A Tale of Hollywood Babylon

I had a terrific conversation with my friend Josh about taking risks in changing your career, following your calling and not letting the paycheck be the only thing that dictates your professional choices. He told me a story about what’s going on in his life right now that I wanted to share with you.

Josh has always been a hard worker, and he has no problem taking risks. Some people love him while others find him too challenging to be around. He’s not afraid to toot his own horn, but he also usually earns the right to do that. He has been a leader in his community, owned several companies, has been in recovery for 7 years from multiple addictions, was once a local politician and has seen his fortunes rise and fall as he continues on his interesting journey of life.

He’ll be the first to tell you that even at 45, he has no idea what he wants to be when he grows up. He’s one of those guys who is very smart and loves building things like companies and seeing if his ideas work or not. I’ve never seen someone handle failure or rejection as well as him. He just views it as another lesson, as data gathering, and as a victory in learning what doesn’t work. Josh has a certain charisma that if you don’t know him, may seem charmingly reckless, but he knows exactly what he’s doing and has cultivated that eccentric aura. It could be a defense mechanism, but I’m not here to psychoanalyze him.

Josh says he’s always been this way. He also says that his parents were the opposite. They had rough upbringings with often unsafe conditions. They internalized it was best never to rock the boat and carried that into their lives as elementary school teachers. He had a brother who was two years younger and throughout their lives growing up together, Dennis was shy and more risk-averse than Josh. When Dennis finished college, he went out to Los Angeles to try and make his fame and fortune as a screenwriter. I know the courage to do that impressed Josh and he wished his brother well.

In Hollywood, probably more than anywhere in the world, there can be no risk-averse thinking. You need to put 100% of yourself into your job 24/7 in the early years and expect to be rejected 99% of the time. Projects fall apart all the time, people change their minds and when you’re talking about the kind of budgets many of those TV shows and movie have, you’re just a tiny cog in the wheel.

Dennis started to make his way up the ladder, just as the script he wrote for himself dictated, and according to Josh, his baby brother was doing well. Then, there was a strike by one of the unions and Hollywood came to a grinding halt. This is where it fell apart for Dennis. When he didn’t know where his next check was coming from, he switched roles. He became a low-level producer for true crime documentaries.

Over the next 15 years, Dennis rose to be a showrunner for many true crime series. He made great money, but was more involved in budgets, insurance and production coordination. During the pandemic, somewhat unexpectedly, Dennis announced he was leaving Hollywood and heading back east to live in the same town he grew up in, this time with his wife and two young children in tow.

Josh said when Dennis arrived, he was excited about new possibilities outside of entertainment. He was considering going back to school, or getting into real estate, or simply resting for a few months while he remodeled his former uncle’s house. A few days after returning east, the brothers had lunch. Dennis told Josh that Hollywood beat him. He wanted to be a movie writer and ended up as an “administrative creative” in true crime TV.

Josh tried to build him up, saying that he adapted according to his needs and went further than most ever get. Dennis made his living in the entertainment industry for nearly two decades but Dennis explained the script he expected to follow was his dream. Instead, he didn’t have the stomach to stick out the strike. Every step along the way, he made the safe decision. Many would say he made the smart decision. But he didn’t make the decision that was best for him because he was scared.

I’ve talked a lot about scripts the last few weeks. Many feel like we’re cornered and have to follow ones that are set out for us, but the flip side, and just as sad to see happen to my clients is when they talk themselves out of the script they want to follow because of fear or not having the ability to take risks.

The frustrating endnote to this is that Josh sent me an email a couple days ago and said his brother finally found a job – making a true crime TV show remotely. Nothing changed, he just lives a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Pacific. If he was my client, the first thing we’d do is figure out why he can’t say no and what it’s going to take to get him to take a risk.

You mustn’t let fear hold you back. You’re only in your 20s once. You’re only in your 30s once. You don’t get a chance to do-over days. If you’re going to seize the passion of your professional life, you need to get going immediately, and that’s what I help my clients do. Once the passion kicks in, nothing can hold you back.

A Blank Canvas is Nothing an Artist Fears, So Why Should You?

