“People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” — Thomas Merton

In childhood, our steps are directed. At each stage of our growth, we are instructed on what to do next. Each rung on the ladder we climb into adulthood is clear to see. Others prescribe the place to which we’re climbing. The path to reach it is narrow and well-defined. We arrive at the top of that ladder into adulthood. Then paths explode from singular, narrow, and well-defined to infinite and expansive.

It is overwhelming.

While we are climbing the ladder of youth, most of us are not shepherded through the process of coming to understand ourselves. We have not learned how to see our own desires clearly. We spend our time looking and being directed onward, not inward. All the while, whist growing, we are rewarded by adhering to the direction of others. Being told what to do, how to do it, and doing it well.

Then we arrive at adulthood and are suddenly faced with an impossible number of choices. In that moment many of us realize we do not have an inclination for which choice might make us happy. We are left adrift. Lacking our own direction, and the skills for new behaviors, we return to what worked for us in the past. The behaviors that got us successfully out of childhood and into adulthood.

We look to others to prescribe for us a path.

What do our parents expect of us? What did another man, who I admire, do to reach the place he is today?

Looking outward, not inward, to find the way. Knowing better how to navigate the exterior than the interior. Presupposing that another man’s choices, in another time, would be the right choices for us. Let alone the right choices now or the right choices at all.

Only too late sometimes we realize that we must peel off the layers of others’ expectations to reach our core. To see ourselves. To begin to understand what is there. The sad truth is that many of us are unfamiliar with ourselves.

I know that I was.

I labored under the illusion that once I was deep enough into myself, my identity would be crystal clear. Like finding buried treasure, you’d pop open a chest and see yourself in high definition. All the shining bits of your true self unmasked at last.

The reality is less like finding pirate treasure and more like an archaeological dig: finding something brilliant and fascinating, covered in a language you do not yet understand. Once found, it takes translation. The translation takes effort and time, but with it comes powerful insights that reshape your life and how you look at the world.

During this time, the almost irresistible siren call of others’ expectations calls to you. So what do you do? Understanding that stuffing our ears with wax or lashing ourselves to a mast, as Odysseus did in the Odyssey, is probably the wrong inclination, what is the right one?

For me it has been to journal. To write. To adjust my perspective. To appreciate that I do not have one life but instead many. We have a tendency to think of our life as one thing. It starts, we grow, we age, we die. One big life. One big death. One person we become as an adult. That one person ultimately dies.

The reality is different.

The life we live changes so much between one chapter and another that, in truth, it is a different life. Our identity has changed. The old life is over. A new life has begun. The old person we were has passed away and will not return. A new person has risen.

Many little deaths, not just one big one.

In each of these transitions, we must let ourselves die. To grieve the past self and be reborn as different. Stepping on uncertain legs into a new life. This happens naturally for a while. From kid to big kid. From kid to teen. From teen to young man. Life pulls us unavoidably through a series of transitions.

Then, later, we must choose to let the old die and step into the new. To let the young man die so the man can emerge. We need to let go of our identity as just men and become something different as husbands. To grow and change again, in becoming a father.

This is why sometimes career change is hard.

We do a poor job of separating our person from our profession. Our identity from our occupation. We see ourselves as what we do and do not have the lens to see ourselves instead as who we are.

So, changing what we do feels like changing who we are when that shouldn’t be the case.

If you are struggling with career changes, feel like you overidentify with your occupation, and want to go in search of yourself but are not sure where to look, I get that. It makes sense. It is an all-too-common feeling. If you’re not sure what to do with that feeling, read on, perhaps some the practices I’ve used will help for you.

If you’ve unearthed some strange object in your internal digging and are trying to make sense of what it means, I’ve been there, too. When I have been there, puzzling through those moments, this is what worked for me. I hope that it works for you.

My journal is the mat on which I wrestle with the mysterious things about myself.

The process of knowing ourselves is not a single revelation. It is a lifelong act of translation. You continue to unearth and translate more fragments of yourself. Each new translation providing a broader perspective. Fresh new insights expanding old information.

I try to journal every day. I journal in three ways.

1. One-line journal (I’m verbose, so it is more like a three-line journal). One thought, reflection, or insight that sits at the front of my mind.
2. Gratitude journaling. If there is one hack to better well-being, it is gratitude. Although many studies support it, Erin Fekete’s study from the University of Indianapolis showed demonstrable mental health benefits. Writing five minutes a day. For only a week. The effects lasted for at least a month. Five minutes of appreciating the things for which you can be grateful, every day, will transform your life.
3. Long-form journaling. Honestly I don’t take the time to do it every day but I wish I did. It takes me a half hour or so to do. Sitting with my feelings, trying to unpack them through writing. Looking at the patterns that negatively impact my life, recognizing and disrupting them (especially internal patterns).

Too often, people confuse a journal and a diary. A journal has very little to do with what happened. Recounting a mundane series of events that you’ve observed is not journaling. Journaling is writing about what things mean, or how things feel, especially when you’re unsure how they feel — or what they mean.

For me the best way to journal is to pay attention to the things that draw your attention — the moments when you feel moved to do something, to speak, to help, to insert yourself into a situation in which you are not obligated to be involved. Become very curious about those inclinations. Insights about these deep compulsions hold the keys to translating the tablet of truths you unearthed in your inner work. To come to know intuitively the thinker of your thoughts.

To journal is to write about what you’re going to do about these things. The curiosities, or problems, that are inside, not those that are outside. Looking not at external actions, but at internal ones. Considering and choosing how you’re going to work upstream of your thoughts. Pioneering to the headwaters of your motivations and inclinations — your identity. And moving the stream.

Recognizing that enduring changes to your motivations and inclinations is about focusing on changing who you are — not what you do or what you have. To sift through the stuff in your life working to extract the things that really matter. In so doing, to come, to understand yourself more completely.

Use those insights to align your actions and the things that are most satisfying to you. The things that really bring you joy.

When you’ve done that, what makes sense for you in a career change seems a lot clearer. It will make which wall you desire to climb, and why you desire to climb it, clear. That clarity makes selecting the ladder a much less stressful, and much higher confidence, decision.

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