so what do you do
this is a common question that comes up
in social gatherings dinner parties
weddings networking events TED
conferences now if I were to ask you the
question right now what do you do think
about how you would respond what would
you say and more importantly how does it
feel to say that now on the surface what
do you do is a common question it's just
an innocent conversation starter right
but on another level you might feel like
there's some sort of judgment involved
judgement about how important you are
how successful you are how useful you
are based simply on what you do for a
living
and have you ever noticed that there are
times in your life when you enjoy
getting that question and then there are
times in your life when you don't enjoy
getting that question so for example you
might enjoy getting that question if
you've just been promoted or maybe
you're working for a highly respected
organization and you might not enjoy
getting that question if you've just
been laid off and made redundant or
maybe you're not feeling passionate
about what you do well it turns out most
of us aren't feeling passionate about
what we do in galip's most recent state
of the global workplace poll that covers
142 countries they found that only 13%
of us are feeling fully engaged with our
work and yet there's a tendency to
maintain the trajectory of our careers
after all our careers are part of our
identity right and sometimes it's hard
to let go of who you've been for so long
imagine if you were to do that if you
were to let go of who you've been and to
walk away from one career to pursue
another that's exactly what I chose to
do 12 years ago what I chose to do again
last year and it's what I feel we all
must do sometimes we evolve our careers
as we ourselves evolve so today I'd like
to share with you my own personal story
of career change three lessons I learned
when standing on the cusp of change
which I hope will be useful to you if
you're also pondering a change in your
own life and finally wrap up with
talking about if you question
that you might want to ask yourself if
you're trying to clarify whether it's
time for you to move on now right now
when I get asked the question what do
you do I actually enjoy getting the
question now I enjoy giving my response
I tell people that I coach individuals
to develop who they are as a brand and
to relaunch themselves during times of
change in their careers their lives and
their organizations and part of the
reason why I enjoy doing this kind of
work is because my own career has gone
through its own set of transformations
over the years you see 12 years ago when
I was asked that question what do you do
I was actually dreading the question and
I was ashamed of my response but before
I get into that moment let me explain
you how I reached that point now as a
small child you're not asked the
question what do you do you're asked a
question what do you want to be when you
grow up and when I was asked a question
what you want to be when you grow up I
would tell people I want to be a doctor
and this is something I decided at the
age of five when I had to go to the
hospital to get some stitches on my left
eye you can still see the scar and from
that moment on I thought you know I want
to do that because I was so impressed
with that doctors ability to fix me up
ten years later a competing interest
came up and that was in business I loved
the idea of starting something from
nothing of marketing an idea of creating
a solution to a problem and so I got a
business license and I started a small
business in the basement of my parent's
home in Springfield Missouri called
Joe's disks and I sold blank floppy
disks which were a hot item at the time
now that didn't exactly work out and
become the next Amazon for a lot of
reasons one reason is because right when
I was developing that interest in
business another event occurred in my
life which squashed that interest before
I had a chance to really blossom at the
age of 17 I was playing tennis one day
and I felt the sharp pain go through the
right side of my chest and it felt like
the air was knocked out of me it was
later diagnosed as a primary spontaneous
pneumothorax now this happens to about 7
out of 100,000 people and it's when your
lung spontaneously collapses on itself
and it makes it very difficult to
breathe now by the time the doctors
caught this and diagnosed it properly
had gotten pretty bad today either shove
a metal rod between my ribs and perform
of Chester's we inflate it and reattach
it now
I took all this to be a sign that
actually you know what maybe I should
become a doctor you see there are two
stories that take place in all of our
lives there is the story of what
actually occurred
so the factual events and then there's
the narrative that we overlay on top of
those stories to make sense of those
events especially when those events are
painful and so the narrative that I
decided I wanted to write was something
along the lines of becoming a doctor one
day equipped with this insight of
knowing what it's like to be a patient
and then I did what we all do when we
have a goal in mind I began to invest
myself in it so I spent the next four
years at Northwestern University
studying the pre Medical Sciences I
majored in psychology because I loved
human behavior but I also thought it'd
be useful to know that as a doctor and I
also spent three summers doing medical
research and as I was going through this
I began to feel what a lot of people
tell me they feel if they aren't feeling
100% satisfied with their careers I
would wake up each morning I wasn't
really looking forward to the day or I
would not feel like I was making the
most of who I am and I was actually kind
of feeling quite depleted in terms of my
energy but I carried on anyway took the
ten hour exam to get into medical school
and as I became more invested in this
narrative it became harder and harder to
extract myself from it next thing I know
in 2002 I matriculated to the Georgetown
School of Medicine in Washington DC and
I remember being at the white coat
ceremony where you take the Hippocratic