Note: This is the second part of a two-part entry. If you’d like to read part one, please click on the link below:

https://www.arnelduvet.com/recent-posts/life-scripts-are-ok-but-you-need-happy-middles-not-just-endings

When I climbed that ladder, getting away from the script that my family, society, and I had written for myself that I tried to follow dutifully for more than three decades, and got to the top of that wall, I was shocked what I saw on the other side.

It wasn’t another script. It wasn’t a clearly laid-out future. It wasn’t happiness or sadness. It wasn’t riches or poverty. It was a blank canvas, like the kind that great artists such as Picasso or Van Gogh once stood in front of, or like the piece of drafting paper before architects like I.M. Pei or Frank Lloyd Wright worked their magic.

Deciding you’re going to change your life is major. Climbing that ladder to get to the top of the wall so you can leave your life as it once dictated behind is even more difficult, but when you see there is no ladder on the other side and you have to take a leap of faith, that’s the scariest part of this entire process.

The bad news is when you take that leap, you won’t land on a bed of cotton. Restructuring your life isn’t a cakewalk. It’s very hard work and it involves some trial and error. The good news is that you won’t land on a bed of nails. I’ve found that when I’ve been scared of things in my life, whether it was monsters in my closet or a troubling diagnosis for one of my young sons, that 99% of the time, it’s not going to be as bad as I fear.

A blank canvas shouldn’t scare you and it shouldn’t be a reason to not make the leap into the great unknown. Even if all you know is that you’re unhappy in your current position, that’s enough to begin to plan changes. When I sit with a client, I don’t expect them to have quit their job – especially if it’s a good paying one they worked long and hard for – in the medical field. 

When somebody sits down with me and says, “I’m making $22 an hour but I’m miserable” we look at it pragmatically. Can you put a price on happiness? Because clearly it’s not $22 per hour for that person. The reality is, even if they were making $44 an hour, they’d be just as miserable. Money can help us solve money problems, but it doesn’t do much else.

I don’t fill my clients full of one-liners I picked up from Instagram memes. Those aren’t going to help anybody and belong on the wall of a mental health professional’s office. While I do help with problems of stress, feeling overwhelmed and unhappiness among others, I’m not a therapist. I’m a guy who is on your team and wants to see you be happy with the one-third to one-half of your life that you spend working.

Sometimes people sit down with me and think I’m going to bring out crystals or start burning sage. That’s not what I do. I have to quickly dispel those myths. Others sit down with me and and have no idea what the first, second or third thing I’m going to say will be… and it scares them. That’s when I tell them about the blank script, and that’s when we pick up a pen and start writing the professionally and personally satisfying future they – and you – deserve.

Life Scripts are OK, but You Need Happy Middles, Not Just Endings

There are very few places that illicit as many negative images in people’s minds as that of the country I was born in, Haiti. I love where I was born and I love the fact I left and become an American citizen, but I have to admit, there are very mixed messages about these two countries being sent to one another.

In Haiti, like everywhere else in the world, we got a lot of American entertainment. We also saw a lot of American news and while I bet less than 1-in-50 American students could name the leader of Haiti, probably 49-out-of-50 can tell you the night of the presidential election who is running the United States. When I left Haiti and moved in with my uncle in Florida, I would see depictions of Haiti on television, usually connected to the massive earthquake that happened there. I believe these pictures have left an imprint for a generation of Americans of what Haiti actually offers.

Of course, there are poor section of Haiti, a lot of them. There are also some of the most beautiful homes you’ll find anywhere. Yes, there is inner-city blight and places you would never want to be after dark. But there are also pristine fields and beaches that look like they belong on a postcard. In other words, it’s a lot like every place else in the world. If I held up a carefully selected group of five photos, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were looking at Haiti or the United States or Japan or Brazil.

Writing the Script Meets the Wall

I think that some of my deep love for America comes from the images that I saw when I was a child. I built a script in my head about what it would be like if I came to the United States. I had friends who did the same things with other countries. One of my best friends thought Germany was the greatest country in the world while another wanted nothing out of life but to live in France. They left around the same time that I did and they both still live in Germany and France, respectively.

Based upon how we were raised, we wrote scripts for ourselves of where to live a better life. Unfortunately, you needed to have certain connections for higher education and high-quality job opportunities and neither I, nor my friends, had that. We needed to leave. That was the first part of our script after school was over.

