MY ORIGINAL CAREER PLAN of marrying into royalty evaporated when Princess Stephanie of Monaco never even answered my letters. Plan B: find someone to pay me for doing stuff I wanted to do anyway. Plan B worked. Mostly, I have mucked around, had fun, and done a few things that interested me. I have been endlessly surprised and grateful to get a bit of money as well.
I exaggerate a little. Every job has green-, orange- and red-light stuff: red-light activity is aspects of your job you hate, orange-light describes work you don’t mind doing but it doesn’t excite you, and green-light is stuff you love doing.
When you are in your green-light groove, work doesn’t feel like work; it’s a buzz, you’re in your ‘flow’. Every job I have ever had has had its red light moments, like preparing reports and invoices or enduring dull meetings, but most of my working life has been brilliant emerald green. I’d recommend it.
Certainly, I’d tell young people to do what I’ve done: have a quick shot at snagging a prince or princess, but if that fails, hunt for green careers. Don’t waste your precious short life on anything less than 60% green.
Adults: help your young people find their green-lights by NOT asking them, “What are you going to do when you leave school?” Adults always asked me that. I wanted to say, “Drugs”. A better response would have been, “I’m starting a door-to-door leg-waxing business …”, then lean back to look at their legs, I’ll give you my card.”
Actually, my standard answer to this vocational inquisition became ‘Quantity Surveyor’; the grown-ups would look surprised and then nod approvingly. I knew they didn’t know what a quantity surveyor was – I didn’t either – but it gave a convenient off-ramp for a conversation neither of us wanted to be in.
I really had no idea what I wanted to do, but the fact that adults kept asking me made me think that I should know. Wrong! Young people don’t know about their career path because they don’t know about themselves! A much better conversation to have with a young person is about their sports, their hobbies, the stuff they watch, their values, their favourite teachers … It’s a conversation that helps you get to know them and, more than that, it helps them get to know themselves.
Career advice should be less about what jobs are out there and more about discovering who a person is. This insight suddenly dawned on me just a few years ago when someone asked me what I do. “I write a bit, I do some TV and radio, and I travel around talking to people.” “So, basically, you just get paid to be John Cowan?” Yes!
If adults had ignored my primitive personal hygiene and inarticulate grunts and actually engaged me in real conversations 50 years ago, I believe my answers would have contained hints foreshadowing every green-hued job I’ve ever had. For example, my adolescent-self loved photography, and eventually I spent decades working in all sorts of photography, movies, television and media.
As a teenager, my favourite subjects were sciences; I had no idea at the time how that passion might sprout into a career, but it did. An insightful adult back then might have asked to see the funny notebooks and the cartoons I made – in hindsight, they held the protoplasm for a communications career.
It was all there. But I never saw it at the time. Some good conversations back then might have saved me from a few red- and orange-light choices.
With each new job, I was wracked with Imposter Syndrome and felt guilty taking their money. “We’ll pay you what you’re worth.” “I couldn’t live on that!” I am sure the bosses who employed me could have found better-qualified people. That’s a fact. I don’t do humility well, but my theory is that the best bosses can see through your CV and see you. And they would far rather have someone on their team with a passion for the job than someone with mere qualifications.
There’s no guarantee you’ll often find good bosses like that – I was lucky – but it’s worth looking for them. Finding you will be part of their green-light stuff.
AFTER DECADES STUDYING FAMILY LIFE, JOHN NOW FOCUSSES ON THE ‘PRIME-TIME’ ISSUES OF LATER MIDDLE AGE. CHECK HIM OUT ON JOHNCOWAN.CO.NZ – ESPECIALLY IF YOU NEED SOME WRITING, EVENT SPEAKING, VIDEOS MADE, OR SOMEONE TO HAVE A COFFEE WITH.
