When I Grow Up I Wanna Be A __________

What are you doing with your life? Is it what you thought you would be doing? I recently worked with a colleague of mine and she had a tool that nearly brought tears to my eyes it was so simple and elegant and yet so POWERFUL.

If you are not happy with your work or are not really being fulfilled, you don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars taking aptitude tests to determine what will bring you joy. Two simple questions can help you begin to unravel the tangle of choices, decisions and directions you have behind you to move you into the joy of who you are meant to be now.

Two questions.

1.  What did you enjoy doing most with your free time as a child?

For me it was reading, researching, learning. I read the encyclopedias, dictionaries and hell, even the food label list of ingredients in our home. I was always reading something,  Always learning something.  I was the child that my mother locked out of the house during summer vacation, saying, “Go outside, play! Get some sun!” These were frequent directions given to her pale skinned bookworm. I’d then sneak reading material outside and climb a tree or sit on the roof of the patio and — joy of joys — read.

So finding a calling that is 40-60% research and continuing education-based is FULFILLING in all caps and bolded in my world.

2.  What did you play at best and/or most as a child?

Where other little girls were playing with dolls or house I would volunteer to be the store owner or teacher. I couldn’t tolerate the thought of having children of my own. Never wanted to marry and was not going to be told what to do when I grew up. Period. End. Of. Story.

So how well did that translate in corporate America? I was labeled hard to work with. Oh, I was good at what I did and effective, but I had trouble conforming.

Now I teach and I am an entrepreneur. Surprise, surprise; here was another place I found the joy in my work.

Although, I never became a pirate, princess, ballerina or veterinarian, I did ultimately become what I wanted to be when I grew up. A student, a teacher, a business owner — and I love damn near every minute of it.

Maybe it’s time to ask yourself those two questions, and see where the answers take you.