There have been some bumps in my script as there are bumps in all our scripts, but there are times when we run head-first into something that isn’t a bump. It isn’t a hurdle. It’s a wall. It’s the wall that tells you your script is faulty. That has also happened to me. It was when I recognize that my career in health care as an officer in the Navy was not my final destiny and would not be my legacy. After recognizing that, it just got worse, and I’ll get more into that in future articles.

I stood there looking at that wall. I could stick to the script. Stay on my side of the wall and live out my years with a nice paycheck, then pension. Have a good home, put my boys through college and slide into old age a tenured Officer. The thought made me not want to get out of bed. I had to find out what was on the other side of the wall. 

And like magic, when I ripped up that imaginary script, I discovered a ladder. I climbed it, and you’ll never believe what I found on the other side….

Neuroplasticity Says Your Best Days are Still Ahead

When I first got into coaching, I was helping people of all careers looking for a more meaningful life by changing their professional endeavors. But once the COVID-19 virus hit, I started to see medical professional after medical professional in my e-mail box or leaving me voice messages. Now, I bet they’re 80% of the messages I get. 

There are certain patterns I also see with those in the medical community that aren’t as prevalent in other white-collar sectors. The biggest one is that they believe once they go down the path of becoming a medical professional, they can’t turn back.

So that’s when my former medical knowledge comes out and I explain that they need to stop listening to that little voice inside of them that says neuroplasticity is an amazing thing, but it doesn’t apply to them.

“Huh?” is their usual response.

It wasn’t that long ago that scientists thought the brain was an organ that took shape in utero, was fleshed-out in our earliest of years, and would occasionally add a sprinkling of adaptive techniques as we entered adulthood. By the time we were at the age someone finally reaches a quality position in the workplace, usually our mid-to-late 30s, the brain was completely done forming. 

That’s 100% wrong.

I’m not going to get too far into the muck of the science on a cellular level, but we now know that the brain is constantly in a state of change. Neurons are constantly making new connections and while most of us still essentially retain who we are, the rewiring we once didn’t understand now reveals that great change is possible. This is neuroplasticity.

It’s what allows a former drug addict to recover from their disease. It’s what allows a previously sedentary person to become an uber-athlete after their double-amputation and it also allows a society that has been inundated with patriarchal beliefs to start to recognize women and minorities are just as capable as anyone else.

Neuroplasticity is a great equalizer if you think about it. I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life in Haiti before immigrating to America and becoming a citizen. I was raised with many stereotypes and customs that were often just tools used by those in power (including parents and teachers) to keep children in line. This was not a country where big dreams were encouraged.

Once I came to America and saw opportunity after opportunity after opportunity, I remember being overwhelmed. I now wonder if that was the neuroplasticity coming to life in my brain like never before. I fear that those who are raised in an environment of options just see it as commonplace. I think if they adapt a one-track mind (“I entered the medical field, I must stay there”) it’s going to lead to an unfulfilling life.

Some artists need new challenges so they move on to other things. Let’s take Dr. Dre for example (since we’re talking about the medical field – lol). He was a hugely successful rapper and producer in the 1990s and 2000s, but then he developed Beats headphones and built a company that he ended up selling for over $1 billion. What if he told himself he could only do music and wasn’t cut out to be a businessperson?

The science is there. You haven’t painted yourself into a corner. You’re capable of change. No excuses. If you’re not happy with the current path you’re on as a medical professional – just like I wasn’t before becoming a coach – drop me a note and let’s figure out if I can help you in your quest to following your calling and live the life you’ve always been meant to live. 

When There Are Still Things You Like About the Job

I write a lot about medical professionals who are fed up with their job and can’t justify any reason to stay either than the time they invested into becoming a professional and the healthy paycheck that comes with it. 

But that’s not always the case. What happens when you also have nice benefits, work with good people, but are still feeling this tug of unfulfillment? What if you can’t immediately figure what else you want to do? Sure, if you had a plan that would be one thing, but is there any guarantee that the next thing won’t leave you as equally unfulfilled?

The security-driven side of you says not to listen to the voice inside you, but as I point out to all of my clients, as you’ve known all along, you’re the kind of person who listens to that voice inside of themselves. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be working with me.

