What’s your 5-year plan?

One of the questions I dreaded the most during job interviews was “What’s your 5-year plan?” or “Where do you see yourself in 3 to 5 years?”. I had no idea about what to say. I would come up with something completely fake just to make them understand that I was planning to build my career in the company. The truth is I had no idea what direction I wanted to give to my career. And since I didn’t know it, my focus was on these two things: “am I qualified to do the job?” and “how much will I earn?”.

At that time I wasn’t worried about it. I thought that if I had money, there was nothing to worry about and especially not the fact that I didn’t have any big goal or dream I wanted to achieve in my life. I thought I could do like everyone else, climb up the ladders in a company, earn more and more money, get married, buy a house and have children.

However, one day I realized that no one is forcing me to follow this path. And so I started to think on my own and I was completely clueless about the things I wanted to do. The result was a lot of confusion, fear, frustration, anger, … a big crisis indeed, at only 27.

I could’ve ignored what I just found out and followed the status quo. But I decided otherwise and choose to follow my guts.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.Robert Frost

Today, I’m on my second year of following that road less traveled by, and for sure it’s making all the difference in my life. I started out with no clue whatsoever on what to do with my life. And although it took me more than a year to figure it out, I’m now finally on the right track.