Rediscovering Purpose
4 Steps to Avoid “Treading Water” After Graduation
Several months ago, I remember speaking with a colleague of mine about what it felt like to graduate college. We discussed many things, but the gist of the conversation can be summed up in one simple thought: “Now that college is over, I feel as though I have very little sense of purpose; very little sense of direction”.
The fact of the matter is that since infancy, the majority of us young people have always had a direction that we’ve been moving towards — a “next step” in our lives.
Age 4 — Preschool
Ages 5 to 11 — Elementary school
Ages 12 to 14 — Middle school
Ages 15 to 18 — High school
And then for many of us, Ages 18 to 22 — College
During each of these stages, we always knew that the years ahead would most certainly contain the “next stage”. These were things for us to look forward to; things that our young minds could depend on for the future; things that we were living toward. And within these various stages, there were all sorts of cyclical changes that occurred too, such as holiday breaks from school, or even summer vacation.
No matter where we’ve been in our lives up until this point, there has always been something different, yet somewhat predictable and exciting in the future.
Suddenly, we’ve graduated college. And don’t get me wrong, graduating college is an exciting time — it’s one of the greatest achievements of our lives. But the odd part is this — the cyclical changes and predictable stages of life are either gone, or completely blurry and confusing.
Some say that “building a career” or “getting married” is the next thing to focus on, but we all know that these stages aren’t nearly as defined or predictable as the stages described above from our younger years.
And what about something to replace the shorter term cyclical changes described above? Instead of spending your summer vacation in a different city for an internship, or studying abroad, we’re now interested in counting how many vacation days we have left in order to somehow get away for a little while? Am I the only one that doesn’t see this as satisfactory?
And I haven’t even gotten to the day-to-day lifestyle yet…
Personally, throughout college, I was used to waking up, attending class for the day, and then spending my afternoons or evenings doing some sort of activity with friends. We would do all sorts of things such as duct tape each other to chairs and put each other in the dorm elevators, strap cameras to our chests and race bikes around campus with someone riding on the handlebars, attend university-sponsored lectures from interesting people, and attend club meetings. There were even times on weekends when we would attend a local bar for a few drinks (and by the way, I’ll be as bold as to admit that there were times when the word “ends” as well as the word “few” earlier in this sentence could be used quite flexibly — and without any shame).
The point is this — only months ago, we were living lives that consisted of defined long-term stages, short-term cyclical changes, and day-to-day excitement, good company, and often unpredictability. We were living lives with a sense of direction, and purpose.
However, after graduation when I took my full time position at my previous company, I began to feel that sense of purpose wane.
“What’s next?! What is there to look forward to in six months, twelve months, 24 months? Or am I now just floating along, letting my career, my relationships, and my life simply occur, and whatever happens will happen?”
Don’t misunderstand me — I had a great summer. I was fortunate enough to still have a sizable group of close friends still around me in Ames, and a killer job at an amazing company. But the fact remained that the lack of direction, vision, and purpose was eating me alive — so I tried to do something about it.
If you’ve been keeping up with my other blog posts, you know what happened next in the story. And if you haven’t been reading my other posts, the remainder of this story would make more sense if you clicked here and read “Expat Dennis”, the story of me deciding to quit my job.
When I first arrived in Seychelles several weeks ago, I remember still feeling completely void of purpose. In fact, after 40 straight hours of what seemed like sleepless travel and downright exhaustion, I felt as though I was worse off than ever. At this point, I had quit a job that many people would kill for, left all of my family and friends to move 10,000 miles overseas to a place where I would be working for a company much different than the one I had left. Yes, the title is nice, and I’ll be spending less money month-by-month in first time since I was in middle school. But what about purpose? Or, perhaps the better word is progress.
“Where am I going? What am I doing?” I remember thinking.
I spoke with my older brother about it for a long time over the phone. We talked about the things that I could do to improve the situation, and with his thoughts, as well as the input of several others, I feel as though I’m veering back towards the right path — or at the very least, a path (note the italicized “a”.
The idea is this: I’ve begun to design and structure my life (both inside and outside of my job) as regularly containing activities that fall into one of four different categories. And to ensure that all of you readers are getting some value out of reading this post, I’m going to explain in full detail each of these categories. Perhaps if you’re my age (or any age at all), and you’ve found yourself in a period of life where you seem to only be treading water, these might help you take an important first step in a direction towards a life of purpose and direction.
