currently are? Could you predict that you would be working/studying at X organization in Y location? Could you predict the friends you made along the way and how they would influence you? Most likely, you couldn't. You could maybe imagine the industry and possibly location, but beyond that it seems all up in the air because it is. We don't know where we're going until we're actually there, and then the cycle starts again and we don't know where we're going again now that we're there.

Below is just a quick mock-up I made of someone's career journey. A journey is comprised of multiple paths which have multiple steps within them. Some of these steps could be paths in other people's journeys if maybe university was very influential or they had multiple positions at the same company.

Careers trajectories are not stagnant.

At this point, the dead horse has probably taken enough of a beating. I will not say "stagnant" in my last heading. But this progression was intentional. Who you are directly impacts your journey and your journey either is your career or includes your career. The main goal of this section is to ensure you have a broad perspective on your career journey; broad having two meanings. One, broad in the sense you are looking holistically at your journey. You're looking in the past, you're staying in the present, you have an eye toward the future. The past is most useful to reflect on positive and negative experiences and see how they shaped you. Are there certain strengths, weaknesses, holes, trends in your history? Apply the knowledge from your past to the present. How can you utilize your strengths, improve your weaknesses, fill the holes, and continue working on or trying new trends? Visualize the future using knowledge from your past and opportunities at the present or near-present. Where do you want to be down the road and at the end of the road? Are there things that you will want to have done by the time you retire?

The other meaning of broad in your outlook on your career journey is broad in the sense of openness. Everything in the future is unwritten. Do not try too hard to put in ink on future, blank pages when the ink on the current page is still not dry. No one knows how many pages their book will contain or how many chapters they will have to go through.

Cherish every step.

To introduce another metaphor (if none of these connect to you I don't know what to tell you \_(")_/), this journey is going to have it's ups and downs, hills and valleys and plains. Do not try to stay on top of the hill, dwell in the valley, or keep it steady on the plains. But equally importantly, do not try to rush through the valleys and plains. Journeys are inherently and intentionally variable. Rushing through a step or path will cheat yourself of the learning opportunities of fully going through those plains and valleys. The hills will only feel more fulfilling and reach maximum heights if you don't rush into them.

Enduring the lows builds resilience. Excelling the highs builds confidence.

One of the most valuable resources at each step is the people you meet. They are valuable because they have experiences and knowledge that you might not have gotten or even been able to obtain. They are also uniquely valuable because they likely will change from step to step or even within a step. I suggest you talk to people you haven't talked to. Invite them for lunch, take them out for coffee, go on a walk for a break. Everyone wants to be listened to and felt heard, and conveniently that's exactly what you should want to do. Learn from their successes and failures. No need to make the same mistake as your peers, but you first need to learn what those mistakes were. This also relates to the recruiting process. For every recruiter/HR rep you talk to for a company, try to talk to reach out to two or three employees outside the HR department. They will be able to give you a different perspective on the company and you can get a better feel for how a company treats all their employees.

But Kai, I hate my step. I don't even want to be in this path, much less step. There's a path with golden bricks and a chocolate fountain over there. Well unnamed person, you'll have to be more strategic. Here's a quick progression of questions to answer and write down:

1. Is there anything you can do make the current step better for you?
2. Is there any value you can add to the current organization?
3. What parts of the step do you hate?
4. Which people make you dislike this step and how? How could their behavior change to make it better for you?

If you can go through these four questions and still want to move on, go ahead and look for some options. If you can't better your environment or add value to the organization, reflect on the bad aspects of the step and try to make a more positive step in the right direction in the future. Even this bad step should increase your self-knowledge and "in-look" and lead to better steps.

I just want to end with a reminder to never lose sight of your journey, start to finish. It might be hazy at certain points, but remember this step or path is finite. There will be more steps to take in the future, more paths to explore, more people to meet. Your journey is not defined by a single bad or good step. Your journey is a complete biography of all the steps you have taken, are taking, and will take.

Reflect, apply, envision; repeat.