5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Career
From Ryan Raiker — As Seen in Disrupt Magazine
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These five things I wish someone told me before I got started working were originally published in an interview with Disrupt Magazine.
I have received many responses from young folks, college students, and friends mid-career about these five things, tips if you would, and it is my hope that in republishing here that they will reach more people and specifically a person who needs to hear them, just like I had wished I heard sooner. I hope this helps you!
1. Don’t plan your future; work for it, and let it come to you.
Disappointment, anxiety, and stress are a few of the things I felt when I planned things out of my control. When I was younger, I swore I would be married and engaged and then have children by a specific birthday that has since passed. I also decided as a child that I would own a house and become a corporate director by another birthday. While the latter came true, I cannot explain to you the immense amount of self-imposed anxiety I experienced simply because 10-year-old Ryan decided some predetermined age when I should have gotten engaged, married, and later have had kids. In the end, those ‘deadlines’ never mattered, and I was foolish for ever thinking they did.
2. It only gets better.
In his Stanford commencement address, Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life…
