Mountain Minute #207: What Should I Do with My Life?

It turns out that "what should I do with my life?" may be a trick question, which is something it would have been wonderful to realize at the very beginning of your career.

Here's the problem: you can't answer this question until you first answer an entirely different question, one that most people skip entirely:

How do I want to BE?

Do you want to be...

• loving or hyper-aggressive?
• kind or cruel?
• afraid or courageous?
• sensitive or insensitive
• at peace or at war?
• solitary or social?
• curious or close-minded?

Being must come before doing. When you skip the "being" question, you make it probable that your career direction will eventually clash with your true nature. Perhaps in your urge to climb the corporate ladder, you will become a person you don't even recognize. Or maybe you'll learn too late that you have ignored your strengths and played to your weaknesses.

Fortunately, I don't think it's ever too late to ask, "How do I want to be?" It's a powerful and potentially profound way to reconnect with your genuine self.

About ten years ago, I finally asked myself the right question, and it only took a few hours for me to come up with the answer: Be generous and expert, trustworthy and clear, open-minded and adaptable, persistent and present. I later wrote a much more detailed answer on my website , and my short "being" sentence became the framework for my book, How to Self-Promote (without Being a Jerk) .

Once you get the right answer to "how do I want to be?, everything else becomes much clearer.

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Bruce Kasanoff is a social media ghostwriter for entrepreneurs. He is the founder of Bend Reality .

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Don't forget to check out these wonderful new books...

• Becoming Coachable: Unleashing the Power of Executive Coaching to Transform Your Leadership and Life by Scott Osman, Jacquelyn Lane and Marshall Goldsmith
• A Touch of the Madness : How to Be More Innovative in Work and Life . . . by Being a Little Crazy by Lawrence Kasanoff