1. Set Goals
This was the big one that my brother and I talked about. For some, this means deciding to exercise regularly. For others, maybe they’re interested in saving money for a big purchase, or even volunteering. For me, this meant making an aggressive commitment to learning French and Creole. I’m still awful at it, but understanding more everyday. I also made the commitment to pick up a schedule of running, because it allows me to clear my mind, and the rest of my day goes better having had a little exercise. Between the beach, the music, the sand on my feet, and the sun above, it truly makes a difference in my day. I’ve also taken a serious amount of action towards getting my financial life in order. I figured since I’m 22, it would probably be smart to begin paying off student loans, as well as open an online brokerage account to begin investing.
No matter what your goals are, you should make sure they are specific, time oriented, and most importantly, actionable. Don’t just set your goals — act on them.
Connect
During college, it was easy to connect with other people. On any given day, I was exposed to thousands of people — and more importantly, I was close to my family and friends. But after college, it was different. Most of us are either far away from family and friends, or we are simply living a different lifestyle involving a “grown-up” job, where friends become more distant, and alone time is more common than ever.
But this problem is easy to fix. Make a conscious effort to reach out to people, no matter if they are far away or right next to you. Human connection isn’t something that simply falls in our laps. I’ve discovered that it’s something that we need to work at — myself especially. If you know me at all, you know that I’m terrible at staying in touch long distance. It’s cost me some valuable relationships, but I’m working on it. For you, it might mean deciding to write one personal email per day to a friend, just to check in.
For me, I’ve developed a habit of writing hand-written letters to various people that I read about online. It could be business leaders, activists, whatever. My latest one was to this guy — because there’s absolutely nothing cooler than a badass hotel concierge whose sole job is to meet the ridiculous and random requests of hotel guests. Future career? I would totally consider it.
Anything that helps you join a conversation outside the realm of your everyday is something that can make all the difference in your life.
Build
Only a short while ago as college students, building things was a regular task for us. Between writing papers and completing projects, we were truly creating things out of thin air — things that we could turn around, point at, and say “Hey, I made that”.
After graduation, this element was lost in my life. Sure, at work we did our best to provide results, to produce things that will assist in advancing the company’s mission. But all of those things belonged to the company, and the day I walked out that door was the day that I was naturally disconnected from anything that I created there. The stories and experience gained will never be taken from me, but the items and productions themselves are now gone.
We all need things that we have built — things that truly add to the human artifice. For me, it means consistently contributing my thoughts and experiences to this blog. At the very least, it’s place where I can store my thoughts. However, ultimately my hope is that the content I post here can somehow by applied to your lives as well. But at the very least, I’m constructing something that is mine and only mine.
Additionally, I’m continuing to look into the idea of starting a business, whether it be physically here in Seychelles, or an online business that can be managed and operating from anywhere in the globe.
Put thought against the idea of you building something. I’d be interested to hear what you come up with.
Learn
At my last job, a guy by the name of Dean once told me that the smallest amount of studying that should ever occur in a person’s life is the amount of studying done in college.
“After graduation, taking time to study and learn is only more important”.
Consciously taking time out of your day to learn new things can be done through various methods. For me, I’ve chosen to read books. And while I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of reading books, anyone whose close to me would tell you that I rarely ever finish them — I always get bored and move on to other things.
So in order to fix that problem, I’ve begun to listen to audiobooks. I find them more engaging, easier to actually finish, and definitely more comprehendible. The best place I’ve found to get them is on Audible. For $15 per month, you get to pick one audiobook every 30 days, as well as receive significant discounts (I’m talking like $15 or less per book) for every book after your first “free” one.
Think about it. If the average audiobook is 10 hours, you can literally spend 20 minutes per day listening (that’s basically your commute to and from work), and finish one book per month (or twelve books per year, which is probably twelve more books than you read last year).
As a quick note, these four things don’t completely consume my day. I’m also an avid nap-taker, and I think it’s fair to say that anyone in my situation wouldn’t mind doing a little bit of paddleboarding or sunbathing either. But if I find myself getting through a day or two without being able to successfully reflect on accomplishing something in these four categories, I’ve misallocated my time.
After this, I hope you’ve gained at a least a little insight into what it means to continue having momentum, productivity, drive, and purpose in a time when you might be uncertain of your direction. Living a life without a feeling of progress or purpose seems daunting to me, and I hope you feel the same way. Hopefully you can use these four categories and implement them someway or somehow. They might just help you regain a foothold on life. I know I certainly needed one.
As always, if you enjoyed this post, please share it via social media so that someone else can as well! And don’t forget to follow me on Medium to continue receiving updates. Additionally, if you feel the need to reach out personally, you can certainly get my attention at patrickmdennis1@gmail.com.
