However, I hear this question coming from adult clients when we first begin our work together. They ask, with understandable consternation and pain, "I just don't know! What am I supposed to BE?!"
We are groomed from an early age to ask ourselves this question. We take the cue from well- meaning teachers, parents, friends of parents, and grandparents who asked us, "So, honey, what do you want to be when you grow up?" And the answer usually runs the gamut: firefighter, lawyer, doctor, farmer, (that is what my 5 year old says she's going to be when she grows up- and no, I didn't even ask her!) And while it certainly is charming and interesting to hear what little ones say they want to be when they get older, the question becomes more of a hindrance as children mature into young adults.
I first thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I saw myself defending people who suffered injustices at the hands of ummm... bad people. Even though I intellectually knew TV wasn't real life, especially when it came to the legal profession, I will admit now that I fell hook, line and sinker for the dramatic savior image of the attorneys I saw on television and read about in history books.
So in college I studied and actually enjoyed political science, considered the pre-law track at my school. However, during my senior year I observed a couple of first year law classes and found myself very very bored. I knew then that law just couldn't be for me because I would just die from boredom if I took even one of those classes. (Did I mention I eventually went into The Theatah?) The lectures were much less theoretical than my liberal arts political science classes and much more practical and detailed. Even their constitutional law class, which is on the most theoretical end of the legal scale, was too concrete for me. I loved the creativity and open-endedness that came with theory.
So why had I waited until senior year of college to investigate law school, the most basic aspect of becoming a lawyer? Not to mention shadowing a lawyer or interning in a law office? (Duh??) Because I was so caught up in the very general and broad image of being a lawyer, I never thought to ask myself what a lawyer really does all day! Even in the most justice oriented, intuitive end of law such as civil rights litigation there is a lot of very non-glamorous, detailed, read- through- mountains- of-dry- documents days. I should have been thinking less about the drama of Gregory Peck's court scenes in To Kill A Mockingbird and more about the dense content and sometimes minutiae of typical legal disputes.
Doing v. Being
Many of us seem to spend so much more energy trying to BE something than looking more deeply at what we DO naturally. Moreover, many people, especially those who find themselves in a career that is a complete mismatch for their personality and sensibility (70% of the U.S. population according to Gallup polls), never learned to ask themselves more specific, useful questions. No one ever asked them, and therefore they didn't ask themselves,"What do you want your day to look like?" or "How much time do you want to spend at a desk? Outside? Working on a team? On your own?"
General Adjectives v. Specific Verbs
The best example of asking yourself specific versus general questions can be found in the craft of acting, specifically in scene study. In professional acting, good actors never use any derivative of the infinitve, "to be." During any given scene an actor cannot get what he/she wants just by being anything. An example of bad acting is this: "I am angry therefore... I am really angry... therefore... I'LL JUST YELL ALL OF MY LINES REALLY LOUDLY AND BE REALLY ANGRY!" Not very watchable, huh? Conversely, compelling, successful acting is all about VERBS. For example, a good actor might have the inner monologue of "I have sheer rage boiling inside of me and I will explode when [acting partner] provokes me with a certain line.
In the above example, to "explode" is much more specific than "being angry," and therefore much more effective. Likewise, constantly asking yourself the question, "What do I want to BE when I grow up?" lacks the same effectiveness. It might be helpful to think of it this way:
Job Titles = Limited Information
A good career coach, like a good actor, sees career design in terms of verbs, not career titles. I give my clients specific (and often fun!) homework that eventually seeks to answer such questions as, "what do I want to do, as in read or write, draw, teach, build, create, organize, discover, perform, etc. every day? What activities make me lose track of time?" And, most importantly, "What verbs do I prolifically and skillfully do everyday (like counsel or advise or help or manage or listen) without even trying?" Those are the ones you want to shoot for.
I wish I'd known in my youth what I know today about being specific with self-knowledge. It would have saved me a lot of time, money and angst. But I now use that difficult journey to help others avoid the "being" trap. I coach.
Now there's a great verb.
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