On Defining The Future We Want

I started thinking about how to craft this piece on Tuesday morning.  I went for an early walk, bought a croissant, and found a quiet bench in a beautifully landscaped square as I listened to an interview with the writer and poet, Ocean Vuong.

In it he shared his belief that the future is in our mouths, not just in our hands.  I love that notion as it perfectly captured one of my fundamental beliefs about living on purpose and with purpose… that it starts with definition. 

Then I heard the news that George Floyd was murdered.  

It’s been a sad, heartbreaking, and infuriating week seeing the blatant violence and disregard for life against another black man and the racially charged malintent in the Central Park 911 call against Christian Cooper.

It’s a WTF exclamation point amidst two plus months of quarantine uncertainty and confusion.  I thought about whether this idea was relevant when so many people are in pain.  

I won’t know for sure that it is, but I do know that one of the main reasons I want to help people live intentional lives doing work that matters to them is because there’s so much that each of us can and want to contribute to the world and if more of us were doing work we found meaningful, I truly believe the world would be a better place.

So, here’s to defining the future that we want in spite of the ugliness in the present that we have.

Much Love,

Pam


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Bear with me as I start with a few lines of basic math.

24 hours in a 7 day week = 168 total hours.

Averaging 7 hours of sleep in a 7 day week = 49 sleeping hours. 

168 total hours - 49 sleeping hours = 119 waking hours in a week.

Let’s use 45 hours as a baseline for time spent at work each week, pre-COVID.

45 working hours out of 119 waking hours = 37.8% of our waking hours spent working.  

We can shave off a few percent for time off, but we’re essentially looking at a third of our lives at work. 

So, how did you come to the decision of how you’d spend a third of your awake life?

In contrast, it makes me think about how much energy I put into other decisions I make about far smaller fractions of my life.  The time I spend looking up restaurant reviews and menus for a 2-hour meal.  How much research I do in the months and weeks leading up to a 1-week trip.

My clients and I talk a lot about the importance and value of defining in detail and with specificity what we want, what we don’t want, what matters to us, what we aspire to be, etc.

Definition gives shape and substance to our abstract ideas about purpose and fulfillment and happiness.  It gives us a foundation from which to then define the roles we seek, the companies we want to work for, the departments we want to be in, the money we ask for.

For example, it’s a good start to know that you want to do meaningful work that helps people.  

But what does meaningful work actually mean to you?  What impact do you want to make with the meaningful work you do?  How would you define it if you were talking to someone who didn’t understand those words?  

And how do you want to help people?  There are endless ways we could help others, directly and indirectly.  Is it on a larger scale solving problems like racial injustice, police brutality, domestic violence?  Or is it more about helping people feel better about themselves through exercise, body image, mindfulness, skincare?  Or do you simply want to make someone’s day better with food, laughter, art, flowers, experiences?

Then we can look to define other layers such as what specific problems you want to help solve in your meaningful work to help people.  What outputs you want to create.  What skills you want to use.  What you want to learn.  What kind of people you want to be around.

Many of these answers are in our heads, but writing them down and making sense of them in a tangible way can do wonders for processing. 

It forces us to be specific and holds us accountable to all the things we say matter to us.  And it’s a lot easier to figure out what that next step looks like when we’ve clearly defined oour filters.

I mentioned Ocean Vuong’s idea earlier, but here’s exactly how he so eloquently communicates the heart of my point...

“We often tell our students the future is in your hands.  But I think the future is actually in your mouth.  You have to articulate the world you want to live in first.”


Wishing you peace and clarity in this time of chaos and uncertainty.

🙏🙏,

Pam