What’s Next?

Oftentimes, when you hear the phrase, “what’s next,” your first inclination might be, “when’s the other shoe going to drop?” If you’ve had a health crisis, like cancer, your mind often wanders in this direction. Obviously, having thoughts like this is not conducive to healthy living, so let’s look at it another way.

What if we look at “what’s next” as a hopping-off point? An idea of great things to come or some new direction you can take; a pivot in your life that can be a game-changer? What would that be like?

Most of us head in a similar direction in life. We go to school, celebrate the fact that we made it through our primary and secondary years of education with the high school band in the background playing Pomp and Circumstance. Then some of us head off to college where after we’ve made it through semesters of interesting classes (some of us setting our notebook on fire in a chemistry lab) and of living almost on our own (with Ramen noodles as our main means of sustenance), we write in tape “thanks mom and dad” on the top of our caps so they can see it from the stands in the field house at graduation.

We start our career, and years back (the old age as my kids tell me), we get our first jobs out of college literally making a pittance. I look back on my first job out of college with my BS (BullShit as my dad would say) in psychology making a whopping $14,000 per year. Sometimes I wonder how I ever did it. But we all persevere, working hard to climb the proverbial ladder of success. It’s hard work, but we do it because we tell ourselves that professional success is the cornerstone of who we are. We’ve made it, in a sense.

Some of us get married and have kids. No one gives you an owner’s manual for that. If there was one, I really could have used it! How wonderful it would have been to turn to page 62 for tips on how to deal with a pain-in-the-ass-does-not-help-with-anything husband as I had two kids in diapers. Needless to say, I figured that one out quick, no thanks to the lack of the manual.

And somehow, through all of the trials and tribulations of life, we still find ourselves here. We are alive and well and still able to make plans.

What dream did you leave on the side of the road while you were so busy creating and living your life? Have you thought about that?

There’s that saying, “life is what happens when you are busy making plans.” What plans do you want to make for YOU?

Dreams are not just for the young. The day we stop dreaming is the day we take our last breath. We spend so much of our time “adulting” and worrying about the dreams of others, especially our children.

For those of you on the other side of diapers, 5th-grade moving-up ceremonies, high school soccer games, and college move-in days, what are YOUR dreams? It’s high time you asked yourself, “what’s next?”