I’ve known people who have left cushy jobs to open their own little shops, go back to school in hope of following a different career path or simply to travel the world. It’s not up to me to decide what’s best for you, but many of us need a guide – a coach – to help us through the process.

Discovering Who You Are Once You’ve Left

While knowing I had to do what I had to do when it dawned on me my job as an Environmental Health Officer with the US Navy was not making me happy, the idea of leaving was still the scariest thing I’d done in a long, long, long time. Leaving a world where you’ve established yourself as a professional and take pride in your work is tough. 

Saying goodbye is tough. Gianpiero Petrigleri, an associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “While you say your heartfelt goodbyes, remember that when you leave a beloved job there is no need to pack light. Take all you can with you, lest you leave yourself behind.”

A big part of my identity was my career. I probably defined myself with my job as much as I did as a husband, father or son. Taking that chunk away from me was like taking a chunk of who I was. There was a long adjustment period where I felt lost and questioned my place in the world. I knew I was more than my business card, but I didn’t know who that was right away. I wanted to help others the way that many had helped me make the transition, but there was growth period and being a coach can be lonely. There isn’t the team camaraderie you find at many jobs.

Still I knew I made the right decision. Sometimes, I think it’s just a matter of taking two steps back and trying to view the situation as an outsider.

Things to Contemplate

While you’re trying to figure out if you should leave your career, for whatever reason, consider the following:

Your History of Following Your Gut – Are you one of those people with good instincts or does everything you touch turn to mush? My guess is the former. What is the universe telling you to do? What feels right?

Expecting the Unexpected – Whether you’re considering leaving to open a cupcake shop or travel the world while you figure things out, your new life will be full of the unknown. Can you rise to the challenge without the security blanket of your corporate life? The answer is “Of course,” but you need to reach that answer for yourself.

Doing What’s Best for You – You get one overall chance at life and those with regrets seem the least happy in old age. Think about how you’ll feel about your decision to leave your job in 30 or 40 years. Will you look back and think it was a mistake or regardless of the outcome, will you be glad you took a different route?

My job as a coach is not to tell you what to do. Maybe your next step isn’t a job like mine, with many hours alone or with only one other person. Maybe you need a group around you. That’s fine. Rarely is anyone 100% happy to leave their job, but the voice inside them just won’t let up. You’ll be letting some good things go, but there’s no reason you can’t try to replicate some of those conditions in your next chapter of life.

Workplace Happiness is More Than Money

What does it mean to be happy at work? That you’re professionally challenged and fulfilled? That you make great money for doing very little? That the people around you make the day better? Is happiness just an individual thing and there’s no blanket criteria to determine the happiness of leaders or employees?

The people I work with, who come from the medical field, as a career development coach, often try to tell themselves they are content with what they are doing, but it doesn’t take much time to poke holes in that. Just because you believe you’re supposed to be happy, doesn’t mean that you are. Yes, it’s a massive deal to save lives and help heal people, but if healing people is taking a piece of your happiness with it, is it worth it?

Gandhi said: “Happiness is when you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

The Dalai Lama said: “Happiness is not ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

Charlie Brown said: “Happiness is a warm puppy.”

I first have to get my clients over the idea that they are “supposed” to be happy. Deciding they wanted to be a doctor at 15 years old and then following a script for the next half of their life to make that happen is like admitting nearly two decades of failure if it doesn’t’ work out the way they hope. Honestly, how many of our plans at 15 years old really work out the way we wanted?

At first glance, it seems like each of our definitions of happiness are as unique as snowflakes, but researchers have been making strides in measuring workplace happiness, actually coming up with certain benchmarks in the last few years.

There is still no universal standard for happiness, nor is there any infallible go-to test to determine it. We can define it in clinical terms, and there are more tests and techniques for measuring physical indicators that lead one to claim happiness than ever, but it really comes down to how the individual defines personal happiness. The reality is that we could have identical brain scans and I find myself to be the happiest person I know while you’re just barely getting through the day.

Looking at the positive data

That said, there are almost as many studies being done to find correlations between happy employees and productivity as there are new executive titles reflecting that happiness – Did you know Google has a Chief Happiness Officer?

