What do you do when you don’t know how to move forward?
This was a central question coming from the high school students in Abu Dhabi, as a kick off start to the fourth annual Forbes 30/50 Summit, which brings together women from all over the globe for a week of intergenerational and cross-cultural networking and connection.
But navigating the unknowns of the adulthood and careers remains a universal question throughout our lives for both men and women.
Some of the answers coming from the speakers, were:
“Never settle.”
“Walk away from a problem, to gain clarity.”
But sometimes, if feels right to settle. At least temporarily.
And more often than not, instead of walking away from a problem or a situation, you have to work through it where you are.
Here is one thing to do, and one thing to know, to keep life flowing.
To keep life flowing, you have to take charge of who you are and what you want.
Take regular time for written self-reflection to increase your self-awareness about your identity, what you really want and value in life. Set your goals and keep adjusting them as you go along. Knowing yourself helps you craft authentic goals that align with your identity and makes them easier to reach.
A good quality self-reflection – an honest kind, takes time to develop. In the beginning you edit a lot and watch out for what you write as if you’re trying to impressive someone.
My advice is to write without the censorship whatever comes to mind, and re-read it the next day.
To keep life flowing, remember the famous ‘seven-year itch’.
Psychologist Daniel Levinson popularised the idea of the seven-year itch and the midlife crisis.
Life changes all the time, sometimes in the form of small events and sometimes bigger.
Usually, your life flows through stable periods, but about every seven years something happens. You realise that the way your life is set up, isn’t working anymore.
You changed, the situation changed, and it’s time to make a transition.
Transition periods usually last for about three years, where you reconsider not only your actions, but also your goals and the premise of your life.
One of the biggest challenges of transitions is knowing what you want to keep and what to change.
That is exactly why self-reflection is so powerful.
It allows you to proactively explore possibilities, ask yourself questions, and eventually commit to a decision.
There are a few traps to avoid, though.
The first one, is about ‘settling’ in life for too long; continuing doing what you’re doing, despite knowing that it’s time to change.
A sure way to settle and get stuck is to never explore your options, so explore.
The second one, is about overthinking; overanalysing and intellectualising decisions and forgetting, that you need to align your head and your heart to make good decisions.
So, explore your options but don’t overthink.
Define the premise of your life, your goals and time frames. Then, take action.
To keep life flowing, keep reflecting on yourself.
Image: Alamy, Demi Moore, A Few Good Men (1992).