What if you chose for yourself?
Why do I live in a place where the air hurts my face? This was the meme my siblings and I used to send each other every London winter until one day, I stopped laughing and thought….
Wait….why do I live in a place where the air hurts my face?
The summer just before I turned sixteen, my family moved to the UK from Zimbabwe. I spent the entire night before we left rage crying while my parents finished packing around me - only pausing my begging to stay to gulp for breath.
It was clear. I had no choice.
I finished school, to London for university, graduated, got my first job, did my masters, moved in with friends, started a business, fell in love, got my heart broken, broke my fair share too. There was a lot to love about London, and it never occurred to me not to just keep staying - especially as I had the passport privilege of being able to do so.
And yet, for the most of the year outside of summer, I lived with a low-grade, background monotonous misery that descended like a cloak as the nights got longer and darker. Work, dinner, bed, repeat - sprinkled with sparks of delightful reprieve here and there.
When I questioned whether there had to be more to life than this, I chided myself to be grateful for the privileges I had and to suck it up.
Until that one day, as I wondered seriously for the first time why I lived somewhere where the air hurt my face. And a new thought popped into my mind:
Why don’t you choose for yourself?
It suddenly occurred to me that I had never chosen where I wanted to live as an adult.
All the choices I’d made since I came to the UK had been baked inside a decision my parents made for me years ago.
And I was realising for the first time that maybe I didn’t have to live inside that choice anymore. I could decide for myself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about it this week while having onboarding calls with the women who joined the Career Crafting Club group coaching program that I kicked off last week.
Many of them have come to the same realisation with their careers.
“As a daughter of immigrants in the UK, I only had a few options—doctor, lawyer, or accountant—so I kind of fell into my career,” one of them told me. “I’m proud of what I’ve achieved, but it’s challenging, exhausting, and unfulfilling.
“I’ve been wondering…..what if I gave myself the chance to explore what my true passions really are…"?”
Which is what we’re doing in the club.
We’re taking time to reflect, get clear on her true strengths, and create a personalized actionable plan so that her choices moving forward feel aligned, purposeful and tailored to her.
It’s also what I ended up doing as I decided where I wanted to live. Even if the answer ended up still being London, I wanted to re-commit to it on my own terms.
I reflected on what mattered most to me in terms of my environment, lifestyle and people, and compared that with what also made sense for my career. Based on that, I mapped out my top three options, spent some time experimenting with what it might feel like to live there, and eventually ended up moving to Johannesburg.
So if you’ve also started to question the limitations of a life built inside other people’s choices, hopes, or expectations for you, my invitation to you is this:
Is it time you chose for yourself?
The next Career Crafting Club starts January 19th, 2025. If you’ve been wondering what it could look like to choose your life more intentionally, this cohort could be for you. Join the waitlist for early access offers.
Journal Prompts
Who do you most worry about disappointing or upsetting with your career choices?
What agreements have you made with them in the past, explicit and implicit, about your career?
Which parts of the agreements feel outdated?