A 2015 article in Harvard Business Review said that most of the data points to workers that self-identify as happy as being more productive than workers who gave themselves any other emotional label.

In fact, the same article said that happy employees are “less likely to leave, more likely to satisfy customers, are safer, and more likely to engage in citizenship behavior.”

 As leaders, we need to make sure the team is happy, right? Eh…maybe not.

It is important to note that “being happy at work” and “satisfied with the job” are two different things according to a 2017 study from university researchers Thomas Wright and Russell Cropanzano presented by the Academy of Management.

Their conclusion is that while the theory happy employees are more productive seems to be correct, it doesn’t necessarily mean that satisfied workers are happy or more productive.

“A person can be satisfied without necessarily experiencing high levels of positive affect. When happiness is measured as emotional well-being, as was done here, it does seem to show consistent relationships to job performance,” the conclusion of their study read.

We’re Human, Not Robots

The other day, a potential client wrote to me and said, “I’m making more money than I ever thought I would, but I will also be paying student loans until I’m 46. If you take what those loans, malpractice insurance and the other hidden costs of being a doctor are versus what I make, there are many other professions I know I would have been happier in and had just as much money left over at the end of the day. If I realized it was going to cost over $300,000 in schooling to become a doctor, I would have just joined my sister in opening her preschool.”

I simply responded: “It is really about the money?”

They wrote back: “No, I’m miserable. What do I do?”

We are scheduled to have our first official online meeting in a few days.

I Got There, But Only with the Help of Others

The last time, I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger. I hope if you didn’t read last week’s entry, you’ll head back and take a look. The question was whether I was going to make it to the top of Japan’s Mount Daisen or if I was going to throw in the towel like many others I saw and simply recognize that I wasn’t built for mountain climbing.

Despite the fact that I was slowing everybody down around me because I didn’t have the necessary knowledge and training to make it up to the top of that majestic peak a mile in the sky, I made it. But it wasn’t just that I made it alone. The truth is, had I set out on that journey by myself, I would have given up.

I got to the summit because of the people who were with me. They knew the field of mountain climbing. They had done this trek many times and recognized where a rookie like me would have problems. And most thankfully, they knew how to go at my pace. The others in my party became my coaches and I never would have been able to succeed by myself.

When I was on that mountain, it didn’t matter that I can speak multiple languages. It didn’t matter that I have multiple master’s degrees. It didn’t matter if I was rich or poor, funny or dull, a great father or a deadbeat. Everything else was noise. I knew I could get up that hill, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone.

One of the guides who helped me told me that he didn’t continue school after the age of 11. Another told me how they were raised by their older sister after the death of their parents. Another climbed the mountain in such tattered rags, I can’t imagine they had very much money. But I needed all of them. I didn’t have the skills I needed to get to the next goal, but these coaches did.

They taught me to focus on the goal, regardless of my burning thighs and aching feet. They taught me to alter my breathing. Gulping oxygen in that altitude, which made sense to me, is actually the opposite thing you should do. I never would have known that without their expertise. Nor would I have known I was holding the hiking staff incorrectly before we took our first steps.

I share this story with many of my coaching clients who are medical professionals, usually on the first or second meeting (I look forward the day we can meet face-to-face again!) we have because they almost all say the same thing:

“Arnel, I wanted to be a (doctor/nurse/pharmacist/etc.) for a long time. I went to school and studied and devoted my life to learning how to help people. And I thought I was enjoying it at first, at least I told myself that. I can’t even lie to myself anymore, but I can’t figure out what to do. Shouldn’t I know? I’m a smart person!”

I’ll then ask them: “Do you know how to play the violin? Do you know how to build an engine? Can you recite the Gettysburg Address in Swahili?” They’ll laugh because my point is made.

Much like I needed specialized help to reach the top of Mount Daisen, we need coaches in our regular lives, especially when something seems difficult or we hit hard times. Even the best athletes in the world use coaches every day. Michael Jordan was never coached by somebody who was a better basketball player than he was, but he was coached by men who brought other things MJ didn’t bring to the table. 

