When the joy of graduation wears off some graduates enter a period of confusion and malaise, unsure of themselves and unsure of what to do besides making sure they eat tomorrow. I believe one of the shocks these university graduates are experiencing is generated by the absence of a script. They’ve been living off of someone else’s script for years. And it may have served them well. They read the lines and made the grades. But now on this side of graduation there is no script for the drama called life!
Did you graduate recently? Perhaps you are experiencing script deprivation.
A script gives you a straight-line process or pathway for getting from “A” to “B.” Let’s say you figured out a few years ago, “I want to graduate with a degree in finance.” Then, you paid the school to take care of you by charting out the courses you needed to “get a degree in finance.” You succeeded! But now your point “B” looms “out there” and no one is going to chart the path for you. You are going to have to blaze your own path.
Look, you are not alone. By the time we finish 18 years of school most of us are conditioned to living on someone else’s script. We have had it all scripted for us. It went like this:
Go to school.
Take the classes.
Learn the material.
Pass the tests.
Graduate.
But now…
There’s not a script for shaping a career.
There’s not a script for starting a business.
There’s not a script for being your own brand.
There’s not a script for creating a social life.
There’s not a script for building significant relationships.
Your friends have probably been living the same school script you were on, so they are not much help for living without a script.
But you do have some options:
- Gather some mentors who have been living in uncharted waters for a while.
- Plan a trip without tour guides and head out on an adventure.
- Take some personal assessments to discover your genuine desires and strengths.
- Make your grand life vision of success smaller by aiming at something contained in it (that’s usually called a goal) and then remind yourself, “Everything doesn’t have to be perfect!”
- Attempt something related to your goal and as you do it, make a personal agreement with yourself that with the completion of each small step you will ask yourself again, “How did this go?” And, “What do I want to do next?”
Soon you will be living your own script and enjoying the rewards of living with purpose through your challenges.