What Don't You Want To Do?

The last three years have seen the world flipped on its head, and many humans are starting to wonder what the hell they are doing with their lives.?

The interest in career transition coaching has spiked, and there wouldn’t be a week where I don’t get a call or email from another human saying they’ve made a career call (or the call has been made for them) and put together a list of what they want to do next in their career, life, etc.?

I’m sure many have put hours of time into contemplating what’s next, and then I’ve pretty much burst their bubble by asking a simple question:?

What don’t you want to do??

This is usually followed with both stunned silence and a tilted head which is a good sign they’ve just been slightly taken aback by my question.??

Why has this question of ‘don’t want’ served me the best over time??

Let me backtrack a bit.?

September 2014 was a time for me where the possibilities were endless, as I had just taken redundancy from my employer of eleven years and had created a list of the things I wanted to do as I transitioned to the next phase of my life at the ripe old age of forty-seven.?

As the redundancy had been a planned one, in the weeks before I departed I was continually asked by friends and work colleagues the same question:?

What are you going to do now??

Here’s the list I had started at the time:?

• ?Set up a leadership consultancy practice specializing in humanizing workplaces and managers – I think at the time, I called it ‘unlocking potential’ (go figure).?
• Write a book?
• Play more golf and pick up my guitar a little more?
• Improve my physical health
• Spend Fridays doing something with Allison (it turns out her Fridays were for her!!)

?I was so full of what I was going to do that I forgot the most important decision and the one that was a little scary but liberating at the same time.?

Mark, what are you not going to do??

So I captured it, and it became the basis for my decision-making:

“I’m never going back to work for a boss in a corporate organization!”?

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the organization; I simply didn’t see a future in staying on the corporate carousel, strategizing, meeting after meeting, special projects, performance reviews, downsizing, resizing, doing more with less, fitting in…you get my drift.?

My suggestion to anyone reading this who is contemplating a next move is to be clear on what you don’t want to do.?

You see, having a list of what you want to do can be helpful, but in many interactions with the humans contemplating what’s next, it’s usually serving them as a ‘soft fall’ mechanism just in case things don’t pan out the way they want. If numbers one to nine don’t work, then at least here’s still number 10!! Experience tells me that after about number three on the list, the rest are making up the numbers.?

Being clear and true to what you don’t want to do is scary and requires one to hold their nerve as I had to do.?

Exploring and realizing what you don’t want is worthwhile because it highlights what you value in your life. Once you have a better sense of what you don't want, what you do want can become clearer.

What don’t you want to do??

Start writing the list before it’s too late