oath to do no harm and I felt incredibly
conflicted because on the one hand I was
proud of having reached this goal in my
life to be surrounded by all these
people were going to make such a noble
contribution to society but on the other
I was deeply unhappy I felt trapped and
I remember being in gross anatomy lab
the second week of medical school and
holding the human heart in my hands and
looking down at this pair of lungs in
this cadaver being reminded to this
organ that failed me so many years ago
I thought well here I am is this still
where I want to be and it was one of
those moments where you feel like you
realize that you know you think you know
where you want to go in life and then
you get there and something's a little
bit off and I remember looking around at
all my classmates furiously dissecting
their cadaver
risen scribbling in their lab notebooks
and it was a moment when I felt
incredibly misplaced you ever feel that
when you feel like you're wearing the
wrong shoe and no matter how hard you
try it just doesn't fit like right and
it was at that moment that I realized I
had a pivotal decision to make I could
either finish what I started
or I could quit and I didn't actually
know what I wanted to do but I knew at
that moment it was no longer this and so
at after only the second week medical
school I withdrew from the program
unraveling all that I invested to get
there and bringing this nice narrative
to an abrupt end I went from being the
3% of applicants at getting the medical
school to the only 1% of students that
drop out and when someone asked me the
question what do you do I had to say
well I just dropped out of medical
school
and it was at that moment that I felt
like complete and utter failure and with
no job in hand and no idea what I wanted
to do next my career suddenly hit rock
bottom before it actually even began and
from that moment on I became fascinated
almost obsessed with this tension that
exists between maintaining the status
quo of our lives and moving on to
something new which has mean the second
part of my talk that three lessons I
learned when standing on the cusp of
change when I left medical school when I
moved from the u.s. to the UK four years
ago and when I left my corporate
marketing job last year to launch the
looma to coaching the first lesson has
to do with the paradox of goals now
sometimes people ask me what took you so
long Joseph to get off that road to
becoming a doctor you saw the signs why
didn't you just quit earlier the truth
is I don't really know I don't know why
we don't get off of the road earlier
when we feel like something's not right
what I do know is that I'm an incredibly
goal-oriented individual maybe you're
the same way maybe when you set a goal
you'll do everything you can to achieve
that goal no matter what the cost
there's something admirable on that
what's interesting is that there's a
double-edged sword when it comes to
goals on the one hand goals provide our
lives with intention with direction with
purpose but on the other they're
incredibly limiting they can prevent
this from being open to other ideas
another interest that pop up along the
way
and that's because sometimes it's hard
to see clearly when you're moving so
fast toward a goal I set my sights on
becoming a doctor and as strange as it
sounds I never took the time to look up
and make sure I wanted to go there I
just got on the train of life and
although it was uncomfortable I just
kept on riding the train because there's
actually comfort in knowing you're going
somewhere and what I learned from all
this is that detours lead to discovery
that if you are willing to step off the
road and take the long way around even
if it seems like initially it's
distraction that it at least opens up
the opportunity for you to discover a
path forward that resonates more
effectively with who you are and what
you want from your life not just what
you feel you should want from your life
the second lesson has to do with the
stubborn power of investment now after I
left medical school the good thing was I
was able to kind of pick up the pieces
and I rediscovered my interest in
business that spark I had when I
launched Joe's disks and I did not go
launch another floppy disk company
instead I spent the next 10 years
working in brand management and
marketing for both large and small
companies in the US and the UK
I went from studying gross anatomy to
marketing gross products initially so I
started on bin liners and trash bags
then moved on to drain opener and then
it got better I moved on to luxury
deserts and most recently luxury ice
cream and I got a chance to work on new
product launches and also brand
relaunches and I always found the brand
relaunches to be much more interesting
because you have a chance to reinvent
and reinvigorate a brand in a way that
represents its future not its past I got
a chance to rename a company to redesign
a package to launch a brand's first
national ad campaign and interestingly
enough during those times there was an
interesting dynamic where there was a
tendency for there to be a tension
between ingrained legacy of a brand and
potential opportunity and everything
that had been invested in building that
brand prevented people from wanting to
change and evolve that brand so I would
hear things like well we can't change
the name of our company because although
that would be a more versatile name
people won't understand what we do
anymore we can't change the way this
package looks on shelf although it would
modernize it consumers won't be able to
find us on shelf anymore or we can't
launch this new ad campaign be
it would allow us to reach new consumers
but our existing consumers are going to
feel alienated
now Daniel Kahneman is a very well-known
psychologist at Princeton University and
he stated that we prefer certainty over
uncertainty that we prefer avoiding a
loss over receiving a gain and I think
that helps to kind of explain the
parallel dynamic that happens in our
careers where there's a tendency to
maintain the logical stories of our
careers this is the idea of never giving
