Advice to Your 20 Year Old Self

impactology Nov 13, 2022
professional plus personal development

If you could go back in time, what do you wish your 20 year old self knew?

When you’re a professional, engineer or whatever, you think that development is about Professional Development. You are learning new techniques, going on all these professional training programs, all manner of things.

But, in fact, what I didn’t know until really quite recently is that in order to really advance in this world, you need to grow as a person not as a professional.

So I would be telling my 20 year old self to pay attention to Personal Development as much as professional development. Because at the end of the day I like to think of this. If there are ten of you and there is going to be one of you left.  Shall we say: the last one standing. Who’s that going to be? I think you’ll find that it’s probably going to be the most rounded, the wisest (or whatever word you want to use) person. Most people when they get to a point in their career where they resent so and so got promoted over me. Or I don’t know where I am going to go from here, because I don’t want to be one of ‘those kind of bosses’ Those kind of thoughts. You are really talking to yourself and saying ‘what have I not become that I need to become’ in order to be something different. Not necessarily the boss, but something different.

P.s. Hear the full context of these words in the Lean Effect Podcast with Mark De Jong