I recently received this question from a business contact, seeking advice:
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Hi Matt,
thank you very much for your message. I am interested in receiving feedback, open words, support and motivation.
At the moment, I am well educated, passioned on data/analytics/data science, have a good job (high work life balance) and a wonderful family. Sounds great, I should appreciate my situation but it feels boring.
I am thinking about going/doing next steps but I am unsafe what should be the next move. Do you understand my point?
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Maybe you (or someone you care about) are in a similar situation, so I wanted to share my response with you and help you potentially feel better and realize, there is no reason to feel guilty about wanting more from life.
When in a situation of not knowing what to do, which decision to take, I recommend you to do what I do – go somewhere quiet, ideally outside. Go to a forest, a beach, near a lake or river. Flowing water often helps us to calm down and feel tranquility. Once, you have found "your place" get quiet and find your inner voice. The more often you look for and find your inner voice, the stronger it gets and the higher the chances, it will never steer you wrong. Now, here’s my response to the message I mentioned above, enjoy the read:
I completely understand your thoughts and how you probably feel. I was in a similar situation already a few times on my professional path.
When you say you are unsafe about what your next steps should be, what is your biggest fear? Do you already have some ideas in your head, on what you should be doing next, what the possible steps could be?
If you try to answer those questions, I believe it would be helpful for you to get a more detailed view on what could potentially take you forward.
Bottom line, I believe it’s extremely important for you to know, you have no reason to feel bad or guilty for wanting to expand your career, your life, your income – even if your current situation feels great. Our society has a tendency to make us believe, we should be satisfied, when we have a decent job, above-average income and a nice family/relationship.
My belief is, we should always continue to improve ourselves and our lives. After all, we live in very exciting times of hi-speed development and ever changing disruptive environments. It would very wrong and a total waste, to not make every effort to capitalize on and benefit from the huge amount of opportunities we have nowadays. We should always aim for a better life, that way we can make use of our potential and ultimately become ultra successful.