Anna S. E. Lundberg

Coach, Speaker, Writer

Why Disney brought us up on a lie – and I’m not talking about the princes!

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Disney World CastleThose of you who know me will know that I have a long history of Disney princess fandom. I grew up on what for me were the classics: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin… Then when I was a little bit older came The Lion King, Pocahontas, and Mulan.

The release of the new live action Beauty and the Beast meant that I was given the chance to relive the excitement of my childhood, as if I were watching the old film again for the very first time. The Sound of Music-esque scene where Emma Watson’s Belle runs swirling out into the field brought me right back to how I felt aged eight (sing it with me now!):

“I want much more than this provincial life!

I want adventure in the great wide somewhere
I want it more than I can tell
And for once it might be grand to have someone understand
I want so much more than they’ve got planned…”

I can’t tell you how many times I swirled around singing this song to myself (and to any poor, unfortunate souls who were close enough that they could hear me), earnestly relating to Belle’s feeling that there was more to life than my provincial existence of school and homework, and dreaming of adventure.

And, of course, it wasn’t just Belle. Another of my favourites is Ariel’s “Part of Your World” (although in The Little Mermaid our heroine has fallen in love with a prince based on looks alone and decides she’s happy to change species and give up her voice in order to win his affection – no matter), and what about “A Whole New World” where a handsome ‘diamond in the rough’ comes along and takes me on a magic carpet ride.

So, yes, I grew up wanting adventure in the great wide somewhere, feeling misunderstood, and knowing I was meant for something bigger – but that’s not the lie, there’s nothing wrong with fantasising about all the exciting things you’re going to do. The big deception instead comes from what happens next and, ultimately, the “happy ever after”.

Belle goes off and has her adventure, she frees the castle from its spell and falls in love with the Beast, who turns out to be a handsome prince, yay! Ariel and Eric together rid the world of Ursula the Sea Witch and then get married on a lovely cruise. Aladdin frees the Genie and marries the princess, despite not being a prince. Ta-da! And they all lived happily ever after.

But what happens after the film has ended? Is Belle going to be satisfied now marrying the prince and living out the rest of her days in a castle, which, by the way, is just a stone’s throw away from her provincial little village? Will Ariel and Eric really be happy together as man and wife, given that they barely know each other? Will Aladdin the street rat be comfortable in the big palace, and will he and Jasmine be content with ruling the kingdom without the freedom to travel the world?

The finality of a magical Disney film ending – or, maybe, most film endings – gives the illusion that you are destined to do this one thing, and once you find it you’ll settle down and live out your days in perfect contentment.

And THAT is where I think they have it all wrong, and where we’ve all been sadly misled.

Generations X and Y are said to be purpose-driven, entitled and impatient. We’ve been told by our parents that we are special and we can do anything, we’ve launched ourselves out into the world to find our purpose… and then? We search for our dream jobs, travel the world to find exciting experiences and, yes, we scour the universe for our prince charming, our ideal partner. But how do we know that we’ve found it? And what happens next? There’s no theme music that starts playing as we achieve our one true purpose, no credits rolling once we’ve reached our goal.

So we end up searching, searching, for our True Purpose, our One True Calling, and the Happy Ever After. And either we never find it, and we end our lives feeling unfulfilled… or we find something amazing and fulfilling, but we’re likely to question whether or not we actually have found it, and often we’ll continue looking in that desperate search for our ONE purpose. Because it can’t possibly be our Happy Ever After since the theme music isn’t playing…

fairies
We may well come across fairy godmothers (and -fathers) in our lives who help us along the way, but we are the ones who determine our fate, not them

I suppose it’s natural that these princesses are all destined for greatness – a whole film has been made about them, after all. That’s part of the deception, though, that we believe that we are special and destined for some magical calling that no one else can do. The lie is not that we’re special, because we definitely are; it’s just that we ALL have the potential to do something unique and impactful, we can all create magic – even without a fairy godmother – and that magic can take many different forms, there’s not just one true calling (or one prince charming).

The latest Disney princess Moana, the South Pacific girl who yearns for the ocean, is reminiscent of all her predecessors as she dreams of greater things. She’s also specifically chosen by the ocean to save her island and her people, and so she’s special and unique versus the rest of the village, with a clear purpose to pursue. Where this film differs, though – *possible spoiler alert* – is that it ends not with her settling down and living out the rest of her life without adventure, but with a closing scene that sees her and her people rediscovering their voyaging ancestry and heading out onto the ocean to new and on-going adventures.

