Breathe: Making It Happen

Since I arrived back from Guatemala, it has been career planning and resetting my career objectives. The pressure of figuring out what career path “best” matches your interests and values is ubiquitously hard. I acknowledge and respect that as a woman in a developed and progressive society I am even able to take more time than others to test the waters. Having the ability and cultural support in career searching through school and work plays an integral part in socioeconomics and the country and culture I live in allows me to do so. But more importantly, this does not mean it is limited to this status and that no matter where we are, what country or demographic, we strive for our potential and what will make us happy in our life.  My time in high school taught me little of how to be in-tune with my interests to a career field. Along the way some words of inspiration have given support to these concerns. TED Talk guest Emilie Wapnick on “Why some of us don’t have one true calling” hits the discussion on the spot of the anxiety of that never-ending question we are asked: “What do you want to do when you grow up”; from the age of 3 onwards. Looking back, I have answered: zoologist, veterinarian, linguist , pilot, cinematographer, prime minister, taking over a small family business, nurse, working under the UN, and the list goes on and on.  Later, the concern was not that I did not have any interests but that I have too many. I am only beginning to see connections to all these world issues and how we are all connected; but what career is this leading me to?!? It cannot be a bad thing to acknowledge you have a lot of diverse interests can it? In this particular case it most certainly seems to be my challenge, I’m proud to have a tremendous number of doors open, I’m stuck with the dilemma of which doors to close. How can I ever find a job/career path that balances aspects of these interests and strengths? I know I am not the only one so I see the benefit in sharing, especially if it will garner me a better answer to this impetuous question:
Trying to understand how to listen and act to my personal interests has been a challenge, as it is for so many others. Decision-making changes is an ever-evolving process. From day to week to month this process ends up backtracking and building upon itself until we feel enough confidence of one’s choice. We try so hard to predict the future, but how can we really know what is our ‘best next step. I read Chris Hadfield’s book The Astronaut’s Guide toLiving on Earth, the summer of my graduation, and it could not have been a more perfect read for my present stage in life. Unlike myself, he was confident at a very young age that he wanted to pursue a career path towards an astronaut. His reminders were incredibly helpful and insightful: it is not that you necessarily have to know what you want to do at any specific time in your life but establishing overarching goals are important steps that will help lead you to explore into the general direction or field. It is only through life, growth, and actively doing things that interest you will in the end, determine whether you achieve these goals. Alternately, Steve Jobs had said along the lines of that, “you don’t have to like what you do every day, but if you find yourself not enjoying your daily activity for some time in sequence, change something.” As Hadfield had also discussed in a seminar in Ottawa I had the pleasure of attending, he promotes to “start making decisions today and stick with them. Decision-making is a skill, and the more you do the better you will get at it”. Having made it though extreme and endless training, screenings and then successfully completing two missions in space, I trust that this individual knows and understands his stuff!

The experience in Guatemala (see previous posts) while reading Clea Koff’s TheBone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist’s Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo really got me seriously interested in a career pursuit towards Forensic Anthropology to improving human rights and justice. But then I soon hit the point of second-guessing seeing how programs and applications can be strictly limiting to narrow prerequisites for further schooling. I would have to go back and complete almost in entirety another undergraduate program. Similarly, with my interest in pursuing a career in international law, I observed that  I have to already have a major in the field. But how would I have had these passions if it was not for completing Conflict Studies and Human Rights with the minor in Psychology; a specific focus that a plain undergrad in law may not have given me.
Digging deeper, the pattern of questioning has caused a lot of anxiety. One, is that I have not been sure how I am going to turn these interests into a career. I would think that eventually I would have to just pick one, deny all my other passions to something I am ehh about, and just resign myself to the incessant feeling of satisfaction or begging for the weekend/days off. I refuse to live like that! Another reason for anxiety is worrying that there is something wrong with having so many different interests or something is wrong with me for not just sticking with what I pick. I worry that all this questioning is an abnormality, that I am scattered or afraid of commitment, or that I am self-sabotaging, afraid of my own success. But there are long-term effects to putting yourself down, which are deeply damaging and the reason is simple. When you put yourself down, people believe you.
Emile Wapnick reminds us that it is from our culture where we learn to assign the meaning of wrong or abnormal to doing many things. It is the idea of destiny or one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this earth, and that you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it. While it may be a good start up exercise, it limits our youthful curiosity and interests to singular thinking, one occupation that is your only defining character. You may have listed off five things but the person may chuckle back at you, “Oh cute, but you can’t be a psychologist and a violin maker. You have to choose”. Emilie introduce someone who is just this.

The funny part is the people that I admire most are those who have experienced what they express as hiccups, experienced many different fields and jobs and then learned from those experiences. These are often the same people that end up saying that they wish they would have known afterwards. Emile reminds us that if there are a lot of different subjects that you are interested in and many different things you want to do then, no worries, you are a Multipotentialite. There is indeed room for someone like you in this framework. You are like the Leonardo Da Vinci’s or Alexander Graham Bell’s. You are the polymath, the Renaissance person: someone with many interests and creative pursuits. She points out three ‘superpowers’ which should embrace as there are a lot of complex, multi-dimensional problems in this world, and we need the voices of the out-of-the-box thinkers to tackle them: 1.     Idea Synthesis – combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection 2.     Rapid Learning – in depth learning of whatever we can get our hands on and not being afraid beginnings or learning new things.  We bring everything we have learned to every new area we pursue 3.     Adaptability  -  ability to adjust ourselves readily to different conditions

So this is positive news, but but I remember, all the knowledge and inspiration with not happen until fits best to us. As JamieVaron of the Huffington Post puts it: “You are as you are until you're not. You change when you want to change. You put your ideas into action in the timing that is best”. That's just how it happens. It is true, sometimes we just feel like we just need permission to do so. We cannot just conjure up motivation when you do not have it, we cannot control these factors, but we just need to deal and live with life in order for those experiences to solidify into motivation and inspiration, maybe two months, two years or later. Sometimes you’re not falling in love because whatever you need to know about yourself is only knowable through solitude or reflection . Sometimes your sadness encircles you because, one day, it will be the creation upon which you build your life. Most of our unhappiness stems from the believe that our lives should be different that they are. We believe we have control and our self-loathing and self-hatred comes from this idea that we should be able to change our circumstances, that we should be richer, more attractive, smarter or happier. You need to see lessons where there are barriers and that you need to understand that what is right now becomes inspiration and identity later. Sometimes we are not yet the people we need to be in order to contain the desires we have. As an endnote Varon notes, “There is magic beyond us that works in ways we can’t understand. We can’t game it. We can’t 10-point list it. We can’t control it. We have to just let it be, to take a fucking step back for a moment, stop beating ourselves up into oblivion, and to let the cogs turn as they will. One day, this moment will make sense. Trust that. Give yourself permission to trust that.”
Keep Going and Never Give Up!

Some Music: 
Further Reads:
The Confidence Gap