50. in the search of growth...

Category: Career and Purpose

50.
If I could travel back in time and speak to my younger self, this is what I would say.

​‘Work will be where you spend most of your time and the people you work with will often be people you will spend more time with than your family. So choose wisely’.

This is what my professor in university said when we were to select our final year thesis. He was the dean of the faculty and had a PhD in Sports and Organisational Psychology, so to a great extent we trusted his words. But I did not fully understand them at the time. It was through experience that I knew the wisdom of what he said.

What we do and who we do it with, is pivotal to our lives. It matters. Sometimes it matters a lot, sometimes a little less. But we all have learned this - if we are not happy at our work or we are in an unhealthy team or culture, it affects our whole life. 

And to make such a big choice at the age of 20-something, for most of us feels daunting.  At least for me, it was. I spent months agonising over what I should choose for my career.

The choice was between two of my greatest interests: Organisational Psychology or Health Psychology. As a Psychology graduate I was often asked - but how will you make money with psychology. So I chose the one that I thought would be the one that would get me a job. 
For several months afterwards, I was sure I had made the wrong choice.


Now, looking back almost 20 years late, this is what I would tell myself:
                 50 things I would tell my younger self... (1-10)