Learn to ‘pay it forward’ to your future self by making sacrifices you’ll consider worthwhile
My son Ben earned a Ph.D. last year at the Colorado School of Mines, but they didn’t hold a ceremony until this year due to Covid. Watching online from home, I was surprised by my emotional reaction when the college president asked the parents to stand up and be acknowledged. And I thought board Chair Tom Jorden’s speech was pretty powerful, including the advice to “never compare yourself to others.”
“Keeping up with the Joneses” was a well-known concept when I was younger. The focus was on acquiring things, but it could also be applied to career success. A good salary and financial wealth were most on people’s minds, I suppose. For sure, we all need some of the green stuff, but money is hardly enough by itself for a meaningful career or life.
The graduation speaker then added this brilliant advice: “Be deeply successful in a way that is personal for you.” At least I thought it was brilliant until my son Ben pushed back: “My millennial generation has heard the ‘be yourself’ and ‘don’t let other people define you’ message so often, that it’s practically background noise.”
When I was a country director for the Peace Corps in Ukraine and West Africa, I regularly engaged with the American volunteers, mostly my son’s age, including a one-on-one meeting at the end of their two years of service. What they planned for the next phase of life was invariably a point of discussion.
When I heard statements like, “I think it would be good for me to go to law or medical school or do X,” I would observe the tone of voice and body language. If I sensed hesitancy or lack of enthusiasm, I would share that observation and ask how they came to that conclusion.
Sadly, we sometimes let others define success rather than determining it for ourselves. Of course, figuring it out is not always easy, and it can be amazingly convenient to let someone else do the deciding. But that is not a pathway to a meaningful life.
I heard author Chad Sanders, interviewed by Brené Brown, describe his experience at a large tech firm, where he struggled to adapt to the culture, eventually realizing that, despite the pay and prestige, the price was too high. “Don’t betray yourself to achieve something,” he observed, adding “lead with what you believe rather than what you think.”
Not so fast, argues the junior Dr. Teschner, who wrote that the I’m-beingmyself attitude, when taken too far, “can be antithetical to teamwork, group cohesion and even societal advancement.”
He claims that many of his generation are “paralyzed” by the idea that they are letting someone else define them.
Rather than simply criticizing the old man’s ideas, he suggested an alternative paradigm: “Pay it forward to your future self,” asking if what you are doing is improving your life or not.
Ben explained this further: “It accepts that there are lots of difficult pieces of life that need to be overcome in order to get to the big outcomes you really want. Will future me look back on what I’m doing and say that I was wasting my time or being unfaithful to myself? Or, will future me be thankful that I did this, even if it’s hard and/or doesn’t fully fit with my ‘identity’ because it got me some growth I really want? While the ‘be yourself’ paradigm suggests that anything less than a full-time genuine self is insufficient, the ‘pay it forward’ paradigm allows you to grow more into yourself and considers the reality that you have to make some sacrifices to fully live into the future and the ‘self’ that you want.”
Good food for thought. And I thought I was the old practical one and he was the young idealist!
Are you following your own path or letting someone else define it for you? If the latter, will this path foster meaningful growth and be worth it in the long run? Write down where you want to be in five or 10 years and list the ways your present work is (and is not) leading you in that direction. Consider if the up-sides are enough and if the down-sides are too much.
We each have an extraordinary opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives, including our own. Don’t underestimate your impact!
Douglass P. Teschner, founder of Growing Leadership LLC, can be reached at dteschner@Growing-LeadershipLLC.com.
