What Happened When I Hit a Wall and the Important Question I’m Using to Move Past It — GAN

Last week, I wrote about how essential it is to ask yourself one important question before going through an accelerator program: What do you want your (work) life to be like? Meaning, unless you define what you want your time in-program (or when starting really anything) to look like, the world around you will surely help do it for you.

I keep coming back to this question since writing it last week, though. Because I think there’s actually a deeper question behind this question. Defining your work life is important, but I think there’s something else to consider before that.

You know how some emotional reactions seem like they’re about one thing but they’re actually about something else? Like if someone misses a deadline three times in a row, anger and frustration are the first things I feel. But the deeper emotional response is actually about the fact that I feel like I’m not being heard and that someone on our team doesn’t care about the needs of our company. That’s the difference between “primary” thoughts and emotions and “secondary” thoughts and emotions.

So I think asking yourself, “What do I want my work life to look like?” actually comes secondary to a more primary question: Why am I doing this?