What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

How we unintentionally limit ourselves and the next generation — and the paradigm shift that can fix that

One of our favorite things to ask children is what they want to be when they grow up. In most cases we ask the question with the best of intent. We want to encourage children to dream, and I think we also kind of want to live vicariously through them as they sprinkle us with their unadulterated dreams.

But as I approach my 40th year of life, I have begun to see this question as more damaging than beneficial. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with getting children to think and dream about the future.

What’s damaging is the terminology that we use. Unfortunately, that terminology is the same terminology that we grew up with. And it has become so ingrained in our view of how our life should proceed that we have no other way of talking about what happens as you go forward on life’s journey.

The problem with the terminology is twofold. First, it presents the process of growing up as one that ends at some point. And it uses a phraseology that favors some endpoint as the destination to reach. Usually that endpoint is a career. What the question seems to assume is that the important thing is where you end up — which is unfortunate.

Becoming, not Being

As I make peace with some of the very difficult decisions that I have had to make over the course of my career, I am beginning to understand a truth I wish I’d learned over a decade ago.

The joy we get from work, just like the joy that we get from our family and communal relationships, doesn’t come from where we end up. The joy comes from the journey.

The joy in life comes from the hard work of making progress, from struggling, from learning. The joy comes from all those things that aren’t endpoints, but rather journeys. To put it another way the joy and the meaning come not from the being, but rather from the process of becoming.

When we ask children what they would like to be when they grow up, we are unknowingly teaching them to fixate on the endpoints, rather than the journey it takes to get there. In doing so, we are unintentionally robbing them of the benefit of enjoying whatever journey they may find themselves on as they stumble into adulthood.

We’re subtly suggesting something static as the goal — rather than something dynamic. And we’re also not-so-subtly suggesting singularity. We’re suggesting that there is only one thing that they will be when they grow up — and everything before that is a mere diversion. It’s a way of thinking I fell victim to for too many years as I too “grew up”.

This seems rather unfortunate. It rules out the possibility of us having more Leibnizes, Newtons, Descartes, or various other polymaths. We are suggesting that one’s contribution to the world takes a singular path. We are narrowing things down for our children, which is a shame.

And sure, you can argue that specialization is important for great progress overall — especially as technology progresses. And I agree. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility of specialization changing over the working lifetime of a person. In fact, in a time like this, where technological paradigms are turning over ever more rapidly — doesn’t it make sense that one’s specialization is less likely to stay the same for the 50 years of their working life?

A Verb, Not a Noun or an Adjective

The philosopher Aristotle talked about the primary aim of life being something called eudaimonia. There are many translations and interpretations of the word, but the best one that I’ve come across is flourishing. And it’s not really a feeling or an achievement. It’s actually an activity.

Philosopher Richard Kraut has a great explanation of the idea:

[Aristotle] says, not that happiness is virtue, but that it is virtuous activity. Living well consists in doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition. It consists in those lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of the rational part of the soul.

There’s something to this. The aim of life isn’t so much to feel a certain way, or achieve or accumulate certain things. Rather, it’s about activity. A good life is an active one — one rich with activities that challenge, invigorate, and ultimately improve the person living it.

But that activity is dynamic. Sometimes it’s pleasurable in the moment. Other times it’s frustrating. But the activity itself is good for the person doing it. It enriches them, and engages their mind and their emotions.

The good news is, then, that the meaning of life isn’t something far away that we have to run toward. There’s no mandatory waiting time to get your arms around it. It can be realized right now. And it can be realized over and over again, so long as you are engaging in the activity of self-exploration, self-enrichment, and contributing value.

Input Goals and Output Goals

I once read a post on Reddit (of all places) that made an important distinction when it comes to goals. There are 2 basic ways you can formulate goals: you can make them input goals or output goals.

Output goals are the ones that we usually think of when we think about goals. They’re basically just results. I would like to lose 20 pounds, so my goal is “lose 20 pounds”.

But formulating goals in this way can very easily detract to you from achieving your goals. This usually happens because once it appears to you that the goal is out of reach, or that you’re not at all enjoying the journey to get there, you end up abandoning the goal. But worse than that, it ties your definition of success to whether or not things work out a certain way — not whether or not you did the work you set out to do.

Input goals, on the other hand, focus not on what you’re trying to get, but rather what you intend to put in. Input goals are defined by the things that are largely within your control, that you will do in order to get some desired result.

Whether or not the result comes, you can still achieve your goal, because you did the work — and that work was the goal. We measure ourselves by whether we did what we intended, rather than whether things turned out how we wanted them to. It’s a much healthier and more reliable way to formulate goals.

Turn Inward

Going back to our favorite question to ask children — I fear we might be asking them from a place of output goals, rather than input ones. And that’s not surprising. Kids’ journey from childhood, to adolescence, and into young adulthood is a vast bazaar of competing metrics and comparisons. And nearly all of them are output goals.

That doesn’t change as they turn into adults. Adulthood becomes the pursuit of outputs. Possessions, awards, job titles, dollar amounts in the bank, quarterly results — they all become the yardsticks by which we measure ourselves. Even the ones that aren’t materialistic, like job satisfaction, are viewed in terms of output, rather than input.

It may be difficult to change our way of thinking. But at the very least, the resource we need to do it is right here. Simply turn inward. Success is not about what ends up happening for you, it’s about what you do and continue to do. It’s about doing the kind of activity that oozes care and a hunger for personal excellence. And really, that can be anything — whether you’re paid for it or not, and whether it’s currently a profession or not.

Is this all too pie-in-the-sky to be practical? Maybe. But maybe it’s also the best way to cultivate a new generation of young people who don’t fall prey to the artificial limits we’ve lived with. Maybe it’s the beginning of an attitude that continues the growth of a global culture of innovation. Shrug off the paradigm of endpoints and outputs, and embrace the love of the journey.

After all, if I had asked Steve Wozniak at age 4 what he wanted to be when he grew up, I’m not sure the answer would be helpful — either to me or to him. I’m quite sure whoever did ask him that when he was a kid didn’t try to paint him into a corner. He continued to believe that he could do pretty much anything he had the passion to do. And we’re all the better for it.

So what about you? What will your journey be?