Define Your Path - Ep.25

Defining Your Own Life Path - Ep.25

[00:00:16] Intro

Hey guys, welcome to Growth on the Daily, the personal development podcast for athletes where we help athletes overcome the challenges we face on the daily. My name is Rey, and I'm your host. I'm a former competitive hockey player, passionate about self-growth, and I'm here to support you on your journey to becoming the best version of you.

Thank you guys so much for tuning into today's episode. I'm super excited to talk to you guys about defining your own life path. Before we dive into today's episode, I would love for you guys to head to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Let us know how you find the show. That is how we grow the Growth on the Daily community and we make a better podcast for all of you.

[00:01:00] Decide what kind of life you want to live

So today we're talking about defining your own life path, and I really wanted to talk about this topic this week because I've had many conversations with athletes, current and former of all levels, age groups and sports.

And the one thing that I can say is definitely common is the choice to pursue a professional athletic career and where that mindset comes from. But also what I found is if it wasn't a professional athletic career that they were trying to pursue, it was some other predefined path as well.

Navigating that can be very difficult. I think there's a lot of different factors that come into play here. One, I think is ourselves, like we have naturally an intention of where we want to take our lives. And two, we also have to deal with how others feel we should be living our lives. And putting that together, navigating how those forces work together can be extremely difficult, especially for athletes.

So I want to really talk about how you define your life path and why we want to do that. Like I mentioned before, you should be living a life that you want to live, right? Whether you want to play sports for fun, competitively, see how far you can take it, whether you want to become a doctor, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, you want to go to grad school, whatever that looks like for you, it's up to you.

So the first thing that I would say is decide what kind of life you want to live. Now, that might seem daunting at first because you have this pressure where you kind of have to have everything figured out. And I definitely would say when I was in my undergrad, I felt like I had that pressure. Like everyone would say, what's your five year plan?

And I'm like, I don't even know what I'm eating for dinner tonight. What do you mean? So there's a lot that goes into that, but I'm here to just say, you don't need to have a five year plan or any of that sort of things ironed out. I would say you just need to understand the direction you're going into, and learn from those experiences, and do what you can to progress as you go along your path.

So for example, in my case, I always thought I was going to start off in the sports industry and my career and work in an organization like MLSE or something. I don't even know. I have no idea what it looked like, but I just had that sort of idea since I've only done everything with sports and now I'm here working in consulting, in every industry except for sports, and I'm loving it.

So I'm not trying to say that you can't have another path and you shouldn't pursue down the path that's in your head initially. I'm trying to say that you can make conscious decisions to decide the life you want to live. So for me, I sat down and this is not a one time like sit down in five minutes, have this figured out.

Absolutely not. I'm talking throughout my undergrad and continuously today, so it's been a few years where

I know I say this a lot, it comes down to values, but I truly mean it.

You need to understand how do you want to spend your money or what role money plays in your life. That's a big factor to what you do, but it's also, a factor of what you need to do to get where you're trying to go. So if you're someone who loves to travel, you love to buy expensive clothing or go to expensive restaurants, like, cool, great.

So how can you build a life that you can do those things that you love, right? If you want to pursue, athletics as a professional career, what resources do you need to have in the place so you can set yourself up for success to doing that? If you want to go to grad school, what kind of programs do you have to look into?

How is that going to affect your athletic career as well? Those are all things to think about. So I would just sit down and say, you know, like, what would I love to be doing? And take this from a point of curiosity. You don't need to know that, like, I want to work for company X or I want to do this job, but just make a choice and start with like a field.

So for me, I started with consulting and I wanted to do consulting for many reasons. One is because I didn't know in terms of like industry what I wanted to go into, but I also wanted to help people and really progress my development on a rapid rate. And from what I learned from other people's experiences, and I'll definitely say what I've seen so far in my few months on the job, is that's definitely the case for consulting.

It's fast-paced. It's a ton of work, but it's great work. It's important work and impactful work. And it's also, work that I feel pushes me in all areas of my development very well. And so I've loved this job so far and I think it's really helping me navigate where I want to go. Now there's also pressure to pursue things like grad school.

You know, I have people in my life, parents, friends, colleagues, they're like, oh, you should go get your MBA. You should go do this, and you should go do that. And they're probably right. Like that's definitely a good path. We can see where those pathways exist, but I also at the end of the day, have to think about what's best for me and how that fits into not necessarily a life plan, but how I want to live my life, right?

If it's a tool that I'm going to use. And by that I mean the degree, if the degree is a tool that I'm going to use to progress my career in this direction X for sure makes sense. Like I'm going to work on it and do that. But also allow yourself to be flexible. Pick the stuff that means the most to you and means the most to your career.

[00:06:18] Handling external pressure

So that brings us into how do you handle the insights of others. What I like to say is welcome the insights of others, but act on your own. And what I mean by that is always be open to other people. And I don't mean you have to like actively listen and like take everything in that everyone's saying, but just like if they generally are looking out for you, and I'm talking about recognizing people that want the best for you, not people who are trying to bring you down.

