WHERE WILL YOU BE FIVE YEARS FROM TODAY? OR IN 1825 DAYS…

Dave gave me a book for my birthday with this title. I was so excited to find out where I would be… but there was no immediate answer inside. It’s a workbook and it asks you to remember what’s important and to think about how you want to be remembered and then to do the work to design where you will be in 5 years.

The last time someone asked me this question I didn’t take it quite so seriously. I was interviewing for a job out of college. The recruiter never looked up from his paper. Three separate times he asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

I had practiced this answer. I was ready. And, I thought I got it right the first time he asked. The second time he asked, I wondered if he didn’t like my first answer or needed more information so I added to it but didn’t change it; of course, it was all about how I hoped to progress at the company he was recruiting for. But then, the third time he asked, well, I figured I had blown the interview because he was bored by my previous two answers. So, unfortunately I blurted out, “Well, I hope I’m not interviewing college seniors.” He finally looked up from his page but only to tell me that the interview was over.

Five years from that interview I was giving birth to my oldest son, now 19. How could I have imagined that? I was working at a job that I loved with people that loved what they did and it was nothing like the company I had been interviewing with. And I was meeting the friends that would last me a lifetime. All good things.

So, now, with this book, I am taking the question to heart. Where will I be in five years? or 1825 days? I think there are some things we can design to happen and I think that if we live with good intent that good things will happen that we can’t even imagine.

So adding to my list for my 10,000 days: I will live with good intent and expect good things to happen.