Part II of Phrases We Should Stop Using.....
Anyone my age would remember being told "You can do anything you set your mind to." We heard it over and over again from adults, presumably those who wanted to give us the entire world as our playpen. Many have opined that my generation has received more than any other generation in terms of opportunity and free wealth handed down to them. In a way, we have been given the world, and this phrase was supposed to encourage us to seek out our dreams and make them a reality through hard work and determination. We could be an astronaut, or President, or even an inventor. We just had to work hard and we'd get there.
In reality, there were two things wrong with this statement. One, it wasn't true, and two, it made it really hard to choose. The reality is, we can't be anything we want. Each of us is born with a particular set of aptitudes that make it easier or harder to do certain things. When I was in high school I took an expensive series of aptitude tests that my parents bought for me. It came back that I had low finger dexterity/precision and low color sensitivity. There went being a doctor, musician, or artist. I was supposed to work in teams and have a wide range of constantly-changing challenges. There went even more careers.
The second thing wrong with the statement is that it wasn't paired with any instruction on how to choose something. As a result, my generation is now languishing in our twenties, working a variety of dead-end jobs if working at all, waiting for that revelation from the sky that would give us a clear direction. What future generations, which will have even more opportunity and openness than ours, will need is training in how to pick a direction and follow it fully. The truth is not "You can do anything you set your mind to," it's "You will be able to fully accomplish what you were made for if you set your mind to it."
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