Millennial's Monologue: Secret Dramas in Our Hearts & Souls

Question #10: How do I find my "true" calling?

Question #10: How do I find my "true" calling?

Do you think the question I posed is too high-minded, vague, daunting—therefore, pointless?  I know some people think that it’s better to appreciate small, ordinary moments in our lives and carpe diem, as the Romans say.  Well, I disagree. 

Deep inside, I bet you have a certain idea or image of who you are and what you’d like to become.  How you view yourself helps you map out your formative years and it may as well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Your self-perception could also be your mental prison.  I mean, it could also feel like a Trump Tower or a tropical island, depending on how pleasant of a place it is, but my point is, that’s where you live your entire life—in your head.   

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Now, take a minute to think about what Professor Dumbledore told Harry in the first book of Harry Potter series: “The happiest man alive looks at himself in the mirror and sees himself as exactly he is.”  What do you think he means by this? I think he means that many people have distorted views of themselves and waste too much time pursuing things that are actually not meant for them.  I’m totally guilty of this.  When I was in college, I wanted to look like a famous Korean actress or Miss Korea, and gosh, you have no idea what I put my body through, trying to live up to that expectation.  But in the end, I realized that I would never look like them.  It was so liberating, letting that image of perfection go. I also tried to be like a cool, gregarious partier throughout my twenties, even though I knew I’d rather be alone in my room, patting my French Bulldog and reading books.  Now that I’m older and more grounded, I can’t help but ask—why the hell did I do that?  So much unnecessary stress and time misspent!  So, if you want to find the purpose of your life and become happier, you need to pay attention to your inner voice and become a big proponent of self-accuracy.

But, the process of figuring out what you really want could be a lot more confusing than you expect.  You might be totally wrong, as I had been many times.  For example, up until my senior year in college, I wholeheartedly believed that I wanted to go to an Ivy League school and become a business consultant or a corporate lawyer.  I emphasize the word “wholeheartedly,” because I was totally, absolutely dedicated to this dream; I made enormous sacrifices to make sure I was on track, and I was.  When it was time to study for the LSAT or prepare for the case interview, however, I was shocked—utterly shocked to discover that I was miserable. By that point, I was too heavily invested, and if I were to bail out, I would have to take a huge hit.  I had no idea what else I could do. 

Figuring out who you are is a trial-and-error process with lots of dead-ends, detours, and pivots, but when it comes to career, you have to be mindful of what I call “the law of path-dependency.”  It means that what you’ve done so far matters; once you’ve chosen a certain path, the further you go along, the more difficult it is to change course later.  Trust me, I have plenty of investment banker friends who would rather be architects or photographers; I also have starving artist friends who later realized that what they really wanted was a conventional career, a loving wife, and a more financially secure existence.  Well, it’s kinda too late, except for the very, very few brave, determined souls.  So, having seen and gone through this, what advice do I have for my readers?

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(1) I think the surest way to figure out your destiny is by paying attention to the moments where you were really happy.  Moments where you felt peace with yourself.  Moments you don’t mind repeating and reliving again and again and again.  A career is basically something you do repeatedly, somewhere you spend most of your time and energy.  When you choose a career, you don’t just get a paycheck; you choose a lifestyle.  This is why I think it’s important not to confuse, say, an image of a corporate lawyer (high-powered, rich, intelligent, suits, sleek office) with the lived out reality of a corporate lawyer (what you will be doing hour by hour, day after day, year after year, until you retire). In my case, it turned out, what I loved was the idea of being a lawyer and not actually living as one. 

(2) It’s also important to remember that you are made “not all at once, but by bits,” to borrow the words of Mary Antin.  When it comes to choosing a career, it’s not like one day you sit down, draw a map of your life, and you have to stick to it.  The process is a lot more dynamic than that. 

Let me give you an example from Peter Buffet’s book, Life Is What You Make It.  In the book, he recounts a story of a guy with an engineering degree who didn’t want to become an engineer.  Instead, he wanted to be a chef, and despite the protests from his parents, he spent many years in a restaurant kitchen.  That is, until he decided that food was not his thing.  This flip-flopping drove his parents crazy but guess what happened to him?  He ended up combining both skills and becoming an industrial designer, specializing in commercial kitchens.  Turned out, he needed all those false starts and meanderings, in order to get to where he was meant to be.  Like Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.  So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

(3) You should also remember that the world rewards experts; you can’t make a living out of being an amateur with disperse interests.  No matter what you decide to do, your aim should be to become an expert, an authority in your chosen field.  If you don’t know what an expert is, you might want to learn about what Malcolm Gladwell dubbed “the 10,000-Hour Rule.”  In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he explains, “The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours. . . no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

(4) Lastly, I’d like to end with a few interesting observations from my life as well as my friends’ lives.  First, most teenage brains are pretty empty.  By that, I mean they don’t have enough life experiences and reference points to imagine what they really want to do.  Because of the way our brains are wired, we can’t imagine our future in the comforts of our bedroom or even classroom.  We have to go out there, poke around, meet different kinds of people; only then, can our brain process all those sights, sounds, and life experiences to create something unique and perfect for ourselves.  I don’t want to sound too depressing or critical, but I think that most people get old before they realize what they want to do with their lives.  They never gave themselves an opportunity to imagine and dream.  Learn from their mistakes; choose to be adventurous and diligent!  I hope you will be blessed with the kind of life you absolutely, unequivocally love.

NOTE: This essay was getting too long so I had to break it into Part I and II. Part II will be published later next week :)  I literally spent all day working on this!  Don't forget to press the orange star button if you want to put a smile on my face!