40 Conversations: A Guided Journal for Personal and Professional Growth

Introduction

Imagine a point in the future where you have achieved your greatest professional goal. Invest a moment here. Try to visualize your career success—you at the top of your game. Imagine you’ve worked hard and have earned it. Now consider this question: How might that success feel?

I think most people will have some level of contentment or satisfaction. Others may feel a bit of pride in the accomplishment. Some may begin to ponder, “What’s next?” Those responses are all normal and valid. But now, imagine it’s one month after that major achievement. Consider these questions:

- How do you feel now (one month later)?

- What is motivating you now (since you’ve accomplished your greatest career goal)?

- What occupies your time and your thinking now (both at work and at home)?

Yale professor and economist James Choi tells his students that the greatest scarcity they will face in their professional lives is not a scarcity of opportunity, but a scarcity of meaning. He contends that finding happiness in life can be accomplished only by knowing our why.

Choi explains that thinking about some future ultimate success or reaching major life goals can become arrival fallacies. Here, we mistakenly believe that we achieve happiness only after achieving a particular goal. This, he contends, can lead to deep disappointment.

Dr. Choi maintains that the only way to find contentment and happiness in life is to identify a purpose. Our purpose answers why we get up in the morning and go to work. It answers why we live, why we laugh, and why we love. It answers the deepest existential questions of our raison d'etre. Please note, if you have not yet formally articulated your purpose or mission in life, this journal will guide you through that in Conversation 6. I was around thirty-five when I first outlined my personal mission. It’s never too early or late. You can begin at any age.

As you move through all forty of these reflective conversations, you will be challenged to dig below the surface to consider what really matters in life. There are likely several questions herein that you have never been asked. These will lead you to think about your real purpose and see beyond surface-level professional achievement.

Now, here's the cool part. As the questions help you zero-in on meaning and purpose, you will, subsequently, become more valuable in the workplace. Walking through this process of deep, missional thinking will provide clarity. It will give you the courage to leave a job you dislike, or stay and improve one that has potential. This inward focus will help your outward leadership skillset grow.

Our personal and professional selves are intertwined, even if we try to hold them apart. This journal—this journey—will help you see how everything can come together with purpose and meaning.

Are you ready for the challenge? Are you ready for the opportunity? Are you ready to define and live your purpose? The time to begin is now.

How to Use This Journal

Reflection and journaling are proven methods that help us retain things we learn. They also help us think about our thinking, the very definition of metacognition. These powerful tools.

This guided journal is a companion workbook that uses questions from The Encouraging Mentor: Your Guide to 40 Conversations that Matter. It provides a place for you to write reflections while talking with a mentor, or you may simply use this journal as an independent study exercise for personal and professional growth. Either way, it will help.

Each of the forty entries herein includes a brief introduction that provides background and context. It uses questions to prompt your thinking on topics that include life purpose and mission, career advancement, expanding your perspective, increasing connectivity, and identifying your potential to create and achieve the future you want. This journal will help you identify leadership skills, strengths, and opportunities that you might not yet see in yourself.

Preview Conversation #3:

Five Things to Have, Do, Help, and Be: A Personal Futuring Exercise

Background: Everyone—every company, every non-profit, etc.—has two options for the future. There is the one that will be if we do nothing (continue the status quo) or the one that could be if we work to achieve it (plan and act to reach desired ends, goals, dreams, mission). Peter Drucker said it best: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

At a very early age, most people are asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” We often prompt young minds with examples: “Do you want to be a firefighter? A teacher? A farmer?”

But what if there is a more important question: “Who do you want to become?” This is qualitatively different. This is perhaps the best question to ask to prompt future thinking, focus, and goal setting.

Read over the chart below. Then fill in each box with some ideas.

What are 5 things you want…

…to have: (These can be tangible or intangible.)

…to help: (These can be big and small. Think broadly.)

…to do: (This is about “what” you might do: jobs, career, things for fun, “Bucket List” items, etc.)

…to be: (Not “what” you might do, but “who” you might become.)

Analysis: Look at your responses. Will the things you want to do move you in the direction of things you want to have and to help? If not, add some actions to the to-dolist, then prioritize. But remember, you cannot do everything. A prioritization strategy is to put some broad target dates next to your to-do items.

Challenge: The “to be” category will reflect how people remember you, now or when you’re gone. Consider two action items that will help you accomplish who you want to be and how you want to be remembered.

Homework: Carry this around and update it over the next few weeks. Discuss insights with your mentor, a trusted friend, or a family member.