Category Archives: Work and Career

Finding a Purpose: Can You Help One of Our Readers?

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Dear Legacy Project Blog Readers:

Cathy commented on this post (see below) asking for advice. In the past, you all have had some great advice for people like Cathy. Do you have any suggestions for her? If so, please comment!

I’ve been talking to friends of ours whose children are applying to college (thankfully, ours are done with that!). It got me to thinking about one powerful message of the elders to young people: Take time to find your life’s purpose.

Many of the Legacy Project elders told me something along the lines of: “Find what you love and do it!” What’s interesting is that people said this from all walks of life and all professions: Look for your purpose and your passion, or you miss out on a lot of what life has to offer.

Gary, 74, trained in engineering and spent his career as an executive in the railroad industry. Gary’s calm demeanor and self-effacing, folksy comments  reminded me a bit of Jimmy Stewart. He’s someone whose goal was to “do his best,” and he looks back on his life with dry humor.

His main advice (indeed, it was his primary life lesson) is to take the time to identify your life’s purpose.

One problem is you go through life and you don’t tend to think very much about these kinds of things. You go along, the dishes need to be done, the groceries need to be bought, you have to get off to work. So insight number one is that there’s more to life than getting the chores done every day. You should draw back from the hurly-burly of daily living and spend a little time thinking about: What’s my philosophy of  life?; Why am I here? What am I doing? Does it make any sense to be doing this? Those kinds of questions.

We need to take the time, perhaps even a little time every day, to reflect on our lives. I don’t know if we do as much as we should, so I think that might be rule number one. Even when you’re in high school. High school a good place to start, that’s where you begin discovering who you are. You should  start laying the groundwork  to develop a philosophy early in life. And throughout life, take a little time to determine what the purpose is to what you are doing. You can view your life as a kind of continuum, one you can direct more if you know the purpose behind it.

This can begin in school. When you’re in school you have a once in a lifetime chance  to learn something. And go for it. You can go for for it to shape your philosophy. If I were to go back and tell those kids in the class I would tell them to  get into whatever you’re doing now as intensely as you can. I think you need to spend some time reading history to this so you can  understand what life was like 2000 years ago versus today.

The end result of this reflection, Gary says, is to discover your underlying passion.

My first thought would be; ‘Is there something in life you have a passion for?’  And if it’s possible, can you start your career in whatever that field is? It could be butterfly collecting, anything. There are people that live very good lives in butterflies and collecting. It doesn’t matter what it is. so I think if you have a chance and you have a passion, follow it. A lot of people don’t have a passion, but if you do, see if you can somehow incorporate that into your career. And it could lead you interesting things and if that’s the case then take advantage of it.

It’s a balance. You need to be careful of what you do, to plan ahead, and so forth. But if you do too much of that you’re going to become stunted.You need some kind of middle ground. And it depends on the individual. If your passion in life is climbing mountains then go climb mountains because that is a talent that you have, a desire, and if you don’t do it, if you consciously give it up because something bad might happen, you’re going have a lot of regrets of missing your dream. But of course, check your gear before you go!

Hard Work is Good Work

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In my interviews for the Legacy Project, I loved listening to the Texas accent. Apparently, some say the classic Texas accent is disappearing, but not among these folks. Many of these elders were from East Texas, with its soft, musical drawl and slow cadence. Twenty-five cents becomes “twenny-fi cints,” kid becomes “kee-ud,” business to “bid-ness,” and government to “gummint.” There was a lulling quality in my conversations with very old Texans, but also a remarkably clear way of condensing the past and expressing their feelings about it. And Texans are polite; no one hurried me along or refused to at least try to answer a question.

One thing that almost all the Texans had in common was that they grew up working – and working hard. Martin, 78, was typical. From a very early age, he was expected to work, and it taught him valuable life lessons. He grew up on a farm during the Great Depression, he told me, and that’s what kept the family alive. “We had enough to eat because of the vegetable garden.”

We chopped cotton, we picked cotton, we milked cows, we carried wood for the cookstove and the fireplace – we cooked over a wood cook stove. They cooked that way until the 1940s. The didn’t have electricity or running water until after I left home. We drew water from the well to do wash. You had to draw the water, put it in the tub. With everything that had to be done on a farm, we tagged along and helped.

Martin embodies the work history of many of the elder I interviewed, and he shows the legacy over his life course.

The family home that I grew up in was very religious, and the community I grew up in was about three hundred people. And we had church and family and our farm where we worked all the time, we worked round the clock and nobody had any money. There was school and work and that was it. And that was my life. And all during the Depression my family farmed that farm and when you could get little or nothing for anything, we managed to keep everything together. And when everybody around us was going belly up, we came through it. Just being around for those years, I got a lot of what I learned over my life.

At a young age, age fourteen, I guess, I was working seven days a week when I wasn’t in school and many days before school and after school, I was working on that farm. And I rode a school bus from school back to the farm and then work until dark and then my dad and I got the truck and we came home. But that was a normal work day. And like I said, nobody had any money. This is something that most people today can’t fathom, they can’t realize. We lived at a time when there was no money and you just really didn’t think about it because all of our friends were doing the same thing. And it gave me a value where I knew what a day of working was. I knew what it meant. I knew what hard work was and when your fifteen or sixteen, that’s a pretty good lesson.

