The Four Stages of Professional Life
I gave a talk last month on the evolution of our career and professional life. I organized my thoughts by using a 4-stage model of the evolution of our professional life. Here’s the model:
The Four Stages of Professional Life
|
Age |
Career Years |
Name of Stage |
Life Objectives |
Professional and Career Goals |
Family and Personal Goals |
| 25-35 | 0 – 10 | Shishya (Learner) | Learning and Growth | Be a sponge. Focus on the learning curve. Maximize quality and diversity of experience. Choose stepping stones. Find mentors. Take on responsibilities. Be humble. Have dignity of labor. Don’t take short-cuts. Find your passion. |
Partner-Centric: Focus on “settling down” with a life partner who will accompany you on your life journey. Cultivate a core network of friendships that will sustain over time. |
| 35-50 | 10-25 | Karta(Doer) | Achievement and Success | Follow your passion. Build deep expertise. Get focused. Build a track record of achievements. Maximize economic success and professional success. Climb the “ladder”. Build networks. |
Children-Centric: Focus on raising children with values you can be proud of. Help them navigate through the teenage years. Invest time in your children, despite all the demands. Focus on wellness, diet and fitness. |
| 50-75 | 25-50 | Daata(Giver) | Significance and Service | Shift from success to significance. Find causes to support. Dedicate progressively more time to service. Apply professional expertise to social causes. Build a legacy. Focus on community. |
Community-Centric: Focus on advising your children as they become parents and as they settle down in life. Broaden your aperture to the community. Find new interests to engage you post-retirement. |
| 75+ | 50-75 | Bodhi (Saint) | Enlightenment and Teaching | Shift towards looking at yourself. Do spiritual work. Meditate and introspect. Become detached from material things. Become a teacher of your grandchildren and children. |
Self-Centric: Focus on your own spiritual development. Spread the wealth of your wisdom and life experience to those around you. Be at peace with the inevitability of mortality. |
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Finding your Passion – Letter to a Young Woman
I spoke at the Sikh Leadership Forum on October 14 in New York City, and talked about “finding your passion”. I got an email from a young woman who asked me how you can find your passion and how you can drown out the noise around you in discovering your true passion in work and life.
Here’s my letter to her:
Great questions, and I wish I had a simple answer. All I have is my personal experience to lean on. At times, when I was doing professionally what I was NOT passionate about, I’d literally wake up in the mornings and not want to go to work. I felt in the pit of my stomach that I was miserable and unhappy with what I was doing. That it was just a job and I was just collecting a paycheck. So that’s one extreme – knowing what you don’t want to do. This much will be obvious!
More subtle are the “weak positive signals” that come to you when you have momentary “highs” on some days –where you feel that THIS is what you were placed on the earth to do! These moments will come, so don’t rush them. You have your whole life ahead of you. Your “little voice of the gut” will speak to you. Just make sure you are listening! How do you listen to your gut? By tuning out the “noise” from well-intended close friends and family members who tell you what they think you should do. They are not YOU. They are trying to help you, but they are looking at the world through the lenses of their personal biases. So, what you should do is to spend some quiet moments in reflection, asking yourself what excites you. Spend time with yourself. There is too much noise in the world. Quiet meditation, even for a few minutes, will help clear your mind.
You are a young and bright woman, so you shouldn’t panic if you don’t find your passion TODAY. You need to experiment, probe, try different things in life. Be foolish, trespass into strange knowledge domains, read strange stuff, meet weird people! Just like we experiment with friendships and relationships before we settle down with the one we love, you should “date” lots of ideas and possibilities in life before you decide that “this is the one”. After all, finding your passion in life is similar to finding your passion in love. There’s an element of serendipity about meeting the right person, and there’s an element of faith in making the leap that this indeed is the right person. But, you need to stumble in the right direction by, maybe, not meeting people at bars but at college, and by trusting your gut!
Good luck with your journey. Smell the flowers along the way and the path will reveal itself. Just remember to count your blessings now and then, for you and I are very blessed.
Warmly,
Mohan