up and never giving in and finishing
what you start there's something quite
admirable in that nobody likes the
person who stands up in the middle of a
movie theater and walks out in the
middle of a movie even if the movie is
bad I've only done it once it's actually
very tough to do and what I learned from
all this is that sometimes moving on is
harder than holding on that sometimes
investment is so strong it's the one
thing that's keeping you from
progressing your life forward but
recognizing that that dynamic exists is
actually the first step toward being
able to cut your losses and move on
especially when your intuition is
telling you that this surely is not as
good as it gets the final lesson has to
do with the upside of chaos now when I
left medical school everything was
thrown up in the air but my interest in
business reemerged and I was able to
grab on to it and run with it when I
moved from the u.s. to the UK four years
ago everything was up in the air for me
again it was very chaotic I had to
rebuild my life to restart my career
here but I was reminded of how much I
actually thrive on this idea of building
something from nothing and just over a
year ago when I was getting ready to
transition to a new brand management
role my father passed away and I was
reminded of life's fragility the same
way I was reminded of life's fragility
when I had that collapsed lung and it
made me kind of slow down and
re-evaluate my life and it made me
realize I wanted to shift my life from
building and relaunching products to
building and relaunching people and I
didn't want to put it off the point is
that transitions are messy they are ugly
they are not pretty and they are not fun
it's like being on a highway and trying
to get off on the interchange you always
end up in a traffic jam but sometimes
that's the only way to get off and get
on get on to a new direction and what I
learned is am its
opportunity the opportunity to
rediscover who you really are because
when you're feeling lost all the
boundaries in your life they disappear
and when the boundaries are gone
anything is possible and you can move in
a new direction a new opportunity can
emerge finally to wrap up with these
lessons in mind I thought I'd share with
you a few questions that you might want
to consider asking yourself if you are
on the cusp of change and maybe you're
wondering if it's time for you to move
on these are questions I asked myself at
every fork in the road and I think
they're simple questions but they're not
always easy to answer and the first
question is what keeps you here second
what is that costing you because while
staying put is serving you in some way
there is always an opportunity cost
always finally is it worth it is it
worth that trade-off is it worth getting
that promotion if your marriage is
falling apart cuz you're never home on
time is it worth the money if your help
is poor is it worth the stability your
job offers you if the rest of your life
has become unstable
is it worth having a convenient answer
for the question what do you do if you
feel like you should be doing something
else and if the answer is no the next
question you gotta ask yourself is what
are you willing to let go of to make
room for something else sometimes in
life you have to let go of part of your
life to make room for the pursuit of
something greater when I left my
corporate marketing job I had to be
willing to let go of the steady paycheck
and the credibility of being associated
with the large brand so that I could
make room for the pursuit of having a
more direct and personal impact on the
people in the world around me now you
might be sitting there thinking well
Joseph I don't know about that I my
situations not that great maybe the
situation isn't right for me to make a
move
maybe my financial situation isn't
correct the timings off what do you say
to that well I say that the timing needs
to be right for you because changing
directions in life and making a pivot is
an enormous amount of investment and
time sometimes money you have to really
want it and only you can know when the
timing is right in the conditions are
right the great news is you get to draw
the line you get to decide
you get to decide when the conditions
are good enough you get to decide when
the path forward is clear enough you get
to decide when your risk tolerance is
high enough and you get to decide when
you have had enough when the fear of the
known is greater than the fear of the
unknown and when the idea of doing
nothing seems riskier than the idea of
doing something when the thought of
standing still is more agonizing to you
than the thought of moving on not
because you know exactly where you want
to go but because you do know precisely
it's not here and because you do believe
at least broadly that somewhere out
there something better awaits you in
closing as far as how things turned out
for me well I can tell you that all
these windy roads have definitely made
for quite an adventure for me and a
memorable journey it's not over yet but
I can also tell you that it was worth it
because right now I wake up each morning
and I can't wait to get my day started
because I'm doing work that I feel is
making the most of who I am both
personally and professionally
I'm doing work that I care about that I
think is meaningful to me and hopefully
therefore in turn meaningful to others
and I do believe that if you're willing
to remain open to new roads to embrace
the chaos that comes your way when you
cut your losses and to bravely let go of
one aspect of your life to make room for
the pursuit of something greater than
this question of what do you do will be
a nice reminder of the time that you
chose to boldly relaunch your career in
a way that has a positive impact on your
life the people in your life and the
world around you imagine what would be
possible if you were to act on that one
idea that has been lingering in the back
of your mind for so long to begin to
rewrite the next chapter of your career
in fact maybe to reshape the entire
story of your career how would your life
change if you took that step thank you
you