This week is the last on relationships so, I thought I would answer a common question I get from many young people I meet in my work. "What can I do with my life?"
What an extremely tough thing to figure out: what to do with your future when things don’t go well or when your young and naive, but I can share what I've picked up from my many years of coaching people –many successfully happy individuals.
Here’s what I’d say in 9 simple rules...
1. You can’t figure out the future. Even young people who have a plan (be a doctor, lawyer, research scientist, singer) don’t really know what will happen. If they have any certainty at all, they’re a bit deluded. Life doesn’t go according to plan, and while a few people might do exactly what they set out to do, you never know if you’re one of those. Other things come along to change you, to change your opportunities, to change the world. The jobs of working at Google, Amazon or Twitter, for example, didn't exist when I was a teenager. So if you can’t figure out the future, what do you do?
Don’t focus on the future. Focus on what you can do right now that will be good no matter what the future brings. Make stuff. Build stuff. Learn skills. Go on adventures. Make friends. These things will help in any future.
2. Learn to be good with discomfort. One of the most important skills you can develop is being OK with some discomfort. The best things in life are often hard, and if you shy away from difficulty and discomfort, you’ll miss out. You’ll live a life of safety. Learning is hard. Building something great is hard. Writing a book is hard. A marriage is hard. Running a marathon is hard. All are amazing. If you get good at this, you can do anything. You can start a business, which you couldn't if you’re afraid of discomfort, because starting a business is hard and uncomfortable.
How do you get good at this? Do things now that are uncomfortable and hard, on purpose. But start with small doses. Try exercising for a little bit, even if it’s hard, but just start with a few minutes of it, and increase a minute every few days or so. Try writing a blog or meditating every day. When you find yourself avoiding discomfort, push yourself just a little bit more (within limits of reason and safety of course).
3. Learn to be good with uncertainty. A related skill is thriving in uncertainty. Starting a business, for example, is an amazing thing to do … but if you’re afraid of uncertainty, you’ll avoid it. You can’t know how things will turn out, and so if you need to know how things will turn out, you’ll avoid great projects, businesses, opportunities. But if you can be OK with not knowing, you’ll be open to many more possibilities.
If you’re good at discomfort and uncertainty, you could do all kinds of things: travel the world and live cheaply while blogging about it, start a charity, write a book, create a business, live in a foreign country and teach English, learn to programme and create your own software, take a job with a start-up, create an on-line magazine with other good young writers, and much more. All of those would be awesome, but you have to be OK with discomfort and uncertainty. If any opportunities like these come along, you’ll be ready if you’ve practised these skills.
4. Overcome distraction and procrastination. All of this is useless if you can’t overcome the universal problems of distraction and procrastination. You might seize an opportunity because you’re good at uncertainty and discomfort, but then not make the most of it because you’re too busy on social media and watching TV. Actually, distraction and procrastination are just ways of avoiding discomfort, so if you get good at discomfort you’re way ahead of most people.
5. Learn about your mind. Most people don’t realise that fear controls them. They don’t notice when they run to distraction, or rationalise doing things they told themselves they wouldn’t do. It’s hard to change mental habits because you don’t always see what’s going on in your head. Learn about how your mind works, and you’ll be much better at all of this. The best ways: meditation and blogging. With meditation and mindfulness you watch your mind jumping around, running from discomfort, rationalising. With blogging, you are forced to reflect on what you've been doing in life and what you’ve learned from it. It’s a great tool for self-growth, and I recommend it to every young person.
6. Make some money. I don’t think money is that important, but making money is difficult. You have to make someone believe in you enough to hire you or buy your products/service, which means you have to figure out why you’re worthy of someone believing in you. You have to become worthy. And you have to learn to communicate that to people so they’ll want to buy or hire you. Whether you’re selling groceries door-to-door or an app in the Apple store or trying to get a job in Tesco, you have to do this. And you get better with practice.
I worked in a call centre at a bank and then a bar man in my late teens, and those were valuable experiences for me.
7. Build something small. Most people fritter their time away on things that don’t matter, like TV, video games, social media, reading news. A year of that and you have nothing to show for it. But if you did a sketch every day, or started writing web app, or created a blog or a video channel that you update regularly, or started building a cup cake business … at the end of a year you’ll have something great. And some new skills. Something you can point to and say, “I built that.” Which most people can’t do. Start small, and build it every day if possible. It’s like putting your money in investments: it grows in value over time.
8. Become trustworthy. When someone hires a young person, the biggest fear is that the young person is not trustworthy. That they’ll come in late and lie about it and miss deadlines. Someone who has established a reputation over the years might be much more trusted, and more likely to be hired. Learn to be trustworthy by showing up on time, doing your best on every task, being honest, admitting mistakes but fixing them, trying your best to meet deadlines, being a good person. If you do that, you’ll build a reputation and people will recommend you to others, which is the best way to get a job or investor.
9. Be ready for opportunities. If you do all of the above, or at least most of it, you’ll be amazing. You’ll be way, way ahead of pretty much every other person your age. And opportunities will come your way, if you have your eyes open: job opportunities, a chance to build something with someone, an idea for a start-up that you can build yourself, a new thing to learn and turn into a business, the chance to submit your new screenplay. These opportunities might come along, and you have to be ready to seize them. Take risks — that’s one of the advantages of being young. And if none come along, create your own.
10 Finally: The idea behind all of this is that you can’t know what you’re going to do with your life right now, because you don’t know who you’re going to be, what you’ll be able to do, what you’ll be passionate about, who you’ll meet, what opportunities will come up, or what the world will be like. But you do know this: if you are prepared, you can do anything you want.
Prepare yourself by learning about your mind, becoming trustworthy, building things, overcoming procrastination, getting good at discomfort and uncertainty.
What next?
You can put all this off and live a life of safety and boringness. Or you can start today, and see what life has to offer you.
Lastly, what do you do when your parents and teachers pressure you to figure things out? Tell them you’re going to be an entrepreneur, start your own business, and take over the world. If you prepare for that, you’ll actually be prepared for any career
Importantly invest in yourself and unleash your business brain.
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