What will I be when I grow up?
I’m a visual person. Like some of you, I have a whiteboard in my office to sketch out ideas while working with remote colleagues. Like others of you, I have sticky notes on my wall and computer with ideas. And still like others, I have a ton of sketches of my latest big idea covering my office wall and various sketchbooks, notebooks, notes on my phone, self-emails, etc. trying to capture those moments of inspiration that could be “the one”. The one what? The one idea that will finally make me the person I envision myself being years from now. The top of my own personal Maslow’s Hierarchy. The self-actualized me.
Mirror Mirror: Show Me the Older Me
But who is that? Like you, I have a ton of directions I could take. I often do a personal SWOT to see what I really have a chance of accomplishing. The SWOT lets me play the odds to see what is a pipe dream and what is realistic. I do this every few years, especially when great opportunities for change come knocking.
But this time, I did something different. Since I’m visual, I decided to see what I will look like when I am older. I got the idea from Daniel Pink’s “To Sell Is Human“. Then perhaps refocus myself when the journey gets unclear. I dropped a couple different headshots into this slick app called Face App. It aged me by about 20 years (I assume) with the click of one button. Well, two, I added a beard, but the rest was done in seconds. I then dropped these photos in to Photoshop, grabbed a couple of logos off the web, and created mock magazine covers with two different directions.
The Creative
One takes me down the higher risk path where I double-down on the creative stories I love to tell and the artist background I have to work on that crown jewel that many of us strive for – to leave something behind that people will remember us for, to inspire or touch others. To me, the type that has the most sticking power is stories and characters that move us. That can be books, movies, songs, etc… It also has the highest risk of failure and the least likely to make any money. For those risk-averse types out there, this is just a “no”. Well, I don’t mind risk so much, but I’m not impervious to it either. So this cover represents what I would look like on (the no-longer-in print) LIFE magazine:
The Financial Success
This one is in line with the career I have been building most of my life, and builds on my other strengths of Engineering and business skills. This route won’t stick in your mind as an inspiring story, but it could inspire any SharkTank types out there interested in personal wealth development and potentially changing the world. It also has the potential to leave a mark on the world, if you can get into the beloved minds of the common person. This is the cover that represents what I may look like on Forbes:
Where I started:
Here are the photos I began with. The software is pretty slick, right? My wife told me I’ll have less hair when I get that old. What does she know. :]
What about you?
If you go through personal assessments like this or even take a whack at the FaceApp, I’d love to see your before and after. I’d love to hear whether it affected your decision in one direction or another.
As for me, I’ll let you know, when I’m 64…
