We are entering the month of November and that means Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away.

All too often, however, we aren't thankful enough for what we have. Instead, we can easily become consumed by what we don't have as we compare our life situations to others.

​In the end, we need to work to define what life circumstances will truly make us happy, pursue those things, and ignore what others say should make us happy.  

Envy & the perils of human competition & comparison
The truth is, it is very difficult for human beings to not envy one another...it is as old as the Biblical story of Cain & Abel, among others. 

This brings up the philosophical debate: are humans by nature competitive or cooperative? Obviously, we are capable of both types of behavior. Certain societal and institutional settings, though, can amplify one or the other.

This fact has led many young people to be focused on living the "perfect life" and when they inevitably don't reach that lofty goal, their mental health can suffer.
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Finding happiness
We all want to have happy, fulfilling lives but struggle to know what that looks like for us. 
Everyone has different values and needs when it comes to what they classify as a "good" life. 

So, allowing others to define what you should find meaningful in life is very problematic. It is incredibly common, though. We all have parents we want to please or life plans we think we should follow but that is a recipe to live a life that lacks personal fulfillment. The idea that smart, dedicated people need to aspire toward some high-paying, prestigious job is common among parents who want their children to "succeed". But that job as a doctor, lawyer, or consultant might not be what the child really wants. 

There is so much more to life and happiness than money or a prestigious position. But what are those other things? The answer to that is incredibly personal. ​
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The importance of self reflection & awareness 
One huge obstacle in allowing individuals to find meaning in their lives is that we often fail to take the time to think deeply about what we want out of our life. While this seems like a basic place to start, our fast-paced, modern world doesn't leave much time for self reflection unless one makes a concerted effort to do it. In fact, psychologist Tasha Eurich's research suggests ~10-15% of people are self-aware.

Self-reflect & begin designing the life you want
Exercises to increase your self-awareness. 
Designing Your Career online course from Stanford University (free).
More life design resources from Stanford. 

A matter of perspective
The perspective we take to our "success" is the most critical component to our happiness. We can count our blessings or ruminate on our deficiencies. The former, positive thinking is infinitely better for your mental and physical health. 

Take me, for example, at age 33 I could focus on the fact that I don't make a six figure salary, that I have yet to find a significant other, and that I don't have kids, though I want to someday.
Or, I could focus on the fact that I am in very good health, have loving parents and two sisters who I get to see on a regular basis, have the flexibility in my work to take time for family, friends, and my own well being, and make enough to live pretty comfortably. On top of all that, I am doing work that I think is having a positive impact on the world, helping support others in their career & professional development.

​All in all, I am doing alright.   

In closing, try to take stock of what you value in your life. Is it money? Prestige? A flexible work/life balance? Autonomy in your work? Plenty of free time to spend with family and friends?
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Once you know your values, pursue them and don't let the opinions of others derail you on your path to your own personal fulfillment. 

When you set your own metric of success and work hard to obtain it, you can find your own happiness. And that is something to truly be thankful for.  

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances." - Viktor Frankl

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This is a question we rarely escape in our youth and, if we are being honest with ourselves, something most adults grapple with from time to time.

The 21st Century world of work is evolving quickly and the concept of a "linear" career is quickly coming to an end.

What this means is that deciding what one wants to do with one's life has become an increasingly complex choice. There is rarely a single, straightforward path to most careers and the options for employment continue to grow. Freelance work abounds and employment sectors such as data science and software engineering didn't even exist as recently as a few decades ago.

Where is someone supposed to start on this journey?

As I serve graduate students and postdocs in my role at NC State University, I will highlight resources and tools of particular interest to this group.

Career Exploration Resources for Ph.D.s

One great resource is ImaginePhD, developed by the Graduate Career Consortium.

ImaginePhD and other online resources are used to create what we in the career development field call "individual development plans" - IDPs. Specifically, these resources focus around the concept of aligning your skills, interests, and values with potential careers.

Taking online skills and interests assessments through ImaginePhD, myIDP, or myPath, among others, is the first step in the career exploration process.

Your interests and skills then map on to potential job families which you need to further explore to determine which careers in those families may fit your values and other parameters important to you - work/life balance, salary, autonomy, work travel requirements, etc...

For example, from ImaginePhD my top interests include helping others, connecting ideas from different fields, and meeting and connecting people. My top skills include working with limited supervision, working as part of a team, and contributing to an institution.

These map on to the job families of Higher Education Administration (which I am in now), Communications, Public Relations, & Marketing, and Training.

ImaginePhD also has a nice career exploration worksheet you can print out and hang somewhere prominent to remind you of potential careers that align with your skills, interests, and values. It also, importantly, emphasizes the next steps required in your career exploration process.

Digging Deeper Into Potential Careers

After you have identified some job families you are interested in learning more about, ImaginePhD allows you to explore potential career fields further through a variety of resources including lists of common job titles in the field, sample job descriptions, job simulation information from InterSECT Job Simulations, profiles/interviews from people working in the field, and more.

As you get to know these individuals working in a career field of interest to you they can be powerful advocates for you when/if you begin to look into employment at their organization. This is how you build a network - meet like-minded people and get to know them and through your interaction with them show your value.

There are also a ton of tips sheets available through ImaginePhD. Some examples:
Informational Interviewing Tips
Networking Tips
LinkedIn Tips
See them all on the General Resources section of the ImaginePhD site

There are also sections for each job family from ImaginePhD focused on skill building - how to get the experiences and expertise needed to be competitive for jobs in that family. These resources include links to webinars and online courses, publications, and more.

