My Why

I have found having perfect clarity about one's purpose is no simple undertaking. We spend so much time in our careers, and lives, in the 'what' and 'how' space. What needs to be done and how to achieve it seems to have dominated my time and energy in education far too much.

When I was at high school I wanted to be an architect. I took great joy from a few of the subjects taken at high school - art and graphics. Designing things and the creative process still delights me. However, in another example of lacking self-confidence, after school I fell into a business program at university and before finishing that qualification I had a job in finance. The white shirt and tie, 'yes' culture of the finance industry at that time didn't fulfil. It certainly lacked the joy I felt when being creative. I now wonder if, as that naïve 21year old, what was missing was any clarity I had about my 'why'.

Within a few years, I returned to university to become a teacher. At the time I started working in the education system men were often offered promotional opportunities very early in their career – this opportunity was usually as a principal in a one or two teacher school in a rural community. I was offered such a position just over eighteen months after graduating and my career in school leadership was underway. It’s true that the subsequent drive for advances in my career were a motivation. As I said previously, I do wonder whether these promotions were about further proving myself, and not because of any clarity of purpose.

I continued to straddle the fields of education and business. Perhaps this positioning is part of being a constructive discontent – not being satisfied with where I was; with the status quo, always looking beyond where I was. I undertook a masters in ‘entrepreneurship and small business management’. In my mind, the idea was to go onto bigger and more important endeavours than running a small school. On reflection, I feel the original finance job, or being a small cog in a large bureaucratic education system, were not going to be rewarding, or sufficient for me. The search for fulfilment even saw me resign from the department at one stage and start a photography business!

An important clue to my true 'why' came during this period of being a photogapher. We'd been out to dinner with friends and on our way home my wife was reflecting on the times, I had become animated in conversations through the night. She said to me, “You know David, the only time I hear you talking about anything passionately is when you talk about education.” It was a powerful observation that when I felt most passionate was when I was standing on my soapbox and talking about how schooling could be improved – what felt like a Deep Truth flowing from within me. The saying goes that whilst no one conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a life, any conversation can. This was one conversation that did.

Through a later in life 'aligning of the planets', a clarity about my why, and a chance to make a more substantial difference to education, seemed closer. The opportunity for me to work in the area of professional learning for school leaders excited me. It turned out to be an important time in which I would clarify my why through the application of my past experiences and my own joy for learning.

Here, my why finally gained clarity as I felt myself coming alive as I began to design learning experiences that unleashed the Creative Genius in educators, helping to create a future in which learning comes alive for students, leading us to a new potential for a thriving humanity.

Next: Aligning of the Planets