Be willing to be wrong about your limits, so that you can be right about your possibilities.”
—Alan Cohen

Whether you are graduating from high school, college, graduate school or even a career as you enter retirement, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the future. So here are five secrets to navigating this profound transition in your life.

1) Nothing beats back fear like information and knowledge. So when you get intimidated because you are comparing yourself to others or the goals you have set seem so big, take the time to look back on your life and get in touch with your greatness. If you can’t figure it out, ask your friends and family to express what they love and respect about you. Recount your proudest accomplishments and write them down. Then look at the skills they demonstrate and the gifts they illustrate and choose to own them.

2) Realize mistakes are the building blocks of success. Julius Irving said “To be an innovator you can’t be worried about making mistakes.” Mistakes are not to be feared, they are simply a fact of life. The secret lies in how you respond to them. Part 1: Make a decision consciously so it truly serves your goals and desires, and respects your values. When you do, even if the decision turns out differently than you expect, you will have nothing to regret or lament, instead you will have experience and wisdom. Which leads me to Part 2: Do not judge your decisions of yesterday with your knowledge of today. Why? Because you now have new information. At the time you make any decision, all you know is what you know and nothing more. You most certainly don’t know what the outcome of that decision will be. Once you learn the outcome you may use that information for the next decision, but not for beating yourself up about the first one. You did your best, so look forward, move on and be proud in your willingness to take the chance and earn your mistake.

3) Take stock. The stock market says past performance is no indication of future gains. The same applies to life. Your success in school or business is not a guarantee to your success in life or retirement. Look at what you are leaving behind. Your past has formed your identity, your purpose, your direction and more. You mastered the skills to thrive in that environment and those skills may not serve you the same in your new life. The first major disappointment is generally felt when that realization takes hold, so prepare for it. Take the time to feel the fear, the pride, the confusion and any other emotion that may be hanging on. Acknowledge what you are saying goodbye to; whether it be the freedom of college or the power of your career. If you just “put it behind you” without addressing it directly, it has a way of coming back in the form of regret, “the good ole’ days,” or a loss of identity. Don’t give it that kind of power.

4) Take time to explore. Life is a journey, so steal a page from your childhood and play “I Spy” along the way. Take time to notice how you are adapting to and feeling about your new life, post graduation or post retirement. You may not feel the way you thought you would at this point in your life. Your dreams may begin to shift; your goals may begin to change. Stay aware of what these changes are telling you. Just because you preached for years that you were going to be a financial wizard after college or sail around the world in your retirement doesn’t mean you are obligated to do so if your goals and desires change. Many of my clients felt like they lost control of their lives somewhere, like they got caught on a treadmill and can’t get off. By staying aware of what you are doing, why you are doing it and how you are feeling about it along the way, you retain control of your life.

5) When looking into your future, see with the clarity of your eyes. You have crystal clear clarity at arms length, but as objects move further away the detail is reduced. By the time something is a mile away you are lucky to discern shapes and colors depending on its size. The same is true with life. By all means, dream, plan, set goals and define your long term aspirations, but be cautious about the level of detail. If you get too specific about how life looks in five years, you may be living with blinders on and missing profound possibilities along the way. Take the time to look up and test your theories for accuracy and continued relevancy instead of just looking for ways to prove yourself right. As Alan Cohen said, be willing to be wrong about your limits, so you can be right about your possibilities.

Life can seem overwhelming and uncertain at these major crossroads of graduation and retirement. So if you find yourself in such a quandary, remember, your next decision is not your most important decision, it is simply your next decision. The criteria you use to make the decision, and the manner in which you respond to the outcome, is far more important than the decision itself. Success is simply getting up one more time than you fall down. Should you happen to fall, get up, remember the five secrets and build your future – one step at a time.

If you don’t brag about yourself, who will? Your mom? Unfortunately, our society has taught us that bragging is bad, rude or conceited. I would agree, if it’s being used to insult or put down another, or to appear superior, or arrogant. If, however, bragging is done in the spirit of respect and compassion and used as a sincere way to share a glimpse of your personal story with another, then it can be endearing, empowering and even unifying.

Point #1: It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.

When given the opportunity to talk about ourselves, most of us resort to the encyclopedia method of communication: place of residence, job, marital status, number of kids, maybe our favorite hobby. While the listener may expect such a clinical response, when someone responds differently, with more enthusiasm or creativity, it catches our attention. If it’s spoken with humble confidence we feel honored and connected.

