We graduate this Friday. As I head off to Oslo for my next chapter, I find myself reflecting on the past 11 months. It’s been a wild ride. But the reality is, it didn’t begin in January. It began in April 2021 when I sent my first email to the Recruitment and Admissions Team.
Now, almost five years later, the ride is coming to an end.
I want to wrap up my year – and my blog – the same way I started it back in March: with some unsolicited advice.
This time, though, I want the advice to be about how you, too, can get here. And when I say “here,” I don’t mean finishing your MBA at IMD, or even an MBA at all. What “here” means is a place where you are proud because:
- You dreamt of something.
- You put everything you could into it, and you took everything you could out of it.
1. Be honest with yourself
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in who we think we should be, what we think we should be good at, or what other people tell us we should be. Thinking about who you really are is hard because maybe it’s not the most prestigious, the most powerful, or the most valued set of skills you have.
This is not to say you can’t become whoever you want to be, because you absolutely can. But the journey to achieving your goals doesn’t start by lying to yourself.
For me, this meant realizing I hadn’t been as happy as I wanted to be for a while. I’m at my happiest when I’m around ambitious people, when I’m constantly learning, and when I’m outside my comfort zone. For me, an IMD MBA was the obvious way to achieve this.
But it may not be an MBA for you. Be honest about what truly brings you joy and what challenges you, and then design your next step around that. For me, between travel, exams, and consulting projects – and being outside my comfort zone – the one constant is that I’ve been around amazing people.
2. Your secure bases
My first post this year was about navigating the MBA with a partner, and there’s a good reason for that: my wife, Cassie, is the reason I’m graduating this week. She’s been the rock of our household, the breadwinner, and the far more popular one in the class this year.
Your secure base doesn’t have to be your partner. One thing I’ve learned this year through leadership sessions, coaching, and group work is that you need to know that there are people in your life you can count on. You can be yourself around these people, and you never have to question whether they care about you. These secure bases are the ones who keep you human, keep you happy, and keep you full of life.
One of the greatest things about this experience has been learning to be more myself. I know that I can live my values of freedom and fun, and that people will still love and respect me no matter what my goals are.
3. Make time for fun
In the ongoing and often ruthless pursuit of your dreams, life sometimes gets in the way. In an MBA, maybe it’s deadlines, teamwork that’s not quite working, or the pressure of getting a job.
That’s the same with any goal you have in life. While I’m sure that if you put your mind to it, you’ll achieve your dreams, it’s easy to get wrapped up in everything else. You can start to feel anxious and stressed when, in reality, you are ignoring the life that you live along the way.
We can all feel the nostalgia kicking in as we approach the last week of our lives together here in Lausanne, and every moment is precious. The last time we’ll celebrate a birthday, the last time we’ll go to that one bar, the last time we go up into the mountains together, the last time we meet in the classroom.
But there’s nothing better than a dose of nostalgia to make you realize that these moments have been happening all along. From exams and assignments to parties, dinners, days out, or just spending time together, don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.
With that final thought on the journey, I want to say again how proud I am. Not just of where I am, but of my wife, my friends, and my family. And of my 77 classmates. This hasn’t been a journey of 11 months, but of many years. We made it. We’re here.
Being proud – being here – doesn’t mean finishing an MBA or getting a piece of paper or an award.
It means:
- Knowing yourself and setting your goals.
- Finding the right people to support you.
- Knowing that you gave it everything…
- … and that you had fun along the way.
