When I was about to turn 30 I did find myself near that cross-road where I felt that I needed to turn things around. By signing a contract for a three year job abroad, my initial thought was that I was just postponing having to this or that. But that’s also looking back, because three years can be long enough to start a little groove that can very well end up creating in a whole new path.
I think that most of the reason that we want something else has to do with us not being happy with our current situation ----- whatever that may be. It’s very rarely the case that we choose another path, because things are going exactly the way we want them to go. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but it may be an essential element of you not having sorted yourself out as yet, or you running away from things.
The not wanting, or the being stuck in a situation communicates immediacy, and a willingness and a need to act in the short-term. I guess you already know where I’m going with this, but here it comes still: to figure out a move generally takes more time than you have, or are willing to take.
When to cease opportunities
For opportunities to be viable there need to be a few things in place. Basic requirements are timing, the person and possibly a bit of money to get the ball rolling (and to buy more time if needed). But before any of this matters, you need to know what to look for and how to identify the right time to make a move.
In an earlier post I was commenting why Good Samaritan isn’t that much of a song, and even though it’s about the anti-shoulder to cry on, there’s one line that makes total sense: “I’m not the one to sort you out.”. This one is so simple and it cuts so close to the truth that it’s easy to miss. This is the stuff that takes time, and that’s a turnout of a life lived. This one mostly depends on you.
For any of that you need to have some skin in the game: it’s about what you know about life, what gets you riled up, what gets you upset and all that. To have any of that, you need to have at least a small bit of the lived life. You need to have experienced success, but more than that, you need to have lived through that experience of failure, when you hit the ground running. That’s where you get to find out what kind of person you are, what you’re made of, what you stand for, and what is and isn’t within your realm of possibilities.
These evenings during dinner we’re watching parts of a rerun of the Giro d’Italia. I never really watched this tour, and in all honesty it’s more fun than its popular counterpart (Tour de France): the Giro is a story about men that battle through snowy mountains, flat roads, dirt roads, rain and all that.
To be a runner is hard and in a way I wouldn’t wish a life like that to my worst enemy, but at the same time: it’s heroic. It’s about things that most of us are unable to do. What sets it apart for me is that small notion that as a runner there will be at least one moment in the year where you literally hit the ground running. You will open your skin, break some bones and run the possibility of death. It’s like fighting a war without all the political non-sense.
Most of those runners work towards those tours for years: they might start training in their teens, but it’s only when they peak in their twenties and thirties that they enter the hardest of these races. That means that there are literally years of preparation, of figuring out whether they are cut out for any of this, besides the literal competitions that do this sorting out for them.
Give yourself time, but also: be practical
I’m not going to imply that any of us, let alone most of us are cut out to be runners. Most of us are not so lucky that we can turn sports into a career, so most of us need a more practical approach.
When I was in my twenties I felt stuck after studying computer science. That’s when I did some soul-searching, I looked at jobs that ran in my family and I looked at projections of job opportunities for the coming years. I opted for maybe a less glamorous job, but one with definite challenges and job security. I enrolled in physics with the aim of becoming a teacher.
Fast forward 15 years, with me having been in the job for a little over 10 years, and I’m at a new cross-road. This time the time-constraint is less of an issue, which gives me more time to prepare a more thorough move. To give you a hint: look at the world around us (pandemic/recession/demonstrations) that was already changing in the face of discontinuity of life-long jobs, the rise of the gig-economy and the advances in AI. What do you think my next move is going to be about?
To identify any of those opportunities in life requires the kind of mind-set where you invest in getting an understanding of the world around us, figuring out who you are (sort yourself out), and using projections of future employment to your advantage.
My point here is that none of this is humanly impossible, but it does require a willingness and certain actions on your part. That’s where it becomes essential to develop the right mind-set, because without it you will have a very hard time to stay focused in the long run. The mind-set will help you to stay on the right track.
That’s where pastimes might come in that will have an improved mind-set as a ‘side-effect’. Sports is an obvious one, and to get this benefit from sports, you don’t even need to compete in any way. Just working out regularly is enough to build discipline, to focus on something, and guess what: you will feel physically better in the long run as well.
Besides sports you may want to look into the way you spend your free time. Of course you need your down-time to relax and recover, but you might just set some of that time apart for reading longer articles or books. Sports and reading are just two examples of habits that will set you up for the right conditions to develop the kind of mind-set that will gear you up for success.
In summary
- sort yourself out (figure out who you are)
- aim to get a deeper understanding of the world around us.
- read far and wide (articles and books).
- engage in sports on a regular basis.
First principle: Gaze wide, aim far.
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