The key was that Jordan, whatever his public persona, was always personally and privately able to ask for help. The question is, can you? I can’t teach you how to slam dunk a basketball, and I’m probably still not the guy to help you climb a mountain, but I am the right pick when you’re looking for happiness, quality-of-life, and professional satisfaction. If you’re looking for these, drop me a note and we’ll combine our strengths to get you where you want to be.

Facing My Reality Trying to Get to the Top of Mount Daisen

I have a slightly embarrassing story to share, and heaven knows I felt ashamed at the time it happened, but in retrospect, there was an important lesson in it that I wanted to share.

I have spent significant time in Japan as a member of the U.S. military. It’s an amazing country where you can feel like you’re in the 23rd Century one moment seeing the technology available in Tokyo or Yokohama, but then suddenly feel like it’s the 16th Century visiting a Shinto shrine or public garden in a more rural area.

Everybody knows Mount Fuji and it’s a must-see/must-climb for tourists. The reality is, you’re bussed almost all the way to the top and it’s just a small walk to the top so you can claim that you “climbed” the mountain. Those who live in Japan seem to prefer Mount Daisen. It’s an old volcano in the Tottori Prefecture (a prefecture is something of a cross between a county and a state in America) that is just over a mile high. Don’t worry, geologists estimate it hasn’t erupted in 20,000 years and shows no signs of it today.

I’d never climbed a mountain of that size before, but I was assured I needn’t be a technical climber and we wouldn’t be doing anything too dangerous. I didn’t want to hang off a cliff by my fingertips or rely on a rope to keep me from plummeting to my death. Once assured that wasn’t going to happen and that I shouldn’t have too much trouble, I decided to go on the hike.

There was a fair amount of snow when I went to climb it with many other hikers and guides. I should have recognized that I’m a guy born in Haiti, who despite now being a US citizen, has only lived in the southeast part of the United States. Sure it gets cold, but I have only lived in the kind of place that if it got any snow, a glaze shut down the entire city. The reality is, I have almost no experience walking in snow.

When you couple my lack of experience climbing mountains and my lack of experience simply walking in snow, that day was so much more than I bargained for. As somebody who has read self-improvement books for years, it didn’t take very long before a quote from motivational speaker Les Brown came flooding into my head: “When you go for a walk with someone, either they adjust to your pace or you adjust to theirs. Whose pace have you adjusted to?”

That came to me in the moment because I was having a rough go of it. I was not prepared to make the transition from “guy who spends his days on flat land at a military base” to “guy who climbs Mt. Daisen.” So, what happened? Everybody in front of me in my party and everybody behind me, in my party or not, had to slow down. They had to adjust to the guy who probably shouldn’t have been there on his own.

There were people there who encouraged me, and others who looked like they wanted to punch me in the face. As we slowly traversed upward, I saw other people along the mountain path who threw in the towel and it was something I thought about doing many times. Did I make it to the top? Did I stop, reflecting on the decisions I might have made differently if I knew how difficult it would be? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see in next week’s article.

These days, I’m not a mountain climber. I’m a transition coach who works mostly with people in the medical field looking to transition out of their career and onto a different path. We all need coaching and encouragement upon starting a new path. It helps to have a guide and know where you’re going, just like when you’re climbing a mountain.

Not achieving professional success? Were you “popular” or “smart” in high school?

So, you were No. 2 in your high school graduating class of 500, felt like you were rather popular, got yourself a degree and now wonder why you can’t even get a GOOD middle-management job, much less advance your career to the upper executive ranks. You know for a fact that the people above you almost flunked out of college while you spent Friday nights studying.

So why are they doing so well? Why is life so unfair to you?

First, forget about them. Next, forget about your past. It’s great you were No. 2, but nobody cares anymore except you. It’s time to understand how your outlook on things has held you back.

While there aren’t a lot of studies looking at high school or college success translating to the real world, there was a fantastic one done over a long period of time by Boston College researcher, Karen Arnold. She kept tabs on 81 high school valedictorians and salutatorians after they graduated.

These people did well in college (average GPA of 3.6%) but none of them had changed the world or are considered the top of their profession. Most reported being content with their lives, but it was clear that success in high school, while translating to achievement in college, didn’t send them to the head of the class in the real world. Only 40% were in middle- or upper-level jobs.

