What You’re Supposed to Do

By: Roy Terracina

When I graduated from college, I decided to go graduate school to get my MBA. I made this decision primarily because my friends from business school were doing this, so I thought this was the path I supposed to take as well.

After getting my MBA, the expectations of “What I Was Supposed to Do” continued. Because I had an MBA, I believed I should go into fields like banking, investment services, investment banking, even accounting roles. So guess what, I did all of them. I bounced from job to job, field to field, never staying very long. I learned a lot of skills but the path I was following was very narrow. I never really considered many of my options outside of “What I was supposed to do”.

Eventually I became the CFO of a publicly traded food company before purchasing my first company at 37 years old and becoming an entrepreneur. I’ve been that ever since.
Reflecting back, I never even considered being an entrepreneur. I believe that a big part of that was the pre-conceived beliefs about what I was “supposed to do”. My MBA and my college degree were great tools, but I believed that they limited my choices. Of course, the actual degree did not do this, but I limited my own choices and my own beliefs because of these things. My mindset about what was possible and what other options might exist.

I think many people go through life this way. As they get tools or have experiences, they limited their mindset about what is possible. They start in one career path and somehow their identity is tied to it. They don’t consider anything else. “I have a MBA, therefore I must work in this field forever.”

We should work to strip away these pre-set beliefs and stay open to possibilities, instead of doing “What You’re Supposed to Do.”