Finding Your You

Who am I?

What am I here for?

What is my purpose?

What is my passion?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

We ask these questions of ourselves constantly, and other people ask them of us constantly, and I have started to wonder when, or indeed whether, any of us are supposed to arrive at the answer.

What interests me most is that this is not a struggle reserved for the lost. I see it in people who appear to have decided. People with the career, the title, the plan they stuck to, the trajectory that looks from the outside like it is bang on track. And yet. And yet there is still a quality of searching in them. A wondering. A quiet seeking that does not switch off simply because the job description is impressive.

The expectation nobody actually agreed to...

Throughout this past year I have listened countless times to younger members of my family berate themselves. Feeling less than. Wondering where they are going wrong. Wondering why they do not know what they want to do yet. Wondering, seriously, whether there is something faulty in them because they have not yet landed the career of their dreams, or because the career they have does not make them happy.

And honestly, what on earth are we doing to ourselves?

Somewhere along the line we absorbed a strange bullying narrative that says we ought to magically and automatically know exactly what we want to do and who we want to be by the age of twenty five at the very latest. Says who? Where did this expectation come from, and why does it land on all of us with such weight? It is nonsense when you hold it up to the light, and still every single one of us has felt the pressure of it.

If we were all completely honest with ourselves and with each other, I think we would admit that we have all done this wondering, and that the wondering carries a particular flavour of shame.

I certainly grew up with the story. Work hard. Do well at school. Go to university. Secure a good job. Do those things and you will be living a happy life, you will have it all together, you will be fulfilled and satisfied and finished.

The funny thing is that I did not know what I wanted to do at eighteen. I did not know at twenty. I did not know at twenty five. I still did not know at thirty, or at thirty five. It is only now, standing on the edge of my fortieth year, that I feel I finally understand what I want to do and who I want to be.

So what was the magical secret? What was the trick?

There wasn't one. There were four things, and none of them were a moment of revelation. Experience. Trusting my gut. Seeking out change. Becoming a creator.

Experience: the evidence I mistook for failure

I have had so many jobs. Saturday jobs, summer jobs, full time jobs. I have been a shoe fitter, a baker, a waitress, a suit fitter, a receptionist, a stable hand, a kennel cleaner, a wildlife rescuer, a farm hand, a shop assistant, a coordinator, a manager, an assistant, an HR professional, a teacher, a coaching practitioner.

I have worked for enormous multinationals and for tiny local businesses. For charities. For the NHS. In state education and in private education. For other people, and for myself.

For years I read that list as a symptom. Evidence of indecision. Proof that I had not settled, had not committed, had not found the thing.

Because in every single one of those roles I was doing the same thing underneath the work itself. I was scanning. Interrogating. Asking, is this it? Is this my career? Is this the one I am supposed to devote the rest of my life to?

I was constantly asking the question, and I was constantly missing the point.

I was treating each job as an audition for permanence, when what each job was actually giving me was information. About what energises me and what depletes me. About the environments in which I expand and the ones in which I contract. About the kind of people I want around me and the kind of problems I am willing to sit with. That list is not a record of my failure to choose. It is the most thorough research project I have ever conducted, and the subject was me.

Instinct: the knowing underneath the noise

Alongside the experience there was something quieter, and much harder to trust.

Gut feeling. Instinct. That low, steady, unglamorous signal that tells you a thing is right or a thing is wrong long before you can construct an argument for it.

We are taught to override this. We are taught to make the sensible choice, the secure choice, the choice that is easiest to explain at a family gathering. And most of the times I have made myself miserable, I have made myself miserable by explaining away something my body already knew.

Learning to trust that signal is not mystical. It is a practice. It is noticing what happens in your chest and your shoulders and your breath when you imagine saying yes to something. It is treating that response as data rather than as an inconvenience to be reasoned with.

Change: we were never meant to stand still

Whilst I have been watching younger friends and family wrestle with what they want to be, I have also noticed something rather wonderful. Older friends and family are wrestling with exactly the same questions. And frequently, as they age, they embrace an enormous change of direction.

The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes.

When you genuinely understand that, and when you make peace with it, something shifts. You start to see the freedom in change rather than the threat. The joy in it. The excitement. You begin to like the uncertainty, or at least to stop bracing against it, and you start to revel in the possibilities it opens.

We were never meant to stand still. We were never meant to be one thing, fixed and finished, stuck in repetition. We are meant to explore. To dream. To change. To be uncomfortable, to grow comfortable, and then to change everything up all over again.

Creation: the thread running through every good career

Here is the thing I noticed last, and it is the one that changed everything.

What do genuinely fulfilling careers have in common? Not the sector. Not the salary. Not the prestige. The person in them is a creator.

Every single job offers this, if you look for it. Take a doctor. A doctor creates the experience their patient has. They create the kind of doctor they are. They create new ways of doing things, they discover, they stay curious. An accountant creates with numbers. A lawyer creates an argument, a strategy, a defence. An artist creates their art, obviously, but so does the receptionist who creates the atmosphere of a room, and the manager who creates the conditions in which a team can do good work.

Creation is not a career category. It is a stance you take towards whatever is in front of you.

So perhaps this is the point

Perhaps the point of a finding ourselves and our career and our path in life is not the destination we were all promised. Perhaps the point is in the being. In the experiencing. In the creating.

If you can bring curiosity, creation and a genuine appetite for change into every role you take, comfortable and uncomfortable alike, and if you can enjoy the fluidity of finding your you inside each one, then that, my gorgeous one, is exactly how we find ourselves.

Not once. Not permanently. Not by twenty five.

Continually, and on purpose.

Something to sit with

If any of this landed, you might spend some time with these:

• Where did your version of the "by now I should have" story come from, and whose voice is it in?
• Look back over everything you have done, paid or unpaid. What was it teaching you about yourself?
• Where in your current life are you already creating, even if nobody calls it that?
• What would change if you stopped auditioning your life for permanence?

If you would like company whilst you explore these questions, this is exactly the work I do. Find out more at bloomandflourish.co.uk, book in for a chat with me or come and say hello on Instagram @rose.bloomandflourish.