{"id":145712,"date":"2012-09-17T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=145712"},"modified":"2018-11-21T09:10:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T17:10:46","slug":"stop-being-the-person-you-think-you-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/stop-being-the-person-you-think-you-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Being the Person You Think You Are"},"content":{"rendered":"

How’s your life going? Do dark nights of the soul outweigh the good days? Have you spent more time than you care to acknowledge wishing for something \u2014 anything <\/em>\u2014 other than what you have?<\/p>\n

Get over it.<\/p>\n

It’s not that simple, obviously. But in order to move in the direction you desire, you need to stop being stuck in the place where you are right now.<\/strong> Specifically, you need to stop being the person you think you are.<\/p>\n

That may be the person you were told to be, or the person you were told you should be but could never quite achieve. We fixate on being what our parents want, what our partners want, what society wants. Never mind whether it’s what we want.<\/p>\n

A particularly disturbing example is each year’s crop of new grads. I’m betting a whole bunch of them took out tens of thousands in student loans because they were told \u2014 directly or indirectly \u2014 that college is What One Does.<\/p>\n

As soon as they hit high school the adults in their lives \u2014 parents, teachers, guidance counselors \u2014 told them to view all choices (classes, clubs, volunteer work) in terms of how those decisions would affect their college portfolios.<\/p>\n

They didn’t go to college because they knew what they wanted to study, or because they had specific plans on the kinds of work they wanted to do. They went because they were expected to go.<\/p>\n

Understand: I’m not anti-college. I’m anti-blind-behavior.<\/p>\n

Afraid to speak up<\/strong><\/p>\n

How many of those students would have been better served by a \u201cgap year,\u201d or a stint in trade school or the military? Or a year of full-time work with an eye toward banking every dime for that eventual college or trade school, or a shot at entrepreneurship<\/a>?<\/p>\n

How many new moms secretly want to go back to work but are afraid to say so? There’s a lot of pressure to stay home, especially if you’re considered to be someone who doesn’t \u201chave\u201d to work. Conversely, how many working women wish they could be home <\/a>but worry about giving up their positions even for a little while, lest they derail the careers they love (and potentially jeopardize their retirements)?<\/p>\n

How many people realize they’re in the wrong careers but are too scared to change? A high-school classmate who was great at math (but who loved writing more) became an engineer because her father and teachers thought she should.<\/p>\n

After a few years she quit and went back to study journalism. Great: Two sets of student loans! If she’d been encouraged to have a say in her own education, she might have opted for j-school at the beginning.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know that’s a dying industry. But it wasn’t always. She could have had a great couple of decades (just as I did) and then reinvented herself (ditto).<\/strong><\/p>\n

What’s expected of us<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having spent more years than I’d like to admit on autopilot<\/a>, I’m frustrated when I see people stuck in what they think is expected of them. Or, worse, stuck in what they think are their only options. For far too long I felt stymied by what I felt I had to do vs. what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

A lot of what I thought I had to do was for other people. It’s what I call the Curse of the Mom. We spend so much time taking care of everyone else’s needs that we think we’re not allowed to have any of our own.<\/p>\n

There’s probably a corresponding Curse of the Dad, or more specifically the Curse of the Man. You guys face conflicting messages, too: Be strong, but be sensitive. Be there for your kids, but earn a lot of money in case your wife wants to stay home. (And if you want to stay home, prepare damned well for that particular uphill battle.) While I still believe that the world is a male-dominated playground, plenty of guys would love to jump off the \u201creal man\u201d merry-go-round.<\/p>\n

How to get started?<\/strong><\/p>\n

How can any of us stop circling on someone else’s idea of what we should be? Preparing for change <\/a>will look different to everyone, but could include one or more of the following:<\/p>\n