It’s easy for S'pore youths to say they don't know their life goals, but this need not be so
Just as it is with the most problems that we face in society today, figuring out what we want for our lives is a “wicked problem” that is complex, and there are often multiple goals that are contradictory.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you see the words:
“When you realise you’ll never get your dream job”?
This article in the Harvard Business Review by American organisational psychologist Stewart Friedman talks about the phenomenon of coming to terms with the fact you are NOT going to realise your dream, and dealing with the associated sense of loss, as a natural part of the process of maturing.
For him, it was knowing that he was never going to become Bruce Springsteen, or any other kind of musical performer.
Learning to “accept things as they are” is part of the path towards finding meaning and purpose in life, he says.
But how about those who have not yet found, or never will find, what their “Bruce Springsteen” is?
BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT
Just a couple of weeks ago, a fresh cohort of junior college students received their A-Level results, and many are asking themselves: “What’s next?”
After years of progressing from one level on to another, this is a significant point when paths diverge and making a choice seems to come with some real stake: Choose one path and I close another.
What if I make the wrong choice? Or what if I don’t even know what I want?
Recently I was running a workshop on exploring life goals with a cohort of students just starting on their junior college journey.
Not unlike a good proportion of the young people I’ve heard from, the most common refrain when it came to one’s life goals was: “I don’t know”.
In a pseudo-competitive game in which students aimed to piece together their “ideal” lives in a 12-minute supercharged version of our lives, we noted an emotional atmosphere of “que sera sera” when the clock wound down.
To win, they had to earn points to exchange for their top five most desired life goals.
Most did not achieve what they had set out to, but the results were met with a form of laid-back form of optimism, where they seemed content with whichever life goals they landed with.
At first I was gratified, thinking this could mean good adaptability on the part of the players.
Then I started worrying if the game play might not have been realistic enough to evoke a real sense of urgency.
And finally I was bemused, when a student shared that it is actually more stressful to know the life you want because then you will be disappointed if you don’t get it. Maybe... it is better not to know.
Could “not knowing” be a form of pre-emptive defensive mechanism at play?
AN UNCERTAIN JOURNEY
The journey from “not knowing” to “knowing” can be scary.
In the concept of a hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell, it is a call to adventure that sets us off on a journey, one that comes with tests and challenges.
Sometimes, it may mean testing if I am strong enough to wade against the flow of parental and societal expectations.
Other times, it may mean putting myself out there when I do not know if I am good enough. Always, it means holding on to hope when I do not know if it will come to fulfilment.
No wonder then, when I asked the participants of the recent life goals exploration workshop for reflections, one quipped: “I used to think life was easy, now I think life is hard!”
Over the past three years, my work has brought me to engage in conversations with thousands of young people, from students to young adults in the midst of career transitions, on doing work that is meaningful for them.
In 2019, as part of supporting the National Youth Council in one of the National Youth Conversations threads, I got to speak to hundreds of young people on the topic of “redefining success”.
What emerged from the many conversations was a picture of our very own young person’s version of a hero’s journey.
In coming together to discuss what success meant, the realisation that came up among the youths was that success was a journey, rather than a set of outcomes to be achieved.
There was the recognition that success is not static; rather, one is in a constant state of negotiation, trying to pull together opposing values and priorities.
Many start out uncertain and unsure, for they do not yet know what they want.
And the value in coming together as part of this larger conversation was to connect with people at different points in their journey, opening up our eyes to all the different versions of success journeys among us.
THE CHOICES THAT MAKE US WHO WE ARE
How can one start on the journey of figuring out what we want?
Just as it is with the most problems that we face in society today, figuring out what we want for our lives is a “wicked problem” that is complex, and there are often multiple goals that are contradictory.
The path to finding the answer is one that resembles a meandering path, rather than a straight line from A to B.
No wonder we default to “I don’t know”, for the answer is by no means obvious or easy to get to.
At Stanford University, two professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans run a popular elective class called “designing your life”.
After years of teaching students the skills of using design thinking to bring creative solutions to the most difficult problems in the worlds of business, higher education and social policies, they realised that the most immediate problem that students faced after graduation was deciding on what they want for their jobs.
Empathy is the first stage in the design thinking process which allows us to define what we truly want.
What does work mean to me? How much time do I have? How does this career path gel with other important goals in my life? Passion or pragmatism?
These are all questions that set the boundaries within which one designs his or her life.
Designers are expected to work within the parameters of constraints and still produce a great solution. Similarly, while we need to work within the boundaries of our own life situations, we can still design the lives that best suit us.
Hard choices are inevitable, and in fact, it is how we make these choices that defines the essence of who we are.
STARTING FROM WHAT I DO KNOW
When asked what your life goals are or what your dream job is, “I don’t know” can be a perfectly legitimate starting point, provided we approach it not with an attitude of helpless resignation, but one of wonder and curiosity.
Start from what you do know, and let the journey begin from there.
While we cannot be guaranteed of success nor a smooth journey, we can be assured of growth, as we embark on our own hero’s journey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Yong Yoek Ling, a former Public Service Commission and Lee Kuan Yew scholarship holder, is the founder of Bold At Work, a training academy for young people.
