Welcome to the fourth installment in a five-part series about planning the next steps in your career in line with your authentic self. Revisit part one, part two or part three to catch up on anything you might want to review.
We’re approaching the home stretch of how to use the WEIRD process to plan your career authentically. Last time, in part three, we learned how to create a compelling vision for the future we really want that encompasses not just work, but our whole life and lifestyle. We thoughtfully chose a direction that felt most energizing, and decided on a way to move just 1% in that direction and observe how it felt.
This time, we’re going to explore how to learn from our 1% experiment in order to move a further 1% in the right direction. If you identify as a multipotentialite, polymath, generalist or person with a squiggly career path, you may feel like your career ship has sailed itself purely based on the changing direction of the winds of your interests and various opportunities that arrived in front of you. This stage of the WEIRD process will help you practice charting a course toward a specific destination while remaining true to your nature as an adventurous explorer.
Reflection questions
Reflect and Refine is all about using the data we collected during our experiment to inform what happens next. Taking a moment to reflect on these questions will help you as you plan the next stage of your journey.
- Was the spontaneous journaling process you used to capture your thoughts along the way fun and easy? If not, what was difficult about it? Does the method need to be changed? For example, if you used voice notes but found yourself wanting to read back your thoughts, could you try a voice note tool with transcripts moving forward?
- What questions do you still have after running this experiment?
- What surprised you the most? Were there any aspects of this trial that ran counter to your expectations?
Expectations vs. reality
If you found that the experiment you ran wasn’t as exciting or energizing as you expected for unexpected reasons, you’re likely experiencing a gap between your initial expectations and the reality that actually unfolded. That’s okay and it’s not your fault.
Let’s put the gap between expectations and reality into context. We often strive to make changes in our lives because we expect that they will make us happier or otherwise improve our lives.
Buddhist philosophy states that suffering is the gap between our expectations and our reality. While pain will happen, suffering doesn’t have to (if we accept and don’t resist the pain).
Due to the phenomenon of the hedonic treadmill, even when we do reach our goals, the achievement and increased happiness we celebrate quickly becomes our new baseline and we seek out the next milestone.
Additionally, we live in a culture built around growth and consumption that tells us that more is better and we never have enough. Advertisers expertly prey upon our insecurities to sell us the solutions to manufactured problems through hyper-targeted messaging everywhere we look.
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