What if we had all the answers as children?
My journey to uncover my Personal Legend
While driving through the stark desert of California and Nevada, when I wasn’t jamming out to Kacey Musgraves, I was listening to the audiobook for “The Alchemist” for the very first time. For those of you who have not yet read this important book, it is a fictional story of a boy in pursuit of ‘treasures’ he witnessed in a dream when he was a shepherd. The story is full of not-so-subtle metaphors for finding the meaning in life, and whatever ‘treasure’ may mean for us. The book is full of inspiring and thought-provoking messages, the core one being “When you want something, the whole universe conspires to make it happen.”
One quote that really got me thinking is,
“Everyone, when they are young knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to reach their Personal Legend.” — The Alchemist
This quote really had me trying to remember back to my childhood to think about — what did I enjoy doing? What was the universe pushing me towards? What IS my Personal Legend? I think this is distinctly different from my childhood answers to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” which ranged from fashion designer to Disney Channel star or lawyer depending on my mood… I didn’t know as much about the world, so I couldn’t translate all my passions and dreams into career goals that aligned. But thinking about the themes of what I was passionate about and what the universe seemingly was leading me towards has already led me to a few insights.
Writing
My first love was actually writing. It feels crazy to realize this only now, especially given how distanced I’ve become from this passion. As a little girl, when my siblings were playing outside on the swings, I was invariably sitting on the floor in my bedroom writing stories about my dolls’ fictional lives. My most cherished possession was a nice notebook with fancy plastic dividers for all the “chapters” in my novel I was working on. I loved writing stories inspired by the ones I was reading, nothing made me feel so alive!
Unfortunately, at some point I started to believe I wasn’t actually “good” at writing. My creative writing assignments in school would come back with a lot of red pen marks telling me I was getting too carried away with description and my grammar was awful (I’ve seen these workbooks from my 8 year-old self as an adult, and my teacher was honestly HARSH). Through a combination of being criticized for my creative writing, and then moving to Canada where creative writing was not at all part of our English curriculum, I lost touch with my creative self.
“The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron talks about how all of us are artists and artists are essentially our inner child. Those of us who don’t believe we are creative or are artists have often had our artistry as children suppressed or overly critiqued. Ever since reading that a few months ago I’ve been trying to remember back to a time when I felt free to dream and create… and this has also taken me back to my bedroom with my dolls and my fancy notebook.
Performing
As a child I was also inexplicably drawn to theater. I was very introverted (as you can imagine from the previous anecdote about spending my time alone with dolls), I had few friends, and would sometimes even hide from my family members when they came over to visit. So my parents were FLOORED when I asked to enroll in a local acting school at the age of 10. Performing was a huge part of my life for the years that followed. I spent every summer in Musical Theater summer camps, competed in music festivals, and auditioned for every school play. In fact, my first paycheck came from professional voice-over work at age 17. At the time an agent offered to represent me in Vancouver, but I let them know I was offer to ‘Bigger’ and ‘Greater’ things at Princeton so that wouldn’t be necessary…
Beyond acting, I began picking up other performance opportunities that also aligned with my academic interests by joining the Debate team back in 7th grade. Why exactly speaking in front of a group about the ethics of prostitution and marijuana appealed to me at age 12 will continue to be a mystery, but I’m so glad it did as debate opened up my world. Debate and public speaking soon began to eclipse theater in my life as I progressed from local tournaments to the Provincial, National, and International stages. I lived for the rush of adrenaline right before constructing a well-structured passionate 5-minute long speech after only hearing the topic 2 minutes previously. I loved the theater of injecting personal anecdotes and the magic of well-timed pauses, speaking to a group was like casting a spell.
Yet after a traumatizing attempt to impromptu debate whether Abraham Lincoln should have suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus with absolutely no grounding in American history (You mean to say the South Seceded !? Who was Abraham Lincoln again?) I left the Princeton debate team, and my opportunities for public speaking since have been few and far between.
So now what?
Whenever I used to envision myself as a Successful Business Person I pictured talking on panels, inspiring students, and writing thought pieces. Never actually doing the “business” work. Perhaps my attraction to business was always a means to an end trying to bring me back to one of my personal legends. After all — if you want to spend your days speaking or writing publicly, you’d better have something worthwhile to be communicating!
Yet, realizing that perhaps what I most wanted out of business was these writing and speaking opportunities has broadened my horizons in terms of what could be next. Is finding success in the business world the ONLY way to find these opportunities? Certainly not. It turns out I perhaps already have a few thoughts that people think are worth sharing.
Over the coming weeks I look forward to teasing out these ideas and using my Personal Legend as an additional lens through which to assess future options and opportunities.