You Majored in What? (21 page)

• Who could help you move forward with your ideas?

Based on your findings so far, would you like to eliminate or change any of your Possible Lives? If so, just remove it and the sticky tabs associated with it. Now, take a look at what’s left. Can you picture yourself in each of these roles? How does it look? How do you feel?

Do you have any duplicate steps in your lists? For instance, maybe all of your Possible Lives require a résumé. In that case, take the “Write résumé” sticky tab away from each list and put it at the top of a new list. Now, write out the steps to doing your résumé on sticky tabs below the “Write résumé” sticky tab. (Hint: Read Chapter 8 if this is the first time you’ve written a résumé.) If each life has several steps in common, then you can easily pursue all of your Possible Lives simultaneously without having to eliminate anything for the moment.

Do your Possible Lives have no steps in common? How would you like to proceed with them? You could start by pursuing the steps that sound most appealing to you, regardless of which life they lead to. Then, as you learn more, see if one Possible Life jumps forward. If it does, switch to the Probability Planning approach. Otherwise, use the ideas in Chapter 7 to help design experiments to learn more.

Whatever you decide, put your poster board up on a wall near your desk or transfer your sticky tab lists to pages in your notebook. They’re all in one place, and you can change them as needed. The more visible your various plans are, and the more you see them, the more likely you are to move forward in one or more of the directions. By doing this, you will quickly learn which ones are most appealing to you (for whatever reason) and help clear the chaos and confusion of too many lives.

Emily is a sociology major and created her possible lives chart as seen on page 150.

After studying her chart, Emily decided that she was most interested in pursuing three options for now: writer, comic, and social worker. She is still interested in urban planning, but she thinks that she might look into serving on a city council or something like that after she’s worked as a social worker first. She believes that her knowledge of some of the problems in the community might help her see a bigger picture of the needs of the city. She also knows she doesn’t have the commitment to being an actress right now—that’s more of a dream. But becoming a comic sounds like fun and right up her alley, because everyone always tells her how funny she is. She would like to be a writer also, but has no idea how to start that career. After doing a very quick search on the Web (by Googling “writing career,” “comic career,” and “social worker career”), she was able to quickly learn some basic steps to getting started in all those fields. She used her sticky tabs and poster board to create the plan shown on page 151.

Several of Emily’s tasks overlap, including preparing a résumé and cover letter (which can be included in her publicity packet as well) and using a notebook to record ideas and inspirations. Emily may choose to start with those steps. Also, several of the steps can be combined: most comedy clubs operate in the evening, while most social work activities occur during the day, so Emily will be able to proceed with finding an internship or summer job related to social work while pursuing her comedy career plans at night. And writing can be done almost anywhere and anytime, so Emily will be able to find some time to write every day if she wants—carrying a notebook or journal will definitely increase the probability that she will write. Emily can pursue her three dreams all at once for the moment; if she changes her mind, she can simply adapt her plans accordingly.

Remember, singling out your top choices doesn’t mean you have to completely forget about your other choices. If you choose for the moment to seek a career in advertising, it doesn’t mean you can’t later investigate teaching or consulting. You might want to try thinking about your decision in phases: “For my
first
career, I’d like to pursue ———.” This keeps the door open to other opportunities.

But regardless of how many Possible Lives you’re pursuing, you now have a wonderful answer to
THE QUESTION
: “I’m actively pursuing several exciting plans at the moment. I’ll let you know where I end up.”

SEEKING THE BUTTERFLY (WANDERING STRATEGY 3)

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

—PETER DRUCKER

So you don’t know what you want to do. Join the crowd. You probably thought you were off the hook here. After all, because you don’t know what you want to do, how can you plan? There’s actually a lot you can do—every action you take will reduce your anxiety about the future and because you’re so open-minded, you’re the most likely candidate for the butterfly effect. You just need to do a few things to increase your odds of finding the butterfly.

Seeking the Butterfly is a planning system for nonplanners that uses intentions instead of goals. It works just as well as, and sometimes even better than, any traditional goal-setting linear plan. Want to know a secret? It’s my favorite planning method. I have used intention setting for everything—with it I have found my jobs, my agent, written this book, and discovered lots of other opportunities in my life.

There are lots of hypotheses about the reasons some people don’t make a clear career decision. Journal and magazine articles about career indecision cite lots of psychological explanations: perfectionism, anxiety, low self-esteem, fear of commitment, depression, lack of motivation, procrastination, and so on. Some students get angry and blame themselves and everyone else, including their career centers, for not finding them a job. For the most part, I have found that it’s more likely that you simply don’t have the information you need about your strengths and skills and how to use them in the workplace, and perhaps you don’t have enough knowledge about what’s out there. So then you get bogged down and feel ashamed, angry, or anxious because you don’t have a plan, particularly when it feels as if everyone else does. But the bottom line is it doesn’t matter why you’re undecided, because we’re going to focus on the solution, not the problem. We already know that chaos theory supports you—there are no believers in chaos theory who would be silly enough to say that they know exactly where they’ll be in ten years. So instead of viewing yourself as undecided (or clueless) consider yourself open-minded. And you do have a plan:
your plan is to find something that interests you.
To paraphrase the earlier quote by Dr. Wayne Dyer, if you don’t have a career goal in mind, then your goal is to identify a career. And it may be that you’re just thinking too hard instead of
doing.
In Chapter 8 you will find lots of ideas and actions you can take to help you find the butterfly and develop your career options without making any long-term commitments.

