Let Your Life Speak

To continue on the same mode from the previous post; here's excerpts from an interesting article ; essentially another way to help sort out this business of, how do I know what I want to do. 

Its by Brad Harrington, Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family and a Research Professor in the Carroll School of Management.

                                            

He says, stop listening to the endless career and life advice that seems to be emanating from all directions; we all too often look to external parties to provide the keys to our own fulfillment and in so doing so we fail to hear the most important voice on our journey – our own.

So, how do I listen to myself? How do I recognize the callings life is sending to me? How can I know myself better?

To launch his students on their road to self-discovery he gives them a weighty assignment: “Write your own life story” in a minimum of 20 pages. Apparently most look at him in amazement when he assigns this paper, wondering if their life stories can fill 20 pages. But given two weeks most of them do write it, and he says about this assignment:

• First, taking the time to write your life story is a rich, powerful, enjoyable, sometimes painful, and always cathartic endeavor that yields tremendous benefits. Whether your life was filled with adversity or you grew up in a “Norman Rockwell painting,” nothing is more important in your journey toward self-discovery than taking a long look back.

• Second, nothing reveals more about the person you are today and are likely to be in the future, than reflecting on the roads you’ve taken (or not taken). By writing your story you will learn so much – who influenced you most, what were the key turning points, what drove your decisions, what were the peak moments, what regrets you still carry with you and why.

And this is not just for the kids embarking on their journey; apparently, in 2011 NY times columnist and author David Brooks asked his readers who were at least age 70 to write what Brooks called a “life report“ and together they did surface a number of common themes through this exercise :

• Resilience is often an under-appreciated skill. We invest so much time these days trying to protect our children from adversity. But hard knocks take many forms, and as the saying goes “into every life, some rain must fall.” Life isn’t about just learning to avoid the falls (that’s a life free from risk taking, which is surely wanting), but also having the mettle to get back up when we do. No character trait might be more important in life.

• We all have regrets, just don’t waste time dwelling on them. 

• Chance plays a huge role in all of our lives. I like to call it serendipity which in this instance I define not as “positive accidents”, but rather as “the faculty for finding positive outcomes in accidental occurrences” – a small but very significant difference. In reviewing our stories we come to fully realize that our lives are defined by not only our preparation and sense of purpose, but also by chance occurrences and our response to them.

I am reasonably sure that few of you will embark on this exercise of recounting your life story, but I urge you to consider doing so. Looking back will always strengthen your insight and understanding about how to move forward.  “Let your life speak” – let yours speak to you. I am confident that those who do, will hear things that will alter them forever.