He went on to a distinguished career in the military, serving in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam. After retirement, he worked for several corporations. Throughout the course of his career, what he learned from a childhood of hard work stayed with him. “I enjoyed working, sure, I made the work a part of my life. A job to me was a set of requirements and a group of people that you work with, you get along with, and you do the best you can.”

This vision of work came from a kind of childhood shared by many of the elders, but known to few younger Americans today:

I attribute any success I’ve had to my family because of the way I was taught. You know, when you’re thirteen and you’re getting up at four in the morning and milk the cows and feed the cattle and then going to school at seven thirty. Getting out of school at three thirty in the afternoon and then getting on the school bus and then going back out to the farm and working til after dark, and that’s before you even started studying.

I am still determined to be productive. Nowhere in the Bible do you find a retirement plan. We’re here for a purpose and I like to think that we need to find out what that purpose is and get about doing it, no matter how old we are.

Making your mark in your career: Sy’s lessons on new video

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There’s been a lot of discussion on this site about how young people should approach their careers. Since the elders we interviewed have had almost every job you can imagine, and many succeeded in careers after a struggle, they are a great source of practical advice. Today we hear from Sy, a successful entrepreneur who shares his lessons those starting out (or in mid-career).

 

 

 

See many more Legacy Project elders on video at our YouTube Channel.

Your turn: Can you advise one of our readers?

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In an earlier post, we shared Bertrille’s regrets about her work life. Jenny commented on the post, sharing her own struggles to find a place in the world of work. Although our elders in the Legacy Project can’t respond to individual questions – can you? Does anyone have some life wisdom to share? Please comment to share your thoughts. Below is the original post, and Jenny’s comment follows.

Sometimes the elder’s lessons come not from what they did right, but from what they felt they did wrong. They advise younger people not to do as they did. So it is in this lesson about finding work that has meaning for you.

Bertrille, 69, flirted with a number of careers over the course of her life, from graduate school in the humanities, to work in research , eventually training as a nurse and practicing in several different settings. Her main regret is never having taken the time and energy to learn  what type of work she would find meaningful and even love:

Work for me? Well, you know, some people have careers and they find what they love to do. For me, work was to make money to do the things I wanted. It didn’t really have much value to me. And I’m very sad to be in my sixties and to have to say that, but it’s really the truth. I worked to live, I didn’t find anything in it that held a lot of meaning to me. I drifted from one thing to another and never really found a purpose.

So I feel sad, I feel very sad about that. I wish I could’ve found something that I really enjoyed but I didn’t do that.

When I look back on my life, I have one area of regret and that is I listened too much to what other people told me to do. I think people have to follow their own instincts about who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what they have to offer. You should not listen too much to what other people tell you to do. I have to deal with that sense of lost purpose.

Here’s what Jenny wrote in her comment. Do you have any life lessons to offer her?

Dear Bertrille, thank you for sharing your life lessons.

I am currently 34 year old and I am one of those who has moved from job to job because I didn’t like the previous one. 3 Years ago, I realized I must stop wasting time and do something more meaningful in my life. I know I want to make a difference in other’s life, particular to those less privileged.

Determined and ambition as I always am, I got myself into a Tier 1 MBA program, aiming to build a more rounded skill-set and a strong network so I can have a good foundation to get started on my life ambition. I dream to establish an institution that teaches and builds people’s character through simulated activities, particularly for disadvantage children in various parts of the world. I see that many people in influential positions today do not exemplify good character such as integrity, courage and compassion. They often get to where they are because of their privileged background and network, without many tests and trials in their lives. It is very disappointing reality for me. I want the institution to raise the awareness that character building is first and foremost and through various activities to instill admirable characters to young children.

As I have no money to start, I tried leveraging on my network to find job opportunities in existing organizations of similar purpose/field and wait till the right moment to start. Maybe it’s the current state of the economy or just bad luck, I joined 4 organizations so far, none of them were able to offer a full-time role. Now, a year and a half after my graduation, I am penniless and with a huge school loan to pay back. The reality of life keeps haunting me and thank goodness I do not need to support a family. I am now applying to any job that I see fit to my previous banking background as I must deal with the reality of life. Yet nothing comes my ways, except a few small consulting projects here and there which is hardly predictable nor able to cover my basic expenses. In my most despair moment, I’d ask myself what’s wrong with me? How big is the price to pursue my dream? Why wouldn’t anyone wants to hire a motivated and highly-skilled with individual? And many more such questions…

I am not giving up my dream. But my question is, what would you do if you were me at this juncture of life?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Very gratefully,

Jenny

Beware of Multi-Tasking

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Oliver’s (age 81)  lesson: Do one thing at a time, or you get “stress and chaos.”  

It’s a scientific fact that you can only think of one thing at a time. Accept that  fact and work accordingly. Make a list of your projects and follow each one as far as convenient, then tackle the next. Many people take pride in handling several things at once without a plan. Their attention is constantly redirected, allowing stress and chaos to build, with nothing completed.