Can a simple question change the course of your life?

Don't let other people's expectations of you dictate your outcomes in life.

When I was a senior in college, I wanted to go to law school.

So, I did all the things that you do to prepare for law school, which consisted mainly of telling everyone I was going to go to law school.

My accounting professor- we discussed it.

My neighbors in the dorm- they heard about it.

The guy who worked at the stir fry station at the cafeteria- he and I broke it down many times.

Finally, I set up an appointment with someone who actually could provide me perspective and expertise- my professor who was an attorney.

I walked into a tiny office and awkwardly shouted ‘I’m going to go to law school.’

She calmly looked at me and replied, ‘Why do you want to go to law school?’

Touché, I thought. I hadn’t really thought about it.

(A strong cross-examination-I could tell from this rebuttal that she was a good lawyer. )

At this point, I had not yet made it to the ‘why., My drive for law school was more riddled in child-like reasoning:“people think lawyers are smart. I want people to think I’m smart. I’m going to be a lawyer”.

Leading up to this meeting, for the past 4 years of my life, I was on a crusade to prove to people that I wasn’t dumb.

When I got out of high school, I was accepted into 1 college (out of the 7 that I applied to) and there was a good reason- my grades sucked.

But instead of understanding that these rejections were based on my grades, I took them as personal insults. “They don’t think I’m smart.”

And even though I had personally grown leaps and bounds in college, I was still consumed by what other people thought of me, and how I compared.

So I responded to my law professor, “I’ve always looked at lawyers, and I wished I could be one of them”.

My professor leaned forward and asked the question that changed everything.  

“Do you wish you could be a lawyer, or do you wish you could learn to be a lawyer?”.

WHOA!

She wasn’t asking about my goal, she was asking about my motivations.

Did I want to go to law school because that would be an achievement that would impress other people, or did I want to go to law school because I wanted to learn the law?

Touché again. Despite all our conversations, the stir fry guy and I never dug for my motivations.

As Jay Shetty, author of Think Like a Monk says, “When we let achievements and acquisitions determine our course, we’re living in the illusion that happiness comes from external measures of success. And even when we achieve this success, it never leads to happiness.”

Truth is, I never wanted to learn anything about the law. I just wanted to tell everyone how smart I was, and I thought being a lawyer was the way to accomplish that.

That’s when I realized that I did not actually want to learn to be a lawyer.

I had wanted the result, but I didn’t want the process.

It’s funny. This law professor changed my life and for years I could never remember her name. And as it turns out, her name happens to be Amy Coney Barrett.

Just kidding. It wasn’t Amy Coney Barrett. But that would have been awesome, right?

Now whenever I pursue a new goal, I ask myself the same question: do I want the result? Or do I want to learn through the process?

If you don’t love the process, you're not going to love the destination.  

So the next time you are setting a goal ask yourself: Do I want the result or do I want to learn through the process?