The 1 question that can immediately transform your career

Despite the pushback from everyone around him and dwindling funds in his bank account, on a lonely spring night, the young man closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slid the check into the mail.

Weeks later, while walking the pristine campus before the first day of the summer course he splurged for, his mind was riddled with doubt. “Maybe they’re right!” he thought to himself. “Maybe I don’t belong here!”

To make matters worse, at 8 AM the next morning, his red plaid shirt immediately clashed against a sea of tweed jackets that dominated the classroom. Not only that, but the serious faces around him were twice his age with ten times his experience.

“Who’s material is this?” the professor announced shortly after class began pointing to a project on his desk.

“It’s mine sir,” he quietly replied from the back of the room convinced the work he had submitted prior to attending the course wasn’t up to par.

“Would you mind talking about it?” the professor shot back.

For the next hour, the young man’s initial nervousness turned to confidence as the distinguished crowd hung on to his every word. He walked them through his thought process and answered their questions with ease. When the class was winding down, the professor, who just so happened to be the man’s idol and the driving force behind why he’d take the leap, pulled him aside and asked him if he was up for lunch together the following day.

Twenty-four hours later, the young man had the most stimulating conversation of his life. He was positively zooming. But the thing that sent him to the clouds was before they parted ways, the professor asked the young man one last question — “Would you be interested in teaching this class with me next year?”

Despite not having any previous teaching experience, at the age of 28, the young man picked his jaw up off his plate and with eyes frozen open replied with a fast yes.

The following day, in the presence of the dean of students and his idol, my friend Kevin Ervin Kelley, AIA inked a contract marking the moment he officially became a lecturer at Harvard.

That’s the power of treating your curiosity as your primary responsibility.

That’s the power of giving yourself permission to create your own green lights in life.

That’s the power of what Kevin describes as having the courage to make a lonely decision.

There he was, a struggling young father and new business owner barely able to keep his head above water paying out his team more than he was paying himself. But he had the stones to prioritize his own dreams over the opinions of others and in the end, he spent eleven years teaching at arguably the best university in the world alongside legendary architect Gene Kohn.

I don’t know about you, but I love stories like this. They light me up. After Kevin told me about it I told my wife about it. Then I told my mom about it. Then I told my dad about it. And then I begged Kevin to write about it.

It’s easy to pull lessons out of this story. It’s hard not to think Kevin is the definition of cool. Betting on yourself is an easy one. The notion that nothing worth having comes cheap is another as you gotta invest in yourself if you want other people to invest in you.

But after thinking about his story there’s also a lesson I see time and time again when speaking to people who’ve reached heights they hadn’t even considered before.

Sure, asking yourself what you want to do is a valuable question. The same goes for asking yourself how you can accomplish your goals.

From my experience, however, there’s also a question that’s potentially not only better, but easier and it comes in the form of five little words — “Who can I meet today?”

One encounter.

One connection.

One relationship.

Opportunities come in all shapes and sizes but the one thing they have in common is no matter how deserving you may feel, they’re given to us by other people.

Like Kevin never being able to predict he’d move from student to teacher in the span of twenty-four hours, I met a man that saw something in my writing before I even knew I could write, and I sure as hell hadn’t considered making a career out of it. But he pushed me. And he challenged me. I don’t know where I’d be today if he hadn’t made the decision to bet on me.

Keep chipping away at your goals.

Put your head down and continue to learn new skills.

But as the world begins to open up again don’t get so caught up in the work in front of you that you forget to pick your head up to get to know the people who are doing what you want to do.

Maybe the next hand you shake doesn’t lead to someone who has the potential to change your stars.

But maybe they do. Maybe you meet someone like Kevin did who sees something in you that offers a path you hadn’t considered before.

I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s the whole point of living.

To take your story and blend it with those around you to see how you can get each other’s worlds to collide.

This article first appeared on Medium.