Find Your Life of Significance in The Hopes of Your Youth
Life can be confusing. We can feel listless and conflicted. Who am I? Where do I want to go in my career, in my personal life? What really excites me and energizes me? Who do I want to be when I grow up, except I am already grown up?
These are not easy questions. And the more we ask them as we reflect on our life, and the more uncertain we feel, it can gnaw away at our soul. Whatever our dreams were, if we can even remember them, have been abandoned, and in the words of Henry David Thoreau, we are leading “lives of quiet desperation.” We may not be clinically depressed, but we certainly don’t feel as though we are truly living.
Often the key to determining the way forward is to go back. To look back at our past, at our origin story. What did we love to do as a kid? What excited us? What energized us? What did we lie awake dreaming about? It is not a linear journey to linking our past hopes and dreams with our current situation or even the future, but there are keys of truth that lay hidden there. These keys, once we find them, can begin to point us to a better future.
That is the case for me, at least in hindsight. I grew up in a wealthy, 150-year-old family media business in Australia. It was founded by my great great grandfather John Fairfax, who was a person of great faith. Growing up I felt it was my duty to go into the family media business. So I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford University in the UK, like my father had done; I worked on Wall Street and got my MBA at Harvard Business School. When my father died in early 1987, I felt the company was not being well run or run along the ideals of my great-great grandfather. So I launched a $2.25 billion takeover that same year to try to deal with these issues. Things went wrong from the beginning, and we ended up having too much debt, leading us to have to file for bankruptcy three years later in 1990 when Australia got in a recession.
Now I have a podcast, Beyond The Crucible, that just celebrated its 300th episode and is in the top 5% of global podcasts. I write blogs; we post on social media. I wrote a book Crucible Leadership, that was a Wall Street Journal bestseller.
What connects my dreams and hopes when I was a young boy growing up in the family media business with what I do now?
As I look back, I dreamed of being in a role at the family company where people would feel cared for, where they would have a safe place to work, where they would feel fully appreciated.
I also loved stories. When I was around seven years old, my father read me stories of great Ancient Greek heroes, from Charles Kingsley’s book, The Heroes, including stories about Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts and Theseus. My father loved history as did I. He would tell me stories of great British heroes like Admiral Horatio Nelson, famous for his victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, or of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.
At Beyond The Crucible and in my book Crucible Leadership, we tell stories. We tell stories of people who bounced back from devastating crucibles to make a difference and who lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others. We tell stories of people that truly care about others. Many have started nonprofits and want to help others avoid the crucibles they have gone through, or if they have to help them overcome them.
So in a very real sense, at Beyond The Crucible we tell stories of heroes who deeply care for others and have bounced back from extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
It is clear to me now how what I do is linked to the hopes and dreams I had as a young boy. My path has certainly not been linear, but few paths are.
So what are some steps to finding your vision and path forward amid the hopes and dreams you had when you were growing up?
1. Be honest with yourself.
Admit you are feeling listless, unfulfilled. You feel like you are coasting and you want more out of life. You do not want to live a life of quiet desperation.
2. Start reflecting on who you were when you were growing up.
What did you daydream about? What did you enjoy doing? What were you passionate about? Don’t worry if those ideas and dreams seem impractical and childish. After all, you were a child back then.
3. Write down the themes you are recalling.
What were the specifics of those dreams and ideas and those passions?
4. Ask yourself why?
What beliefs, values and passions lie behind those ideas and dreams? Explore those hidden passions and themes that form the genesis, the origin story of what makes you you.
5. Begin almost like an archeological dig to piece those shards of broken pottery together…
to form themes of ideas, passions and beliefs that are fundamental to who you are and what you care most deeply about.
6. Talk to friends and family who knew you back then.
Ask them about what you were like. What did you love to do? What were you passionate about?
7. Start thinking about one step, one idea, one way forward to exploring what it would like to be you, the real you, in living out those ideas, beliefs and passions today.
You may not have it all worked out, but that is not the point. What do you feel deep in your gut is the next right step forward to charting a new path forward?
8. Trust the process.
You will unlikely have it all figured out right away. But one positive step forward leads to another. Monitor how this new journey fits with what your dreams, passions and beliefs were from your earliest days.
Life is not easy. Many if not all of us go through painful crucibles that feel like they get our lives off track. Those dreams, beliefs and values may have been squelched by what was done to us or by the mistakes we made. We may even feel that we do not deserve to be happy or fulfilled.
But let’s remember what life was like pre-crucible, during those days of childlike dreams, hopes and fantasies. Recall those pre-cynical innocent days, when everything seemed possible, at least in our childlike imagination.
Reclaim that childlike innocence and hope, but in a way that serves who you are now. Dare to dream. Dare to hope. Dare to believe that the impossible just might be possible. Dare to believe that you can make a difference in the world. And dare to believe that you do matter, that you do have worth and that you do have value.
The world needs the person, the child, that you were with those innocent, anything’s-possible hopes and dreams, those dreams that might feel now hopelessly altruistic. The world needs less cynicism and more hope, more inspiration. Reclaim that idealistic dreamer that you used to be and start changing the direction you are going in life, one small brave and beautiful step at a time.
Reflection
- Who were you when you were young? What were your hopes, dreams and beliefs?
- Write down those themes of both dreams and ideas, and the beliefs and passions that lie behind them. Connect the dots between these ideas and beliefs to form strands that make up the core part of who you are.
- Decide on one small step forward to begin to live in light of your dreams, beliefs and passions; to reclaim who you were and really are. Talk to one person about what you are thinking about doing, someone who could be a fellow traveler in your journey. Someone who could encourage you or perhaps be your partner in this journey.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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