I can’t tell you how many people are relieved when I tell them this.

The impression I get is that people think senior people always knew what they wanted and how they were going to get there. That there was a plan.

Speaking for myself, there was NEVER a plan. I was a history major undergrad, and I thought I was going to be a lawyer. But I ended up working in banking, and decided to stay in financial services. I have held positions in marketing, operations, pricing, new product development, reengineering. I’ve worked in credit cards, private banking, corporate banking, retail brokerage, and high net worth asset management.

My point is that clearly I didn’t have a plan. But I did have two requirements: that my next job was always going to be challenging in some way because there were new things to learn, but I would also be able to contribute to the role immediately because of what I already knew.  That way, I wasn’t walking into a job where everything was new.

When you’re starting out in your career, it’s perfectly ok not to know what you want to be. Here’s the analogy I gave to someone recently:

Imagine a huge buffet with 300 different dishes. Knowing what you want to be when you grow up is like me asking you “What is the one dish you want to eat for the rest of your life?”  It’s reasonable for you to look at me and say “But I’ve only tasted this one dish!”

As you progress in your career, you’re going to try lots of different things. You’ll figure out what you like and what you don’t like, and hopefully, you find the dish you’ll want to eat for the rest of your life.

But in the meantime, relax. It’s ok not to know. Just make sure you’re doing what you need to do to eventually figure it out.