What You’re Really Meant To Do is a short book that will help you reassess your career path. Kaplan asks us at the end of each chapter a series of questions to challenge our decisions. And those are the most valuable parts of the book. Completing these exercises will force you think more deeply about what you really want, what you’re good at, and what’s holding you back from answering these questions honestly.
The rest of the book is devoted to stories about people the author has encountered in as a career counselor, and he relates to us the common problems people have had. He has found that it was often previous negative experiences that pushed them to become gun shy about following a passion. Feeling the need to live up to other people’s standards – especially our father’s – was also very common.
A lot of people tend to ignore advice given by successful people who advise us to follow our passions, and we tend to make up excuses such as “not having enough experience” “bad timing” or “not enough money.” But Kaplan warns us that telling ourselves these excuses is dangerous, as they may lead us down a vicious cycle where we continually postpone what we really want to do until it becomes too late. And the successful people who were giving that advice wouldn’t have been successful unless they were doing something they loved on some level. You cannot stick to a job for long enough – and become good enough at it – unless you feel a deep attachment to what you are doing.
Another important idea is figuring out which narrative you run in your head when living life. Having a success narrative allows you to act more confidently and optimistically and react well to other people’s criticisms – whereas having a failure narrative will do the opposite.
If you don’t know what your passion is or are unsure how to break free from social pressure. A good place to start would be to create your own definition of success – this will allow you to honestly consider what matters most to you in life, and how that may be different from what others think. Another good idea would be to think about which academic subjects you enjoyed the most, which jobs you loved, and which moments you felt the most competent in. The default position would be to succumb to social pressures and try to create goals for yourself that are consistent with what your family and friends care about – but if it’s not what you truly want, you will inevitably fail at these goals. And worse, you will fail at having not taken a risk with something that did matter to you.
To make things easier, try to forget about things like money – assume it wasn’t important. And assume that you only had a year to live. Would you still be doing what you’re doing now? While this is cliched advice, I think these questions are a good mental exercise – if only to help you identify what you really value. The next step would be to get pragmatic about how you’re going to get there, but it’s important to have a solid starting point that doesn’t depend on external factors.
“What stands in the way of you spending time on the activities you enjoy? Is there an action you could take that would remove one or more of these impediments?”
The rest of the book talks about relationships, how to approach your superiors, how to find a job you love, how to make the most of your time at a company, and resolving your experiences from the past. Finally, the author leaves us with a few pieces of advice such as keeping a journal, staying up to date with the news, save money for the things you care about most, build time in to taking time off, and work on maintaining your relationships with people, and finally – seeing a professional.
If you’re an entrepreneur and you want a quick guide to know what to think about before launching you business, check out The Myth of Entrepreneurship.