The Life Tick Sheet
Another reason I’m writing these posts (maybe one day another book), is to attempt to find connections I didn’t find years ago.
I have two degrees and I use neither. I went through the process of applying to graduate schemes three times while I was studying. I received an interview for the first time because my uncle knew people at the company. On my second time, I got no interviews. And during the third time, I received an interview because I currently worked at the company myself part-time and this role was in the head office.
This is a small example of how connection gets you places. In hindsight, they weren’t places I would have enjoyed because they weren’t in line with my values, principles, and purpose.
It’s also an example of learned helplessness, a term in psychology to describe giving up after some failures. I’m unsure how long this period of learned helplessness will last. But I have used it to my advantage to discover new things I enjoy like writing these pieces and my pieces on geopolitics over in my other newsletter.
The idea of it’s who you know not what you know when it comes to getting a job is very true. I recognised this too late. After I finished my second degree, I didn’t know what to do. I always get asked, ‘what are you doing with your life now?’ And I don’t have an answer. I get all embarrassed and describe made-up roles in pursuing.
This prompts two questions in my mind. Firstly, why am I lying to this person, but also to myself? And secondly, why is it so within human nature that we tick off every square on “Life’s Tick Sheet”? We go to school, get into college, do further study, get a job, to work in this job for 40 years, accumulating and accumulating. Then we retire with all this money. Great! Now we can do everything we ever wanted. But you have yourself a health scare. We had better cancel that holiday. I don’t think my body can handle it. And at the end, do we look back at life’s tick sheet and think, “I completed it”? I did everything. Rarely.
I love reading about older people being asked what they regret in life. It’s important to find good mentors, and experience provides excellent lessons. I’m rather inexperienced and so looking to those who are is where I start. The biggest regret of older people is not living a life true to themselves. They abided by life’s tick list.
I don’t think I want to abide by life’s tick list. Whether that’s out of stubbornness, or my belief that life has to be something more. I’m not sure. But I hope I find out. I didn’t find connections during my studies, and I didn’t find a job because of it. So this is me trying to find connections. With myself, others who think like me, and those who don’t. I want to understand people and the world, and where I fit into it. That’s one way in which I’m lucky with how I think. I don’t see a particular rush in my 20s to rush through a tick list. And so I’m not going to.
I‘ve explored myself and found my values and principles. Now I’ve aligned them with what I want to be my purpose, and that puts me far away from the stereotypical tick sheet. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have a tick sheet, goals, or dreams. I’m saying to not accept the life tick sheet that most people accept. Make your own tick sheet, one that defines success for you on an individual level.