And that’s how I think we need to approach our lives and our goals, whether we’re talking about that dream career or the dream partner or any other big objective that we aspire to: as one of many adventures, as a project after which there will be other projects, as just one step on the journey.

Because if you think you’ll be happy and content once you find It (or Him or Her), if you think the film credits will roll once you’ve completed your life purpose… then you can only ever be disappointed and, ultimately, unfulfilled.

Career choices, glass ceilings, and finding work with a purpose

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shattered glass ceilingLast weekend I went to a local Tedx event and my favourite talk was about women in politics. The message was that although women are just as capable and qualified to go into politics as men are, we simply don’t put ourselves forward. When women do run, they are just as likely to win as men (though I question this statement following this week’s presidential election results – and my own sad attempts at getting elected in both primary and secondary school!). This is partly due to the lack of role models and gatekeepers to encourage women to run for those positions of power, and partly due to our own reluctance to ever put ourselves forward for a position where we’re not sure that we’re completely qualified.

Now, I studied PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Magdalen College, Oxford, a degree that spawned everyone from David Cameron to Theresa May, Ed Miliband to Ed Balls, Nick Robinson to Evan Davis. Never once did I consider running for office or even really getting involved in politics at all, other than working in development and applying to jobs at the United Nations and various NGOs. My economics professor introduced me to Iain Duncan-Smith in the college bar one evening and while the young men in the group (who were not in fact studying politics) were vocal with their opinions and questions, I spent the evening sitting off to one side chatting to his wife.

In no way am I suggesting that my active involvement in UK politics would have had any kind of significant effect on important issues or on recent outcomes such as Brexit or Trump – I’m not that egotistical or arrogant, I promise; but I am one of many and it’s possible or even likely that if some of those many had chosen to go into politics and argued for the issues that matter to us then the landscape could begin to look a little different.

I find this particularly interesting in the broader context of my career coaching, and my strong belief (supported by research) that finding meaningful work is critical to our personal job and life satisfaction. In our corporate jobs especially we’re so far removed from the end users of our products that we are disconnected from any real purpose for our work. We spend our time on PowerPoint presentations and Excel sheets, staying late into the night rather than going home to our young families or going out with our friends. We surround ourselves with colleagues and people with similarly narrow priorities and perspectives on the world and think that this is the only path available.

When we’re young and naïve, we believe we can change the world – that soon gets knocked out of us as we settle down into sensible jobs that will allow us to earn a living. Something happens, though, as we get older and realise that our office work is quite meaningless, we’re not enjoying it, and we begin to think again that we’d like to change the world and leave some kind of legacy; to show that we’ve been alive on this planet, that we matter, and that we’ve had an impact in some way or other.

So when we see things going on around us that begin to disturb us, when we start to realise that we’re more opinionated than we perhaps thought and when we recognise that there are some principles that are worth believing in and standing up for, then maybe this is an opportunity to find that meaning – inside or outside of our work – and to get involved, in whatever form that involvement might take.

I have no idea, in fact, what that involvement looks like and it will probably be different for different people. Maybe you can join a particular political party, maybe you can go back to your old school and share your insights and encouragement with a new generation of future change makers, maybe you can write an article sharing your thoughts and concerns. What is clear to me is that moving to New Zealand or Canada, hiding away and putting our heads in the sand, or maybe worst of all lamenting developments at the dinner table or on Facebook while doing absolutely nothing about it, is definitely not the answer.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

– Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

And so perhaps we might at least consider, on a personal level as well as in the broader context of society: how have we arrived where we are today – and what can we now do about it?

I know I’ll be giving this a lot of thought in the coming weeks and months, and I hope you will do the same.

Travel with a Purpose: Finding your “why”

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I’ve written before about the different reasons why people travel, provoked by a friend who claimed that “of course everyone likes to travel as it’s just going on holiday”.

Langkawi, Malaysia
Nothing wrong with a holiday!

Travel can of course be “just” a holiday, or perhaps an escape from something back home. It can also provide some much-needed time and space to process things that are happening and to gain a new perspective on a problem or a situation. It can be a way of getting out of your comfort zone, putting yourself in unfamiliar situations so that you continue to learn and to grow. It can be a way to meet interesting people that you’d never come across back home; and it can be many other things too.

Do you know why you travel?

It’s impossible not to notice all the messages we see these days about quitting your job and becoming a digital nomad, working from the beach on your laptop, travelling long term without a care in the world – but this isn’t for everyone. Likewise I’ve come across all sorts of sporty types and professional adventurers who do things like cycling backwards through the Amazon – and this definitely isn’t for everyone either! When you haven’t defined your own reasons for travelling, your own purpose, I find it’s easy to get caught up in other people’s plans and approaches to life.

