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Hey, folks, welcome to another episode of The You School podcast. My name is Scott Schimmel. I'm the president and chief guide that's my official title, podcast hosts is my unofficial title. And today we're talking about, I think, probably my favorite conversation having to do with all the things that we discussed in new school. And it's about helping people clarify and define who they want to be when they grow up, which is a very different, it's actually a very different conversation than what we typically have with young people. We typically, and I do this too, even though I wrote the book, I run this podcast, I will still default into asking kids, what are you going to do when you grew up? And versions of that? Where are you going to college? What are you going to major in? What kind of job? Are you looking for those sorts of externals. And obviously, those are very, very important. And those parts of our lives academics, and job and career, define us and and say so much about us. But there's so much more to life. And what I've learned and a real core hypothesis to YouSchool, is if that's your unique focus, whether you're a student, you're a parent with kids, and educator. If our unique focus is about academics and and career, then we're doing kids a great disservice, we're missing out on the most important opportunities, which is to grow up well. I remember being 21 years old, and walking into an office to have my final interview to go into a career that I had been preparing and planning for for years, to go and follow my father's footsteps to go into a career in public accounting, worked for a big accounting firm. And I had a nightmare. The night before that I went in to sign a contract that I was going to start working for this accounting firm. When I graduated college, and I told the managing partner, I told the boss, I told the guy about that nightmare, that I was going to turn into someone in 20 years that I didn't want to be. And I didn't take the job. And what that meant for me was if I'm not that person in a career, the question would then be, who will I be? And I knew even at 21 years old, the more important question was that Who will I be? not What will I do? And maybe as I don't know, if that's like, the early midlife crisis for me, maybe this is my theory back then maybe if I could figure out who I want to be, then when I do that, that decision, and those set of complex decisions could become easier. And that's what I've been pursuing for the past 20-21 years. That was half of my lifetime ago. And what I've been saying what we've been saying, through YouSchool is this- kids get asked all the time, what they want to do when they grow up, high schoolers get asked what their plans are, after graduation, college students get asked the same thing with a big emphasis on work. But we never asked them more important question that foundationally will prepare a kid for success. And here it is, what kind of person do you want to be? Now, we don't ask that question. And here's what happens. We forget to ask who we who they want to be. And kids go with the flow. They go with the flow, meaning whatever their culture is, whether they're from a high achieving low achieving culture, environment, they will really generally go with the flow. I went to a private Catholic high school that was very bent on university success and career success. And which Ivy League school you're going to and, and I was a part of the honors classes and AP classes. And so the culture, the environment, the flow, was all pointed in that direction. Not once though, as far as I remember, do we talk about what kind of neighbor do you want to be when you're older? What kind of father/parent do you want to be? What kind of friend do you want to be? Those are the questions that we didn't discuss, but rather we discuss how do you get the right scores and GPA to get into school you want to go to. So if that's true, I think I missed out on opportunities. Opportunities because they're so myopically focused on career in college, I missed out on opportunities to grow it to explore things to put myself in situations that made me uncomfortable. And as a result, I unconsciously went with a flow that was not right for me. If I had the opportunity, I believe when I was 15, 16, 17, to really think about these questions, I wouldn't have chosen the college chosen the major
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shut off growth and development. And I regretted that. I, you know, it all worked out. And I think many people would say the same thing. It worked out for me. However, I know many people who made regrettable decisions about their life who now are feel or are stuck with the decisions that they made early on, because they didn't have clarity about who they wanted to be. And you will become someone. But will it be right? Will it be authentic. And I'm personally committed to helping an entire generation not have to have a midlife crisis where people wake up, when they're finally at a point of more self awareness and more confidence to get out of the situations that regrettable decisions that they made, and get on a path that's right, and all the pain and trauma and carnage that comes from midlife crisis. Like that's, I want to solve that. So how do you do it? There's one main question, it's a prompt, who do you want to be? And that's such a vague abstract question. So we need to ground it. What kind of person do you want to be in in this specific and different roles that you will play in your life? It's hard to I think it's hard to know, I don't know, I want to be happy. I want to be kind I want to be someone who fights for justice, like those are really abstract big ideas. But if you grounded in a role, you think about what kind of data do you want to be? Or what kind of leader in work do you want to be? What kind of what do you want to be known for in your neighborhood? That those two ground that big abstract question with those prompts, what we've seen now, doing these exercises with 1000s of students, hundreds and hundreds of transitioning veterans, athletes, corporate executive mean, we, we've known that if we help people articulate and imagine the kind of characteristics they might have the attributes they would embody, and what ways they might be known by others remembered for what kind of interactions they hope to have experiences, that other people would have them kind of impact they want to have. These are the prompts that help somebody get to clarity, and it works. So if you're listening to this is the exercise for you. You in five years, you plus five, what kind of person do you want to be? And we'll look closer at this. Yeah, who you turn into isn't just left to chance. It's not like a preset prefixed menu. It's not just over time that your natural state emerges and unfolds. And then you're, you know, you're it, this is who you are, it just took a while to get there. That's that's not how it works. Your future character who you will be, is predicted by the clarity you have now, and the many little choices that you make now, to live into the vision that you have, in other words, get clarity today about who you want to be. And that will become that you'll become it. So, again, the most important conversation that we have, and the most important critical question that we ask, Who do you want to be? What kind of person do you want to be? So get a vision for life, get a vision for who you're turning into, and pursue it. That's it. That's this week's conversation. Hey, thanks for joining in on the YouSchool podcast, we'd love to share with you the resources available on our website at theyouschool.com not just articles, ebooks, worksheets and other podcast episodes, but specifically you should know about a free course we have available called the real me course. It's digital, it's interactive, and it will guide you to get clear about who you are in the great story you could tell with your life. So go register for a free account and get started on the real new course today at theyouschool.com. That's the you school dot com.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai