Scroll back through your calendar or planner to 2015. Where were you? What were you doing? And if 2025-you asked 2015-you where you saw yourself, and what you wanted to be doing…are you doing it? My money is on…no. You are not.

And that’s not a bad thing at all. I just think we are asking ourselves, and each other, the wrong question; dare I say, a dumb question.

Recently, I have decided to stop asking myself and those who I mentor or teach or interview the irrational and self-limiting question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years? What are your 5 and 10 year goals?” Am I saying I think we should abandon vision casting? Certainly not. I just think the question about what we want to be doing in 5-10 years is naive and narrow-minded, even arrogant.

Let me explain. I’ll take you on my own journey, as relatively boring as it may be, to show you why I think we should stop asking this question.

In 2015, I was a junior trauma surgeon attending at a fantastic, very busy Level 1 trauma center in Columbus, Ohio. I was growing and maturing in my clinical skills; teaching residents and medical students; I was happy and satisfied. We had recently purchased our ‘forever home’ in a tony Columbus suburb; I was making excellent money and loved my job. My kids were settled into their schools. My parents were just over an hour away…so we saw them often. My 5-year goal was to keep doing what I was doing…maybe explore a niche in surgical nutrition, but no real aspirations to change much.

But in mid-2015, a dear friend and mentor invited me to interview for a more academic job at Indiana University. This was nowhere on my radar. But a few interviews later, I was mesmerized by the opportunity, and we were packing the moving truck for a job in Indianapolis and traded one posh suburb for another. Fast forward to 2019 and though clinically and academically (ie, doing more research and publishing my work) successful, a brand new job in a brand new field emerged, and I applied for the challenge. The field of “Wellness” didn’t exist when I was a new attending surgeon and anyone who completed surgical training before about 2015 had never heard the word applied to surgical training. Alas, I became a local, then regional, dare I say, national leader in this space by 2020.

Oh, 2020. If you are reading this blog, you lived through one of the darkest moments of our collective social, political, mental, emotional, and physical health as a nation…and world. It changed everything for all of us. And none of us saw it coming.

COVID-19 upended everyone’s 5 and 10-year plans. Hell, it upended my 1-week plans. I was literally trying to survive day to day. In 2020, 5 years felt like a preposterous amount of time. I moved out of my family home to an Airbnb in an effort to shield my family from dying in the event I would contract COVID myself. It was a surreal time.

Alas, we survived. Wounded. Confused. And changed. But here we are.

When the ‘Wellness’ job revealed itself to do little more than break me down, burn me out, and help me learn what the term ‘gaslighting’ really means…I moved again. To Kansas City. Was this anywhere on my 5-year bingo card? Definitely not. Am I happy here? Endlessly.

Do you get it? Where I am, and what I am doing, were nowhere in my imagination 10 years ago. And thank God it wasn’t because I couldn’t have imagined the work that I am doing now; the amazing partners I have; the local, regional, and national opportunities I have. Yet here I am.

When we ask, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years or 10 years?” we don’t leave space for the great big huge world that has plans for us that we can’t imagine. The people who cross our paths who have big ideas for us. Unpopular opinion among life and career coaches, but friends, the 5 and 10-year plans are arrogant and narrow-minded. I said what I said.

So what should we ask instead? How about, “Who do you want to be 5 years? 10 years?”

And my answer:

I want to be the best mom I can be to my children and any significant others who may be in the picture. I am not in control of the fate of my children, but should I be lucky enough to still be a mom in 5-10 years, then I want to be a mom who is present; that my children know I love them to the ends of the earth.

I want to be a teacher…to students, residents, fellows, junior partners…to whoever is willing to listen to me. If that’s in a clinical setting, perfect. If I am not a surgeon anymore for whatever reason, I still feel like I have something to give. I love to teach.

I want to be a woman of my convictions. I want anyone who brushes into my orbit to know that they are loved, that I will defend them, and I will take care of them to the extent of my capabilities. I want to be known for speaking out, using my voice of relative privilege for anyone who doesn’t hold the same power. I will give of my resources, though largely behind the scenes. I don’t need recognition for that, but in the end I want people to say, “She is generous”.

I can’t see what is around the 5-10 year corner, but I can always commit to being the ever-growing and better version of myself. I can commit to being true to myself and my values. When we get too granular about our 5-10 year vision of ourselves and our world, we invoke the egocentric position of believing we have control over the future; we double down on the privilege of being able to even consider our lives in the future, which so much of the world does not share.

So my challenge to all of us in 2025 is to lay off the 5 and 10-year plans. And set our sights on just being the best version of ourselves, true to our core, for the foreseeable future. And that, I believe, is some real achievable and rewarding 5-10 year planning.

Love you all!

Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.