>> What did you mean by, "values"? What kind of things should I be be figuring out now that my kids are 4 and 2?
What your life goals are. Identify what your purpose is.
I developed expertise and experienced in a field that was rare. I like what I work on. I knew that I needed to like what I do and find pride in my work.
I also have a long history of creativity. I feel like I will be judged by what I have created. I want to be able to look at tangible things I’ve made as evidence of my contributions to others and of my own creativity. So finishing things is an important value.
I had parents that weren’t great. I feel like I overcame them more than I was helped by them. I found that it is more important for me to mentor my kids than tell them what to do.
I have benefited from mentors. I decided I am obliged to pay that favor forward, even when I feel like a failure.
When you identify your values, it will help you decide what you should be doing. Do I need to take my kids to this appointment? Or can I put it off on family and spend time mentoring? None of the answers are easy, but they’re easier when I consider my alternatives and how they align with my values.
My life goals are to take care of my family and have a material positive impact on human health, in that order. I guess what worries me is that both of these are long-haul, compounding-type efforts when I've spent my entire life pursuing short-term goals like finish school-grade, finish college, finish grad school, finish post doc, start job. Now that I've been working in my career for the longest stretch of my life (just recently passing length of grad school), it's no longer a "sprint" and I'm not sure exactly how to do it fully. I have been taking on different functions at work every few years, so I have new and exciting things to do but there is no end-goal. Sure retirement is a possible end-goal, but I really, truly love what I do and I would love to not retire fully from science--I doubt I ever will. So then what is the life-goal? Keep on trucking, compounding the gains. That scares me because it's so nebulous, no count-down, no "number of steps left". Same now with parenting now that we're done having kids. Now what? Compound those gains. With children there are always new things since they're changing so fast, but that's so much of a gradient as to be unchanging when analyzed in the moment. I guess my wife and I discuss, "once the kids get into school" and "once the kids go off to college". sigh I imagine this is a common thing ambitious people feel at this point in their career-life matrix. Sorry for the rant, thanks for the opportunity to reflect. Didn't mean to take your time without asking.
Pro tip: Pick 'values' that don't require unlocking experience points, hitting milestones, or achieving things in this transitory world. Values that you can just do, now.
I appreciate that, and I've understood the sentiment for my entire life. I guess I'm just unable to grasp doing something that I can't follow my progress on. I think it's a personal fault of mine. Kind of like when people say you shouldn't compare yourself to others. How do you actually only compare yourself to who you were yesterday and only strive to be better than them? The whole mindfullness movment of recent makes me feel 'less than' because so much of my mental time is spent comparing myself to others' success...So when you say, "love well". Love well compared to what? What's the reference to compare against? I feel like at some point I'll hit a zen moment where I'll see with eyes crosses outward some inner "ah ha" and then I'll get it. But I'm not there yet.
What your life goals are. Identify what your purpose is.
I developed expertise and experienced in a field that was rare. I like what I work on. I knew that I needed to like what I do and find pride in my work.
I also have a long history of creativity. I feel like I will be judged by what I have created. I want to be able to look at tangible things I’ve made as evidence of my contributions to others and of my own creativity. So finishing things is an important value.
I had parents that weren’t great. I feel like I overcame them more than I was helped by them. I found that it is more important for me to mentor my kids than tell them what to do.
I have benefited from mentors. I decided I am obliged to pay that favor forward, even when I feel like a failure.
When you identify your values, it will help you decide what you should be doing. Do I need to take my kids to this appointment? Or can I put it off on family and spend time mentoring? None of the answers are easy, but they’re easier when I consider my alternatives and how they align with my values.