Point #2: If you aren’t interested in what you are saying, the odds have it your audience isn’t interested either.

Positive bragging is a lot like selling yourself. Unfortunately too many people have a negative opinion of sales. If you view sales as manipulation or coercion, then you are likely to view bragging as aggressive and unflattering because it’s used as a tool to intimidate. This is like when you were young and complained how difficult your life was and your dad would say “when I was your age I walked to school 10 miles one way, up hill in both directions!” The problem with that kind of bragging is it’s about one-upmanship and it leaves you vulnerable to attack. The listener is no longer interested in you because the dialogue has turned into a competition and you might well get a response such as, “Well, when Abraham Lincoln was your age he was president of the United States!” This kind of bragging doesn’t bring people closer to you, it pushes them away.

However, if you view sales as positive, a process of matching product with need, then bragging is nothing more than the education of a prospect about your product…you! When a young sales person started out, the story goes; he was struggling with converting his prospects to clients. He said to his manager, “I can lead the horse to water, but I can’t make it drink.” The manager replied, “Ah, that’s the problem, your job is not to make them drink, your job is to make them thirsty.”

Point #3: Positive bragging is about telling a story about you that connects with the listener in a meaningful way, so they become curious about you and who you are.

Benefits of Bragging:

1. Improved self confidence
2. Better posture
3. The ability to see greatness in others
4. More Romance, that goes for the married and the unmarried. I’m married but I still love it when my wife agrees to go on a date with me.
5. Job opportunities, you never know who you are talking to, or the potential connections that will lead from it.
6. You begin to see patterns in your life and you realize truths about yourself, such as being a healer, an artist, a builder, a teacher…
7. Rut buster. It breaks the habit of negative self talk.
8. Most people are about as happy, successful, in love… as they make up their mind to be. Bragging raises you to another level of happiness, success, love, whatever you want.

How do you do it? One way is to answer questions with information that excites you. If someone doesn’t know the truth about you, then all they can know is what they see. If you simply answer, “I’m a lawyer” and the person you are talking to has a negative opinion of lawyers, then they will makes assumptions about you based on what they think they know or understand about lawyers. Your goal is to break those assumptions. Instead you could respond with “I am changing the world by balancing the scales of justice!” Or, “I’m protecting the environment from within the legal system.” What makes these responses powerful is they are sincerely about the speaker with no comparison or judgment about the person with whom they are talking.

Point #4: Think in terms of how you want people to see you, then use language, stories and information to demonstrate that perspective

Tips for Bragging:

Dreams are to life what headlights are to cars, they don’t determine where you go; they simply show you what is possible.”

In 1979 the Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the Cold War was going strong and Vietnam was still a recent memory. I was confused, I was afraid, and I was 15 years old. The question, “What was I supposed to do with my life?” percolated in my mind. I considered fixing the world, a dream I harbored since I was six, but fear won, so I picked up my 35mm camera and decided that I was better suited to photography. I graduated from high school and pursued an education in business and photography.

In the summer of 1984, no longer able to take the global hatred, I transferred to a four year college. Something had to be done in this world and I decided I was the person to do it. I took up the study of politics and I set out to become P.O.T.U.S., the President of the United States. As graduation approached, the fear returned, along with a heaping dose of doubt and confusion. As I looked ahead I no longer saw opportunity or the oval office, I saw an abyss, a void, an unknown. The day before graduation, I stood in my parents’ hotel room and had an emotional breakdown. “Great!” I said extremely loudly, “Now what!?”

Sitting in the twilight between student-hood and adulthood I wondered what my life purpose was. “What’s it all about, this life of mine and how do I live it?” For me, the answer was quite simple – get a job. “It doesn’t matter what the job is,” said my parents and others, “you just need experience.” So that’s what I did.

By my mid thirties I was a success; the Vice President of a Software company, and an integral part of turning a $300,000/yr company into a $10million/yr industry leader. Unfortunately, something was missing. I was in a rut. I had stopped paying attention to my dream of changing the world and ended up in a place that I never intended to be. That’s when it hit me: I was living a job, not a life. It was time to wake up.

It is during similar awakenings that my clients come to me for coaching. They find themselves on that precipice between the only world they have ever known (school, work, motherhood…) and how to can make a difference in the way they want the world to be. They are confused, sometimes afraid and sometimes eager about the mystery that lies before them and asking, “Is this what my life is meant to be?” “Can it be more?”

