My Initiative Journey: Exercise 1 – Personal Essay
The Initiative Journey begins with a personal essay on yourself. Write about why you decided to do this methodology, about your field of interest, and finally, make 3 lists of people:
- 3 people closer to your field of interest
- 3 people with high status or value in your field
- 3 relevant role models
Exercise 1 – Personal Essay
As a homeschooled child, I liked to think I know something about initiative; when you hold the reins to your own education and you only learn as much as you teach yourself, you find ways to motivate yourself into action: you have a responsibility to yourself. This isn’t to suggest that I had no support, my parents were of course the ones who taught me to be independent. But possibly more than other children, I had a little more control over my own education. Now, at a point in my life when I am looking to enter the world of a career in engineering, I’m finding that a different kind of initiative is required. There are a different set of rules: I’m not just trying to motivate myself to study. Instead, I’m motivating someone else to take interest in me enough to hire me. The same methodology doesn’t quite apply. I’m starting to think I don’t know quite as much about initiative as I thought.
The reason I’m applying this methodology to my life is simple: at the most basic level, I am looking for a job; a new start of a career. More specifically, I am interested in the effects of climate change and I want to have an impact in helping humanity fight climate change and reach a carbon-neutral future that is more in balance with nature. Whether it be through carbon sequestration technology or clean and renewable sources of energy, I very much look to work in one of these fields. I have a background in mechanical engineering but have yet to apply my skills in engineering towards a career in fighting climate change. When it comes to a career, connections are potentially more important than skills, and I feel I lack the knowledge and skills needed to properly connect myself with the people that can help me achieve my goals. Through this methodology, I hope to gain the tools needed to put myself into a position with a higher probability of success, and possibly start a business or gain some deeper insight into what I want to do. Success to me means a job where I am solving technical problems and finding technical solutions to climate change.
How can initiative help me to achieve this? To me, initiative means being proactive and setting goals for yourself to ensure progress. The way I have accomplished taking initiative until now is by setting small, achievable goals, and then taking small steps every day to work towards them. I make a point to never set the bar so high that I near-guarantee myself failure. I’ve applied this methodology in my life to learn languages (both Korean and Japanese), advance my skills in music, and self-study engineering and computer programming in preparation for a career for engineering. Learning and taking on self-imposed challenges is something that I am very familiar with. But when it comes to initiative involving reaching out and presenting myself in a way that creates value in myself to others, I would say I have little to no experience. As a homeschooled child, I most often worked to motivate myself alone. This is where I could most take advantage of the learning initiative.
I have always respected people who are educated, empathetic, well-liked, and who take on the most challenging problems. People who are unafraid to think outside the box and face problems head on without allowing themselves to think it’s impossible have always held great respect from me. Particularly when they do so while still maintaining their humility and empathy, and inspire others into action. Silly as it may be, the fictional representation of my role model is Gandalf, from the Lord of the Rings. Wise and intelligent, and yet understanding of the deep matters of the heart, he would always inspire others to tackle the problems that must be solved. I have known real people who also have these characteristics. My junior college professors of mathematics and physics were compassionate, intelligent leaders who guided me onto the path of engineering. My violin teacher was another who also taught me more about facing fears and solving problems with the most humility and emotional intelligence. All of them always seem to know the right thing to say to make you feel empowered. In my mind, these role models that I have met and have an emotional connection to feel more real and stand out more in my mind compared to people I don’t know as role models. In terms of well-known role models, the feeling is more akin to idealized idolization. To truly know and respect someone, I think that you need that real connection. But for well-known people, I have great respect for people who take on the biggest challenges and seem to always be a step ahead of everyone else: people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, who take initiative, lead, innovate, and create technological revolutions.
A role model is a representation of someone you wish to become, and one of my main reasons for applying this initiative methodology to my life is because I would like to move one step closer to being someone with value to society: someone who solves problems, has a positive impact, helps advance humankind and is yet humble, kind, and well-respected. I would very much like for my positive impact to be in the sector of stopping climate change. I think this methodology will be valuable because it will give me a blueprint to act on my own dreams, put me in a position where I know what it is I want, how to connect myself with the people who can help me achieve and make real progress in not only my career, but in my life in entirety.
3 Lists of 3 People:
3 people closer than you to your field of interest (Friends/Family names removed for privacy):
- E.H. (Works for PG&E renewable energy transition team)
- H.N. (Works at Tesla)
- J.S. (Most environmentally-friendly person I know)
3 people high status or value in your field:
- Jigar Shah
- Jonathan Foley
- Tony Seba
3 relevant role models in your field (living or historical):
- Elon Musk (Great respect for his vision, work ethic, and determined drive to succeed and change the world, less his character)
- P.G. (Physics professor, the reason I became an engineer)
- Bill Gates (Visionary, wanted to bring science and technology to everyday people to improve society)
Some notable others: Mark Z Jacobson, Greta Thunberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Shubhendu Sharma
Exercise Reflection
Reflecting on my essay, several thoughts come to mind, mostly regarding the role model selection. I realized that most of the role models I actually idolize are people that I really know and who have had a real impact on my life. When it comes to people that I don’t actually know, I tend to and idolize just the parts of their character that I like and create an idealization of them in my mind. It becomes more or less the equivalent of idolizing a fictional character. Because of this, when actually asked to come up with role models, it was quite difficult to come up with ones in my field. Coming up with goals was much easier, since that is something I do regularly for myself, but experiences with taking initiative were surprisingly difficult to think of. It’s possible I was just thinking too hard about it, but it’s also possible that I just don’t take as much initiative as I should, which was a little worrying and made me feel glad I was going through this exercise now.
Upon reflection, I also wonder if my goal is specific enough. It is not a very specific goal, but I think that is an accurate representation of how I feel inside: what I want to do is not yet well defined enough to be able to state a goal that is more specific. The most specific I can get is a desire to have a career working on technical solutions to climate change.
What’s the point in naming people, rather than positions? By naming people as role models, as opposed to positions at companies, it creates an image in your mind of a person you want to become. Not just some job that you want. It emphasizes characteristics that are person-specific, not job-specific.
See the Preface for my Initiative Journey here.
See Exercise 2 – 5 Problems, 5 Solutions here.