I wonder if we might not also get lost in meaningless activities or distracted by things that aren’t really that important. There can be a manic urge to tick the boxes, to “see everything”, to make the most of our time while we’re in a particular city or country. We may rush around or flock to the popular sights and miss out on richer, more subtle experiences.

On my current trip to Japan, I’ve been struck by the absurdity of TripAdvisor and other similar reviews of sightseeing destinations.

Inari Shrine
Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine in Kyoto. Getting there early, we were able to experience the shrines before the hordes descended…

Who is really to say that Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine (sitting at the base of a mountain, it encompasses a long corridor of distinctive red shrines, which were soon infiltrated by hordes of tourists from all over the world) is #1 of 847 things to do in Kyoto, while Sanjusangendo Hall (a Buddhist temple that includes a long wooden building containing an awe-inspiring one thousand life-sized statues) is #4?

Or that Rokuon-ji Temple (a beautiful Golden Pavilion where we were herded along the path in a Disneyland-type queue system) is #2 and the Gion neighbourhood (a historical geisha district that is lit up beautifully with lanterns at night) is #14?

I never set myself a clear purpose for this trip, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “see the top 10 ‘things to do’ on TripAdvisor for every city I visit”.

I’ve also been swept up in what I can only define as online hype and PR gimmicks. These make us go out of our way for experiences that can simply never be as epic as it is claimed, whether on TripAdvisor or in travel magazines, or on one of the many blogs from intrepid explorers around the world.

tuna auction
Big tuna. No comment.

In Kurashiki, I queued for over an hour for a “happy pudding”. This small vanilla dessert was very nice and, sure, the smiley face on top was a cute touch – but was it that much better than the smile-less pudding from across the street? A friend of mine here in Japan topped this with her own story of waiting for three hours for shave ice at some presumably celebrated café. And I have since exceeded that again by staying up all night to be one of the lucky 120 people who got to visit the early-morning tuna auction at the Tsukiji fish market.

We often chase these unique, “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences, ticking things off our bucket list, looking for things to do that will give us stories to tell.

As Richard says in The Beach (a film that was made 16 years ago, when the whole backpacking scene in Asia in particular was really thriving):

“Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.”

It definitely hurt lying on that cold floor for three hours on Wednesday night as I waited for the tuna auction to begin… but was it worth it?!

Of course you could say that it’s through accepting all these invitations, trying new things, that we get to have the very experiences that we’re actually craving – even if they’re not what we were expecting.

happy pudding
Feeling happy after pudding!

The happy pudding may have been over-hyped, but it still makes me smile when I think about it – and the hour we waited was spent outside in the sunshine, watching people go by and chatting to others who were similarly lured by the pudding. The tuna auction was not the captivating experience that had been promised, but the hours that led up to it in the company of a new group of friends (involving chocolate bread and an impromptu karaoke session up on a bridge in goodness-knows-where) were all the more unforgettable. And, of course, I now have a ridiculous story to tell people about the time I stayed up all night to walk around a wet and cold fish market at five in the morning…

Having a purpose can help to remind you why you travel, when you find reasons to start to question yourself – and help you to decide when it’s time to stop.

open road
On the road again – but where are you going?

You may be missing important milestones back home, away from your family and friends; you may have to say no to job opportunities that require you to be in a particular place at a particular time; and although I think you increase your chances of meeting your soul mate when you travel, it can be hard when you have to say goodbye before you’ve worked out if it could be him.

All this being said, maybe it works in the other direction as well: maybe you can actually find your purpose by travelling.

Maybe you fall in love with a country and decide to move there more permanently. Maybe you fall in love with a person and decide to move to be closer to each other. Maybe your discovery has nothing to do with the act of travel itself but it’s simply a realisation that manifests itself during your travels.

Maybe the point is this: although travel on the surface looks like it’s about the packing of your suitcase, the flight to the other side of the world, the names of the cities and the sights that you’ll see… it’s not about that at all.

Like all of life, it’s about those moments: the laughter and the intimate conversations you share with fellow travellers whom you may never see again; the delicious meal at the little restaurant that someone takes you to and that you never would have found by yourself; the stranger on the street who gives you his umbrella and then continues on in the rain; the new ideas and insights that come to you that will change the way you look at things when you get back home.

These moments may be harder to pin down than the top 10 sights on TripAdvisor – but I think that’s why they’re worth treasuring; and, in the end, I think that’s why I travel.