So people in your life who look out for you and they have whatever, 2 cents to say, just hear what they have to say. Hear what they have to say, because I'm not saying you need to follow the direction or not. What I'm trying to say is it'll benefit you either way. Either way, it'll instill in you your own opinion about how you should live your life, or it'll intrigue you into a new pathway that you haven't thought of. So there's definitely benefit into that.

On the other side of the coin, like I mentioned a few moments ago, they're people that are going to try to bring you down and say, you're trying to be an entrepreneur. No, you should go be a doctor. Like it's a steady job. You'll make good money, et cetera.

There's a lot about that. On the sports side, you might have pressure to, you know, pursue a professional athletic career where, you know what, you've done this for 20 years and you're not really feeling it anymore. Like it hasn't had the same role in your life as you wanted it to have, like maybe you're curious about other things, but you might feel pressure because your parents put like all this time, money, resources into your development and you might feel like you owe people.

And that might be a lot of pressure to navigate. So what I would say to that is, remember one thing. Everybody who is pushing you in a certain direction to be better for yourself, like I'm talking in a positive direction, they want you to be happy and successful. That is what they want. It's not that they want you to be an NHL player, they want you to be a lead surgeon.

It's they want you to have a happy and successful life, and that's why they made so many sacrifices. So how I would say you navigate that is you have to communicate to them. If they're not planning to pursue the path that they set out for you, then you have to communicate to them that you are doing what's in your best interest.

You're doing something that's not only just going to make you happy, but it's going to make you fulfilled, and it's going to let you have a significant impact in whatever you're doing, whether that's on other people in the world, in your communities, and that is successful, important work, whatever that looks like.

And definitely not an easy conversation to have. And it might be a few conversations. It might also take the receiving party some time to actually wrap their head around it. It might require a few conversations, but honestly, taking that initial step is the hardest thing you have to do, but the best thing for yourself because why live your life for someone else?

No matter the sacrifices that were made, like the sacrifices were made for a reason. They were for you to live your best life. So do it. Do it in a way that you're going to love and surround yourself by the people that love you for doing so.

[00:09:31] Navigating Fear

 The final aspect of this, deciding what kind of life you want to live in, defining your own life path. The one element that we haven't talked about yet is fear, right? Even if you know you have everybody on board in supporting you, and even if you recognize like, hey, this is what I want to do next. There's still the jump. , right? The act. And fear is a thing that is likely going to impede you. But I would say let fear fuel you rather than impede you.

And it's very much easier said than done. But I will say, for example, with starting Growth on the Daily here, very fearful. I knew it was going to take a lot of work. I knew I had to learn a lot, and I also knew that it was going to require consistent effort and a lot of time to gain traction. And I'm in it now and I don't regret any decision that I've made.

It was very scary coming into this, you know, new world. You have tons of podcasts out there, tons of creators. Everyone's a creator, everyone's an expert on this, everyone's an influencer. It's just really saturated in this market. At the end of the day, I sat down with myself and I said, you know what?

Everybody has a voice, and that's why it's so saturated and just because there are other people out there that have their voice, the key thing to note is that they have their voice and you have yours, which means everyone has a unique value add in this world.

Whether that's a podcast, whether that's a business, whether it's you as a doctor, whether it's you as a performer, whether that's you as an athlete, whatever that looks like, you have something to contribute to this world, and you have to recognize that it's up to you to define what that path looks like and bring along the people that support you and push you to be a better version of you.

[00:11:23] Key Takeaways

So that is how I would say you can define your life path. Just to recap my points for you guys, the first step is really deciding the kind of life you want to live. So think about not necessarily a five year plan, but what makes you happy? What would make you happy in the future? What kind of life do you want to live?

Is that in Canada? Is that in your hometown? Are you traveling? Are you working a corporate job? Are you an athlete? What does that look like? The second thing I would say is handling the insights of others and the best way I would say to do that is to welcome those insights, but act on your own insights.

So let those voices come into play, but make the decisions based on your own gut. And when I say welcome those insights, I really mean focusing on listening to those who have your best interests at heart, not those who are trying to bring you down. And then finally, the aspect of fear. Let fear fuel you rather than impede you.

[00:12:24] Outro

Alright guys that is all I have for you guys for this week's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening. To motivate you guys to define your own life path this week I have a quote for you from Swami Vivekananda that states, "it is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us".

I absolutely love this quote because it reinforces the idea that how we make decisions in our life defines a life that we live. And so I really hope that resonates with you guys. If you took away anything from this episode, feel free to DM us on Instagram @growthonthedaily you can give us a follow there as well to stay in tune with the Growth on the daily community.

And of course, as always, for all of our information and resources, blogs, videos, head over to growthonthedaily.com. Thank you guys so much this is the Growth on the Daily podcast. The podcast helping athletes overcome the challenges we face on the daily. My name is Rey Lambie and I'm your host. Thank you guys for listening, and I will see you guys next week.