When to Start Living Your Own Life

You don’t have to agree with people in other referent groups, but if you appreciate the influence exerted by such group, you are less likely to be stupefied by their adherents’ choices or dismiss them as “idiots.” By the way, my referent group is teachers. My mother was a teacher, and she was my biggest influence growing up. Thus, I identify with teachers. I judge myself on my ability to impart what I know to help others. The respect I value most comes from teachers. That said, this personal fact is hidden, rarely revealed, or openly discussed. Even lifelong friends might not know this about me unless I told them. That’s how mysterious a person’s referent group can be. You have to probe hard to figure it out. Your reward, though, is an eye-opening recalibration and understanding of someone you only thought you knew. 

I saw how Roosevelt Thomas’s theory applied to Mark, the Goldman Sachs employee who had, at first, been reluctant to leave his job for The Nature Conservancy because he feared what his colleagues would say. 

I had the false impression that Mark’s referent group comprised socially concerned people who were vegan, practiced yoga, and cared about the environment—just like him. The truth was that after twenty-four years, Mark was still emotionally linked to his aggressive, bespoke-suit-wear- ing, deal-making colleagues at Goldman Sachs. Their approval still mattered to him. 

Expecting Mark to instantly abandon this referent group was a big ask, akin to demanding that he deny his identity. It was so powerful that he was willing to sacrifice the gift that fell into his lap with the search firm’s initial call, namely, the opportunity to re-create his own life. 

Mark’s call triggered an insight. Although I was gratified that my exhortation to “start living your own life” proved to be a persuasive phrase for him, the teacher in me wondered: If someone as driven and accustomed to success as Mark could be thwarted by his referent group, how many other people, many with fewer resources and opportunities, were being equally blocked for wholly different reasons? 

What were the forces stopping them from creating their own lives?  

And what could I do to help? 

The good news is that it is easier to create your own life today than it has ever been in human history. In the past, almost all of us were second-class citizens from birth. We could not vote and  choose our leaders. Conformity was the rule and any difference was punished, whether that difference was whom we loved or which deity we worshiped (if, in fact, we worshiped any deity).  

We may have had more sorrow, but we had less regret. You cannot regret your decisions if you’re not allowed to make decisions. 

The trend line of the last hundred years suggests that we will continue acquiring more rights and more freedoms. In much of the world, we are no longer serfs, women can vote, hundreds of millions of people are rising out of poverty, and it’s okay to be gay.  

In other words, many of us have reason to be optimistic. The icing on this layer cake of optimism is technology: In expanding our mobility and access to information, technology has multiplied the number of choices beckoning us — more freedom, more movement, more options in work and play. 

That’s a problem—and I’m hardly the only one making this big claim.