Each one of us has personal heroes.
There are select few to whom each one of us look up to. It could be someone you personally know – a friend or a relative, or someone you have read about or seen on TV. It could be your college professor or a celebrity or a successful business executive who knows the benefit of using the online paystub generator.
Usually people will select one aspect of an individual that they would like to develop in themselves; that would be enough to begin to look up to this individual, to learn about them and attempt to emulate their skills and behaviors as best we can.
The danger with this approach is that unless you are able to spend a significant amount of time with your mentor one-on-one, and in various environments and situations, the impression and the image you have would be incomplete. There are many subtleties that don’t quite come through except in a face-to-face interaction.
The risk here is that while developing a certain positive facet it is very easy to overlook other areas and end up as a quite lopsided version of your personal hero.
What is even more difficult is to understand upfront all the trade-offs that are required to get something. Do you work more hours to get that promotion or should you spend that time socializing at industry conferences and making business-networking connections instead? There’s no clear answer and of course you are in no way a personality clone of your would be mentor or someone you look up to.
To make sure that you don’t inadvertently end up trading one achievement by giving up another, it’s best to consider if someone you’re thinking of emulating or asking for advise is living the lifestyle you want.
For example I personally value unstructured free time and while I could be more productive and either increase my earnings now or work towards positioning myself for a less structured work environment this goes against my belief that enjoying what I do and doing something I enjoy every day is at the core of my life philosophy.
There is a big push from entrepreneurial types, or at least those who pursued that route and succeeded (those who failed aren’t on Oprah and don’t write books) touting the benefits of working for yourself. And there are definitely trade-offs that might be worth it to someone.
Most anyone who can graduate from a college with an undergraduate degree definitely has the skills to start and run a small business. Of course there’s a lot of hard work and long hours involved in building a successful organization.
The mistake that people who start out on this path for the corner office or building a company that goes public is that the role models who’ve achieved what you’re after will never tell you what they missed out on in other areas.
If you decide that you want more freedom and time to spend with your family, working as a freelance consultant seems like the obvious choice – set your own hours, choose what type of work you’ll do. And if you ask someone who has worked as a successful consultant about what the rest of their life looks like you might discover that it’s exactly what you want – or that long hours and constant traveling will take away from your other interests, even though you might earn a lot more for your time.
The way to avoid buyers remorse is to think about what you want, keeping in mind that any achievement means prioritizing your goals against other things you can pursue. There are many guides out there, and if you’re reading this a search engine query will help you find information on how to clarify what you want.
After that, it’s a matter of remaining selective and paying attention to the complete person you aspire to emulate. What they do, how much of their time is spend in different spheres of life. Is their general lifestyle something you see yourself enjoying or does it just sound good to visit every country in Africa?
If you’re unhappy with where you got yourself so far, the last thing you want is to get yourself somewhere else that you wouldn’t like any better.
Self sacrifice creates miserable and resentful people. Don’t make the mistake of falling in to a trap of getting something while missing out on all of the other things you enjoy and which contribute value and meaning in your life.
