Planning For the Future Isn’t Always Necessary
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Today, one of my friends asked me, “What’s the one thing you want to do most with your life?”
I answered quickly, “I want to start a business.”
He replied, “I want to have a great family. But I feel like I’m not doing anything to work towards a great family, and it makes me wonder why I’m doing all of this.”
The “this” he was referring to is his high-stress job and his twice-weekly commute from Wisconsin to Chicago to attend graduate classes. I sympathize, seeing as I have the same setup, minus the 2.5 hour drive.
So I asked him what he would be doing now if he was working towards his goal. He said he would date, so that two years from now he could find a great girl, and two years from then they could have a great wedding, and a few years later he’d have great kids. A great plan indeed; one that could be modeled in Microsoft Project even.
But like most projects, dates get pushed back, or forward, priorities get shifted, and shared resources (our time) becomes a nightmare to manage. We are Gen Y, and we want to find happiness. The problem is we don’t define it well.
We’ve spent our entire lives to this point learning to trade up. Do well in high school and you get into a good college. Do well in college and you get a good job. Do well at that job and you get a better job.
The theme is “do well,” but in real life, “doing well” doesn’t work for every situation. Like relationships. Do well in a relationship and you get engaged, or married. Or maybe it doesn’t work out and you break up, for no good reason. Do well with marriage and you get healthy kids to round out your perfect family. Or maybe you get sick kids, or you get divorced, or both.
We have an idealistic vision of how our lives will be if we just “do well,” and then it doesn’t play out that way. And we become unhappy and lose faith in our big plan, when our plan was unrealistic to begin with.
Because happiness is not about having a “great job” or a “great family,” unfortunately. Happiness is not something we can work harder for or “do better” to achieve. My friend wants something that doesn’t have a clear path, and there’s a very real chance he won’t ever get it just the way he imagined, no matter how hard he tries.
So stop chasing happiness, or thinking your life is going to be a certain way if you just work harder. Real happiness comes from living life, right now. Solve the problem in front of you and take things one step at a time, and be prepared to shift gears if necessary. I have no idea what the future holds for me, but I know however differently my life turns out from what I expected, I will be okay.
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Hi! I'm Monica O'Brien and I created this website in January 2008 as a place for twentysomething professionals who wanted to be a part of a personal and professional development community. Now, I've joined forces with the Brazen Careerist team to meet this goal on a larger scale. I continue to maintain this blog as a place to talk about what I'm learning as I tackle marriage, a start-up, and graduate school.
Roman | March 10th, 2008 at 9:49 am #
Nice post for Monday morning. I would add that “doing well” is not as clear as it was in college or grad school even at the job place. So many complexities and circumstances are determing how one is “doing well”, than just pure working hard.
I still think thought that we own what it is in our control, so it is necessery to do what we can towards the achievement of our goals, but know that there are no guarantees that these goals will be reached and just let go of the things we can’t control.
Monica O'Brien | March 10th, 2008 at 11:28 am #
Roman, thanks for the comment. When I was writing this I had trouble getting across what you said: that “doing well” is not clear cut after college. I definitely agree with you - we should do our best and still have goals. But I think even more importantly we should learn that locking ourselves into one plan means that our lives won’t meet up with our expectations - because at this point so many things are out of our control. We could also miss out on opportunities and those opportunities could lead to something special. Thanks again!
“I want it all and I want it now” - nothing wrong with it | March 10th, 2008 at 4:18 pm #
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Angela @ Girl Meets Business | March 10th, 2008 at 5:48 pm #
Monica, are you reading A New Earth? If you aren’t, you should. It seems like a good fit with some of your points here. Good post!
Matt | March 10th, 2008 at 8:23 pm #
Monica-
Once again you hit on the topic that continually keeps me thinking. How you define success for Gen-Y is much more arbitrary than it is within older generations. Happiness is not measurable, like money is for instance, and as a recent relationship has taught me, is not always noticeable. My happiness is not a smile, its a content-ness, with my actions, with the way I lead my daily life. But a main characterisitc of Gen-Y in my opinion is to almost never be content. A lot of us see things the way they are and continually ask for more, failing multiple times on the way to achieving the next level. And when we get there, its on to something else. You are absolutely right when you say its time to stop chasing, and start living. Great Post!
Monica O'Brien | March 11th, 2008 at 1:01 am #
Angela, thank you for the book recommendation. I am not reading any books currently, which makes me sad, but I have a lot of reading to do for school. Hopefully on my week break I’ll have time to pick up something, and if I do it will certainly be A New Earth, because I want to learn more about happiness. Thanks again!
Matt, this is something I think about all the time too. I agree with you, we are always looking for the next best thing, because we’ve been so conditioned to keep achieving (by parents, teachers, etc). We never stop to enjoy our success - at least I don’t, or not for long enough.
Btw, thanks for your post that inspired this one. You touched on something I had never thought of - that millennials are chasing happiness. In some ways it’s a good thing, but there are caveats too.
Karl Staib - Your Work Happiness Matters | March 11th, 2008 at 9:48 pm #
Most of us never take the time to step back and appreciate the beauty that we have in our life. We rush to get what we think will make us happy when it was right in front of us all along.
Just enjoying the moment.
Thanks for the great post. What do you do to remind yourself to enjoy the moment?
Monica O'Brien | March 11th, 2008 at 9:58 pm #
Karl, I have no idea at the moment. I guess what I do is walk places instead of taking the train or a taxi. I live in Chicago and walking around downtown at night near the river is one of the most calming, beautiful experiences, anytime of year.
Oh, and write posts like these. I don’t have everything figured out by any means - I should be taking my own advice! That’s part of the reason I write.
Book Review: Finding Your Career Path | Twenty Set | March 17th, 2008 at 9:50 am #
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