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What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up? Starting the Next Chapter of Your Life
by Dorothy Cantor with Andrea Thompson;
Little Brown, 2001, 256 pages, $22.95
Just the right size. Just the right tone. Just the right combination of advice and stories combined with professional expertise. Dorothy Cantor’s newest book, What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up?, is just right for psychology practitioners who want a sophisticated and accessible book for their clients who are making career changes. This is a self-help book that a psychotherapist might recommend a client read. Or this book might be used by the therapist to help a client explore career change.
Dr. Cantor, whose own career is a model of thoughtful change and growth, has used her skills as a psychotherapist to give the reader specific skills to approach retirement and career changes. Her analytic training can be seen in the thoughtful questions she gently prods the reader to reflect upon. Dorothy takes the noun question we are asked as a child - What do you want to be when you grow up? - and turns it into the action verb question of adulthood, What do you want To Do?
The book’s message is to plan retirement or career changes. Using a psychoanalytic approach of combining fantasy with an examination of the details of life, Dr. Cantor pushes and prods the reader to go beyond his resistance to self-exploration of a difficult subject. For example, one section instructs us to ‘Go back in time and remember what we wanted to do as a child’. Further prods have to do with messages we received about ourselves, about work, about heroines. The reader of this book will be challenged to engage in “... a creative aggressive approach to growing up ... including daily activities that were personally meaningful and actively chosen ....”(p.67).
Contained within this compact book are guiding lists such as six dimensions of adult well-being, 10 motivators and 10 activators along with possible roadblocks. For example, some of the traits of adult well-being include autonomy and purpose in life. And activators include such personality traits as proceeding independently and changing course. I challenge any one reading this book to not find a part of herself in these pages. For example, when reading about the ninth activator, I resonated to the roadblock “I’m never quite satisfied with what I’ve done”. In mid-life adults have enough work experience to derive satisfaction from their accomplishments whereas young adults frequently are discontented and pushing to do better.
Dorothy weaves the stories of eight people throughout the book. We get glimpses into the lives of Max, Sheila, Dave, May and four others. We hear the stories of career and retirement choices that are regretted like the husband in a retirement couple who jokes, “I married her for better or worse but not for lunch”. Or of the woman whose statements reminded me of some elderly people whom I vowed never to be like”... the day to day balance was a lot more satisfying when I was working... now ... the chores expand to fill the time.”
What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up? is deceptively easy to read. But, don’t expect to come away untouched. This book will cause you to think about yourself, your work, the real purpose of life and the gift of the possibility of change. As APA Board of Directors’ member Ruth Paige said, “As I think about making some major life changes, one of the things I’ve been most afraid of is giving up the rewards I obtain from my usual activities. I’ve been excited about Dorothy’s book because I think I’ll be able to learn how to do what feels good to me versus feeling good because I get praise and acknowledgment from others.”