When it comes time to apply for jobs, ImaginePhD has example application documents for each job family, links to job boards, and articles with valuable tips on making a great impression with your application materials.

Ikigai - Reason for Being

To summarize, the concept of career exploration is thinking about how your skills and interests intersect with something the world needs and will pay you to do. This process helps you find your reason for being or ikigai in Japanese.

The Importance of Self-Reflection

Tools such as ImaginePhD can help you begin to map out your reason for being but the process of finding a career fit that is right for you also takes some deep self-reflection.

You often need to listen to your gut and not overly rationalize a career choice. If you have some internal feeling of doubt/concern about a potential career path, it could be nerves, but it could also be your body telling you it might not be the best fit. Really, you need to integrate the rationale side of you with your emotions and "instincts" to make smart career decisions.

Only late in my postdoc did I start shifting my focus to other career options. You can read a bit about that career journey here, here, and here. I am happy in my current choice and feel like it nicely fits my personality while giving me a good work-life balance. 

Final Thoughts

There are plenty of career options for Ph.D.-trained researchers. Tools like ImaginePhD and other IDP-planning resources can help you begin to discover what those other career options are.

I believe everyone has a unique set of skills that contribute value to the world. The key is discovering how they map onto your interests and values and can lead to meaningful and fulfilling work.

Naming my first Reflections blog post "Start Here" may seem a bit on the nose. But, the key to taking on any big life decision is to start tackling the problem. 

I am currently reading the book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans (see an excellent New York Times review here).
It is a really great read for anyone trying to improve some aspect of their lives: finding the right job, prioritizing your love/family life, doing something that makes a difference in the world, etc...

The book starts out emphasizing the need to Start Where You Are. This centers on the need for a person to figure out where they currently are in their lives and what problem(s) they are trying to solve. A key point here is that you need to focus on the right, actionable problems in your life.
You should avoid tackling what the book terms "gravity problems" or problems that we effectively have no chance of changing because they are systemic (like gravity). This doesn't mean you should tackle a difficult problem but you should address it in an actionable way where your actions have the ability to affect change.
Another key step to moving forward with your problem is addressing "anchor problems". Anchor problems often keep us stuck because we have become anchored to only one ideal solution. This is problematic because that solution may not be obtainable (think, achieving a particular job at a particular company - what are the odds of you achieving this?). Ultimately, to address these problems, you need to reframe them or approach them from a new perspective. Maybe you don't need to land that particular job but you want to do a particular type of work and there are other avenues you could pursue to find a career that is a good fit for you. Be flexible and don't get stuck on only one solution.  

The book defines "life" broadly as health, work, play, and love. You should start out assessing how your life is going in each of these areas (how full is your life in each area, what could be improved) and whether you want to tackle a particular problem in one or more of them. 

You may find work fulfilling but have no time for play, love, and health. So, that might mean you need to address how much time you spend on work and whether you might want to do something different that provides you the free time to spend on the other important aspects of your life. What is a good life and how "full" these four areas of work, health, play, and love need to be to achieve the life you want will vary considerably from person to person. 
Once again we come back to starting where you are. What one person might deem a life problem worth solving another might be perfectly OK with. One's "good life" is immensely personal. But you need to understand what that good life looks like for you. 
As this blog and my interests focus on career exploration, let's turn to what a "good career" looks like for you. Where do you start?

Other great resources include InterSECT Job Simulations and content from UCSF's Office of Career & Professional Development (see also the MIND resources from UCSF).

A key concept from Designing Your Life is to "prototype" your next move...ie, try out a new career before you make the leap. A useful way to begin to learn more about a career and start to measure its fit for you is via informational interviews. Another great way to prototype is to freelance or volunteer, performing the task "on the side" to see how you like it and begin building a portfolio of experience that will help to land a job in that space, should you want to pursue it. Some work is easier to freelance or volunteer for than others. Writing is in high demand from many organizations (think, your professional association and their newsletter). You can also get experience with working with and presenting data (and market yourself as a Data Scientist) via Kaggle and keep your work available on GitHub.

A final point to keep in mind as you explore your career options, prototype your next move, and think about your ideal life: there is not one "optimal" life for you. The following quote from Designing your Life sums up this point: "A common mistake that people make, is to assume that there’s only one right solution or optimal version of your life, and that if you choose wrong, you’ve blown it.That’s completely absurd," Mr. Evans said, “There are lots of you. There are lots of right answers.”
I think this point is especially powerful as people grapple with the fear of making the "wrong" choices in life. It is freeing to know that one choice (or series of choices) doesn't have to define your whole life. The book pushes the idea of creating multiple "Odyssey Plans" for your life. Map out the next five years of your life in radically different ways: 1) pursue certificate in X, 2) intern at company Y, 3) transition to position at company Y OR 1) continue working in area Z while also working on improving writing skills by volunteering with association W, 2) do freelance writing for company D while still working in area Z, 3) move to a full-time writing career OR 1) continue working at company T, 2) take night classes in area U, 3) get promoted to new role at company T, etc.
This activity reinforces the idea that there are multiple viable options available to you in your career and life. I could do A, B, or C and be happy and fulfilled. Having this mindset means that if things don't work out with option A (you realize that career/life choice wasn't the right fit for you), you know you can pivot to option B or C and be equally (or maybe more) happy.

Remember that life is a journey, and there is no one way to undertake it nor one path to follow. With some deep reflection on your skills, values, and interests, you can start researching and planning the multiple paths you could take to achieve fulfillment in your life. 

Find more resources on the Designing Your Life website. ​