When I work with clients during this awakening, I use powerful questions to help them find a meaningful starting point for their quest, such as: What role are you playing in your life – leader or follower? What role is your job or current circumstance playing in your life – fulfillment or maintenance? Are you actively moving your life forward, or drifting with the current? Do you look back over your life enthralled with the story, or wondering when the real story will begin? Is life about creation or acceptance? The answer to these questions gives people a concrete place to begin the next phase by helping them understand how they have approached their life up to this point. And as a coach, I have found there are two primary approaches these answers describe: The Foundation approach and the Vehicle approach.

The Foundation Approach

The Foundation Approach is a life focused on “what” questions, such as: What should I do with my life? What job should I take? What do I want to be when I grow up? People building a Foundation type of life generally view themselves as results oriented, practical, pragmatic, realistic and responsible. They make decisions in their lives for a wide variety of logical reasons: such as earning money, paying down debt, supporting a family, buying things, building a stable “foundation” for their life they can build upon, all of which are admirable goals. This approach, however, has little to do with dreams or changing their world.

The challenge facing Foundation builders is they look at their station in life as a destination. They use expressions such as “you play the hand you’re dealt” and generally feel they have reached some sort of end. As a result, several things happen to Foundation path subscribers:

• Obligations and responsibilities supersede desires and wants.
• They stop dreaming and growing and ruts begin to form in their life.
• Time gets shorter – there’s not enough time to do the things they have to do, and the ones they want to do.
• Promotions and raises are golden handcuffs and they think they can’t leave the job now that they are finally making good money.

The Foundation approach can be stable, steady, consistent, dependable and comfortable; however, it is also binding, rigid, inflexible and restrictive. The underlying emotion for many people following this approach to life is fear, which leads them back to the questions of “what:” What if it changes? What if it gets worse? What if I lose control?”

The Vehicle Approach

The Vehicle Approach to life asks questions that begin with “how.” This approach understands nothing is permanent and life can turn on a dime, as proven by families affected by downsizing, hurricanes, or winning the lottery. People attracted to the Vehicle approach are similar to those attracted to the Foundation approach in that they too want to earn money, pay down debt, support a family, buy things, and start building a stable life they can grow into. However, when using the Vehicle approach, life is more about the journey than the destination. People subscribing to this approach find:

• They are willing to risk being wrong and dreams are an integral part of life.
• Time is a negotiable commodity and balance is a goal to life.
• Obligations and responsibilities are born out of desires and wants
• Every experience is a stepping stone to be collected and used to their personal advantage
• They have a clear understanding of their values and goals, and make decisions to honor those values and meet those goals.

While the Vehicle approach can appear naïve, it is simply an approach that is acutely aware of life. Because of this consciousness, people who use the Vehicle approach are armed with tools and benchmarks to make effective decisions that serve them throughout their life. The Vehicle approach makes people flexible, curious, open, full of conviction and willing to ask powerful questions: “How can I make this situation better?” “How can I learn from this experience?” “How does this situation serve me?”

Societal pressures and expectations often drive people to the Foundation approach first, and foundations are great – if you’re a house. Life, however, is more dynamic than a house and requires a method of flexibility and movement that a “foundation” can’t provide. So, how does one learn to adopt the Vehicle approach, especially when the weight of reality is bearing down upon their shoulders? Here are three tips for getting there:

1. Dream! Not because you are obligated to follow those dreams, but because dreams will show you your truth. When you know your truth, values are clearer, which makes it easier to stay focused on the road of life you truly want to travel by giving you guidelines and benchmarks. Dreams are to life what headlights are to cars, they don’t determine where you go; they simply show you what is possible.
2. Believe! Believing is what makes things possible because you cannot achieve what you do not believe. Believing is like a steering wheel. Without the wheel you cannot control your car, and without believing you cannot control your life. When you believe, you can create any kind of life you want.
3. Become! The driver who takes control. Driving requires constant adjustments and compensation for the road and conditions, the same is true for life. By continually adjusting the lessons of life against your values, dreams and beliefs you create possibilities!

Embrace the detours along the way; they tend to be where the best discoveries are found! I did, and that’s how I am now changing the world. Not by being POTUS, but by challenging disillusion and helping people find their identity, conviction and direction. There are three types of people in the world: those who experience life, those who watch life, and those who wonder where life went. Which one would you like to be?