Here’s a different statistic to consider that comes from Harvard researcher, Shawn Achor: The average GPA of over 700 millionaires surveyed was 2.9.

Who were these millionaires? Probably not the popular kids. Research done in both 1977 and 2005 seem to point to the most “popular” students taking average jobs while the less “popular” seem to move on to better-paying jobs and finding their passion outside of social interaction.

So, what to account for this discrepancy? Arnold told Time magazine in 2017 that those who do the best in high school are often not the smartest, just the hardest workers.

“They are well-rounded and successful…but they’ve never been devoted to a single area in which they put all their passion. Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries…they typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up,” she said.

Dr. Mitch Prinstein, a professor at University of North Carolina has researched how reputation (social status) and likability (social preference) in high school played out when it came to the success of a person’s life. His data suggests the concept of peaking in high school is a very real thing.

"There is some evidence to suggest that 10 years later, 20 years later, they are having some more difficulties with relationships, those that were high in status in adolescence," Prinstein told Business Insider.

The most popular students in high school, Prinstein concluded, are less happy and successful than many who were of a lower social caste because their popularity was largely superficial, and when they left high school had not yet learned to create meaningful relationships.

Most importantly though, Prinstein said there are exceptions to many cases and it’s a matter of shifting mindsets later in life.

So often we here the cliché: “We are the stories we tell ourselves.” However, you perceived yourself to be years ago and however you perceived your future is not important to your present. Allen Saunders (not John Lennon) originally said “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”

If you’re unhappy with where you’re at professionally and you’re disappointed about how things turned out, it’s time to stop judging based on a former iteration of yourself. It’s time to drop resentments against others who may not have a CV as impressive as yours but you feel have gone on to be more successful. If you need some help breaking out of this funk, there are a lot of people in this world who can help you.

Is It Possible to Actually Follow Your Dreams?

You’ve always had your eye on that alpaca farm in the country and it’s finally come up for sale! Or maybe there’s a little voice inside you who says there’s something to all of your friends telling you that you make the best cheesecake they’ve ever had at the same time a storefront has opened nearby.

But you’ve got a great job with a major company. Sure, every day isn’t heaven, but you’d have to be insane to walk away from the money and benefits to follow a crazy dream. That only happens in the movies, right? I couldn’t really throw everything away and be successful, could I? Isn’t it better for me to just ignore that little voice?

Most of the time, yes. You’ll end up crashing on the rocks like a wooden ship that didn’t pay attention to the lighthouse. Everybody was screaming, “There’s a lighthouse there!” but you were blinded by your own ambitions and lost everything

But then there are those who listen to the little voice, follow their dreams and live happily ever after. Albert Einstein, an average patent clerk at best who showed no signs he’d go on to become the most recognized name in the history of physics, once said, “Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.”

What are the best ways to follow your dream and hopefully not end up like the wooden boat?

Research -- Einstein’s quote aside, do you know what it takes to succeed with your new venture? Have you thoroughly studied how to operate the business and who your competitors are? Do you have a trusted mentor you can go to with questions as they arise? Why have people failed in the past when they’ve opened up this kind of business and what is your differentiator? You need to become schooled in all aspects of running your business before you open your doors.

Financial Planning -- How much money is it going to take to get your new business off the ground? What can you expect for revenue in the first quarter, first year and first few years? What happens if you’re off by 20%. How long can you live on a salary of $0? Analyzing how your professional financial life is going to proceed will tell you a lot of about how your personal financial life will proceed. Are you willing to make the necessary sacrifices?

Expect the Unexpected -- There is no “perfect time” to follow your dream and you will never be able to remove obstacles, either the ones you see or the ones that will blindside you. Also, while you probably envision yourself as a success, try not to have unrealistic timelines. Through learning and experience, you may also find that your dream is only 75% accurate. Your final results may be different than what you start out doing.

Take Your Head Out Of The Clouds -- Doing your own thing is romantic and you’ll probably feel an initial passion that you haven’t in the past, but after the bloom comes off the rose, are you really going to want to put 10-12 hours per day, 7 days a week into something that comes with a guaranteed lower salary, no benefits and no retirement plan? People often call their business, “their baby” and that’s absolutely true. You’re now attached to something that you can’t just walk away from on a whim.