What are you living for?
For some time now I’ve been doing some reflecting on my life, the type of work that lights me up and the footprint I want to leave. Given how quickly a day can turn into a week, a week a month, a month a year, I think it’s important to carve out time every so often to stop, look up, and check in with yourself. Is what I’m doing what I want to be doing? Are there things I wish I could change? What can I do to make that happen? In an attempt to get some of these whirring questions out of my head and seek out some reason and rhyme, I thought I’d write a few reflections on this.
I believe it’s a balance between being present and looking ahead. You don’t want to spend too much time focused on the future and completely miss the beautiful moments right before you. As they say it’s about the journey, not the destination, and you’ll miss the journey and all those incredible places you should stop into and check out if you’re behind the steering wheel blurring down the highway and looking straight ahead. But you also want to make sure you’re living a life that connects to what you value most. That allows you to express yourself as you are and use the gifts and talents you’ve been given. What’s the point of working a 9 to 5 if you’re not in some form (whether for work, a side gig or a hobby) using and sharing the talents you have and doing the things that light you up. I’m going to be indulgent here and do a bit of big-picture, future-focused reflecting today.
In his TED Talk, David Brooks asks should you live for your resume or your eulogy? He talks about Soloveitchik’s the Lonely Man of Faith and this idea of two warring sides of ourselves. The ‘Adam I’ – our resume focused self, who focuses on building personal strengths and external success, and ‘Adam II’ – our eulogy self, who focuses on fighting and overcoming weaknesses and internal value. We live in a world that values this first persona of external success over the second of internal value and strength of character. And I think it runs the risk of making us deeply unhappy, or as Brooks’ suggests, to living lives of mediocrity.
This idea of Eulogy virtues got me thinking. Resume virtues are the ones you stick on your resume to land that job. Mine reads like a list of things I can do and have achieved, and reflects very little on the person I believe I am, the things I value most or the person I hope to be remembered as. I’m sure you’ve all been told by a well-meaning manager, supervisor, parent, mentor, etc. that an opportunity would be ‘great for your resume’ and half-heartedly perhaps you agreed and pursued something despite not really ‘feeling it’. I have been guilty of this more than once. And while they were great stepping stones, they more-often than not led to detours where I came right back around and then took a different direction.
Do I regret those decisions? No, of course not. I wouldn’t have had the experiences or be the person I am today without them. But I do acknowledge that, had I been true to myself and listened to my own idea of what success was rather than other peoples, I would have trekked down a very, very different path and probably not spent most of twenties feeling incredibly lost or being a people pleaser (a whole other reflection for another day). Alain de Botton talks about a kinder, gentler philosophy of success, and I have to agree with him when he says we shouldn’t give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. “That we are truly the authors of our own ambitions, because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out, at the end of the journey, that it isn’t in fact, what you wanted all along.” This brings us back to knowing what we value. To define success, to feel fulfilled and engaged and know what work we should do and what we shouldn’t, we need to be clear on what we value most, and what we don’t. I should be clear here that when I say work I mean this to encompass all work – not just the economic, paid variety. Perhaps you have a day job that is your life’s work, perhaps you work 9-5 in order to pursue another passion. Perhaps your work is raising your family or working in/for your community. We all have work, in its various forms, that should align with our values.
I’ve gotten to a point in life where I’ve stopped caring about what my resume looks like. I don’t care if it looks like a random hop from A to B with a slight detour through A.1 and A.2 and a redirect back to something else. I don’t care if, to someone who doesn’t know me, there are no obvious interlinkages. If they asked me my values they’d very easily see how every job I’ve held is aligned with what I believe, even if in very different sectors and with very different job titles. Some people have fairly linear work/career lives. Others, like me, don’t and that’s ok. It’s estimated that the average person will change jobs ten to fifteen times and change careers 5 – 7 times during their working life these days. Most people stay at a job on average for 4.5 years. Some see this as a lack of commitment. A fickleness of the young generation. I see it as an opportunity to grow and evolve. We are not the same person last week that we are this week, let alone last year. We are constantly evolving, complex humans, so why would our work be any different?
Each role I’ve had has given me a great number of skills and experiences, a sliver more knowledge of the world and my place in it, and the meeting of many incredible people and visiting of some amazing places. But the greatest thing they’ve each given me is not a new line on my resume, but an understanding of exactly what it is I value most. And what I definitely do not.
Brooks describes eulogy virtues as those that touch on who you are at your depths. The most important virtues you have and the ones people will remember and reflect upon when all is said and done. Getting clear on these can be challenging. For me it’s been a process of months, if not years. I decided to try to identify and define these last year, and using butcher’s paper and many colourful markers I managed to get a list down. [I’ve recently revisited my personality type – INFJ and its sadly accurate on a number of things, one being the natural tendency to strategise, plan and analyse ideas from several angles before even thinking about implementation… this often involves many coloured pens and butchers paper]. I then spent the past six months looking over them every few weeks and honing them down to a mission or ‘why’ statement and a set of values that really resonate.
These values I’m hoping will be the things that people nod and say yes definitely that’s Sinéad. These will be the set of guide posts that I can check in on when making decisions and deciding if something really aligns with me. The values that people will reflect on when my time comes and they’re reading my eulogy (before blasting Queen’s we are the champions just as a side note). My journey of identifying my values, finding my mission statement and then figuring out the how and the what is something I’ll probably reflect more on, but for now if you’re curious I’d encourage you to check out Simon Sinek (yep another TED talker, or check out his website).
So, leaving it here for today, what’s the conclusion in all this? It’s a lonely road to the top if you’re living just for your resume. You may do well, accumulate wealth, power, position, but if it doesn’t align with your values what is the future you going to look like? What will they say at your eulogy? I hope in leading with the core values I believe in, that when it is time for my eulogy the values reflected upon speak to my character, who I was as a person, entwined with the work I chose to do during my life. I hope my resume reads as a reflection and support of those values.
And what are the values I landed on? There’s six:
Health – the holistic trifecta of self, community and the environment;
Community – family friends, local and global;
Courage – challenging the status quo, not being afraid of the unknown and pushing my perceived limits;
Contribute – speak up and support others, advocate, be part of the solution;
Learn – have a student mindset and never stop learning/growing;
Freedom – living in a way authentic to me and not to fulfil a mythical checklist or societal/gendered expectations.
These values ring true for me now and I believe, after much rewording, they simply reflect what I want in life. They underlie a core why statement which I’ll share with you some other time, but one which I think can be summarised in one word - equality. I didn't list it above, but it is perhaps the driving value for all others and the heart of my why. Knowing my values (and my why) the real work begins. How to live by these is the real test and challenge of a lifetime.
Do you know what your values are? I’d love to hear them if you do, or if you don’t stay tuned I have plenty more words on this topic to share :)
S x
