I was talking to a few people close to me about career direction and life. It got intense. It got so intense that I left the conversation upset, defeated, and still confused. To summarize, my conversation companions told be that I live in a fantasy world, I’m terrible at planning, and I revel in theory while discarding practicality.

The worst is when people compare you to your siblings – if you have any. They compared me to my brother who knows what he wants and have it all together.

“He’s stable. We’re not worried about him. You, on the other hand…” They expressed with a genuine concern. “Why don’t you become more like your brother?”

That is the worst thing anyone can say.

Why become like someone else? Everyone has his/her own unique gifts and talents! Modeling your life based on someone else’s will only bring misery because you’re never going to be that person. You’re never going to measure up. You have your own path to pave.

It took me a few days and an incident before I came to my senses.

I had been staying in Hong Kong for a few months. I had just quit my paying job and just wanted a break. Unexpectedly, a job opportunity landed in my lap. My quivering finger hovered over the return key and I almost sent the acceptance email. This completely stressed me out since I had nothing lined up at home and the U.S. economy isn’t exactly what you call, peachy keen. In fact, I was swearing left and right as if this decision would define the rest of my life.

As I was banging my head against the wall, it became clear to me - “Never take a job because it sounds good. Always follow your passion. Don’t compromise your values.”

Why was I pretending to be something other than I was meant to be? I hesitantly smashed this learning opportunity against the wall. It was a sales/biz dev job for a startup that on the surface looked great but in reality was a distraction. It was something I thought I should be doing when the opportunity was just a cover for my insecurity.

Don’t do something because you think it will make you look good in the future. Do it because it touches your soul and your heart. I had a mental construct of what I should be doing to elicit admiration from my friends and classmates, to feel important in the eyes of others.

But really, at heart, I’m a maker. I build things; I do things. I’m really not a talker; I ask questions.

When you think, “If only I did [this] I can be [this],” or “If only I had [this] I can look like [this],” stop and turn around. Look into the mirror ask, “If I could do anything, will I still make the same choice? Too often I hear about someone getting to the top only to realize that it wasn’t something they wanted or that it wasn’t what they imagined it to be.

Curiosity helps you get in touch with what you knew all along. It forces you to listen, feel, and put a filter on the noise. An open mind helps you pay attention not to the opinions of others but how you interact with the world.

In an earlier conversation I had with those close to me, the feedback I received was, “You’re too imaginative, impractical, and theoretical.” I know I could use better planning, but why give those traits a bad light? They saw them as something to be controlled rather than harnessed. In a flick of a switch, I saw those qualities as an asset not a liability. I looked back to my childhood and saw a reoccurring pattern. From Legos and action figures to Sim City and fighting imaginary ninjas, the imagination was there all along – until adults and school beat it out of me. I’m not trying to blame anyone except myself, for not realizing them as my strength and something to be cherished. Maybe I am meant to inspire, catalyze, and move people.

Until you realize what you have and embrace its potential, you can’t change the world. You’ll be stuck in a perpetual “What should I be doing?” state.

Recently, I came across this wonderful quote on the HOLSTEE blog:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

We don’t need to have everything figured out but don’t let not knowing stop you from taking the first step. The most important thing is to know your values or in other words, know what qualities are important to you. Let that be your guiding star and embark on your journey.

Listen. Observe. Be curious.

(This also appears in my other blog. Apparently I have too many.)