One concern often expressed about this type of planning is that it’s too risky—aren’t you just casting your fate to the wind? Also, isn’t it just an excuse for doing nothing? Actually, this system is quite the opposite. You’re doing a lot of work: focusing, noticing and evaluating opportunities (maybe for the first time), and moving forward with your ideas and interests.

So let’s get started. Review the information you collected about yourself in the Where Are You? section of this chapter. Are there any themes, strengths, or threads you’d like to continue in your life? For instance, maybe you have a thread of “writer,” but no careers are coming to mind. Or maybe you have a strength in “athletics,” but you know you can’t be a professional athlete and don’t want to coach but don’t know what else to do. Why not use one of your threads or themes as your starting point? And then, because the destination is still a question mark, you can develop some intentions (instead of goals) that might help you map out your direction.

Intentions are statements that invite an as yet unknown answer. They are less concrete and specific than goals. By creating an intention and
reminding yourself of it on a regular basis,
you encourage the likelihood of bringing it about. It all goes back to what you think about, you bring about; when you believe it, you will see it; and you see what you want to see. Psychologists have a fancy term for this:
selective perception.
I like to call it the MINI Cooper effect. You see, a few years ago one of my friends started talking about a great car called the MINI Cooper. She desperately wanted to buy one and had even created her ideal MINI Cooper on their Web site. I kept telling her I didn’t know what she was talking about, which she found very frustrating. Finally, she took me to their Web site and showed me the car. The next day as I was driving to work, I saw at least ten MINI Coopers on the road. Not only that, my next-door neighbor owned one! MINI Coopers were around me all the time, but my mind wasn’t on them so I didn’t “see” them. Your future is like the MINI Cooper: it’s out there; you’re just not seeing it yet. As soon as you start focusing on it, it will appear and appear and appear. That’s where intention setting comes in. You set an intention and focus on finding an interesting summer job, or an interesting internship, or meeting someone who will help you find your career and you’ll start seeing a way to make these things happen.

All you need is to identify what you want and be ready for it to happen. When you create your intentions, make them as specific as you can, based on what you currently know. Here are some sample intentions to get you started:

• I intend to find a great summer experience.

• I am creating an amazing career plan.

• My intention is to go calmly through the job search process, honing my skills.

• My intention is to attract helpful people who can assist me with my career plans.

• I’m creating an interesting future for myself.

• I intend to find an interesting international opportunity.

• I’m collecting all the information I need.

• I am in the process of finding a great opportunity in nonprofit services.

• I am developing a writing career.

• My intention is to attract a great job in the advertising field that allows me to use my talents and skills.

• I’m going to find a way to work with special needs children this summer.

• I’m excited at the thought of finding my career direction.

Now it’s time to create your own intentions. You can fill them in below or write them down in your notebook.

I intend to ___________________________________________________.
I am seeking _________________________________________________.
I am developing ______________________________________________.
I am creating ________________________________________________.
I’m in the process of __________________________________________.

To succeed in this approach, you must keep your intentions in mind and be ready to take action when opportunities appear. You have so many distractions in your life, it would be easy to set some intentions and then forget all about them, like last year’s New Year’s resolutions. Visual reminders are one of the best ways to keep your focus on what you really want. You could write your intentions on your class notebooks so you’ll see them every time you go to class. Or place them on an index card on your mirror or at your bedside. You can even create a special notebook or collage, or make a box to keep reminders of your intentions or things you’d like to have in your life. Doing this is a great way to make your vision of the future more tangible.

To create a simple intention box, just get a box (plain or fancy—any size you want), and when you see something that interests you in a newspaper, magazine, or elsewhere, cut it out and place it in your intention box. Collect pictures of what you’d like to attract into your life. You can keep the focus on career-related items, or you can include anything you’d like in your life—from a car to a house to a relationship. You can put in pictures of places you’d like to visit or live in, articles about someone living a life you’d like to live, favorite quotes, and so on. If an idea comes to mind of something you’d like to do, write it out and place it in the box. Take some time every now and then to go through your box and remind yourself of what you want. Remove the items or experiences that you’ve already acquired (it will happen) or anything you decide you no longer want. You can even make a “digital” intention box by setting up a bookmark folder called Intentions and bookmark interesting Web sites and online blogs or other inspiring items from the Web. While this may sound trivial or even silly, the act of collecting these interesting items helps you focus and encourages you to look for clues that might lead you to your future.