Jeff Johnson: Asking Adults for Career Help

Jeff Johnson: Asking Adults for Career Help
By Ben Gross

As a Grady Talks contributor, Atlanta personality Jeff Johnson brought his unflappable enthusiasm to the halls of Grady High.  Johnson asked the students to think back to the halcyon days of early childhood: imagine, he said, that you are taking a walk on a hot summer day, and right in front of you is a big, deep, puddle.  What would the younger you have done?  Johnson told the students what he would have done: jumped as high as he could and landed right in the middle of it.  Sometimes the puddle was clean and clear; sometimes it was muddy and murky.  But, Johnson said, he would still jump, be the consequences what they may.  Which is a lot like life, Johnson told the class.  Life presents us with clean puddles and dirty ones: with challenges and rewards, successes and failures, struggle and peace.  While a little more circumspection might have saved Johnson’s family some laundry detergent in his younger days, life, Johnson said, differs a lot from puddles in that respect.  You can’t spend your whole life on the sideline.  Eventually, Johnson stated, you have to deal with life; you have to just jump right in.    

   

Life is all about relationships, Johnson continued.  Jumping into life, he said, means building relationships at every opportunity to do so.  Network, he told the students, intern, mentor.  It’s not easy, but it’s not too hard; and the rewards of such proactive relationship building, Johnson advised the students, are fantastic.  People can be applied to the puddle metaphor, too, Johnson said.  Good influences are like clean, sparkling puddles – seek them out.  Bad influences are like shallow, muddy puddles – step right over them and keep doing the good things you’re doing. 

Johnson told the students that jumping in also means practicing your craft, learning new things, and honing your skills. Find what motivates you through life, and go for it, Johnson said.  Don’t sit back and expect success to come to you, Johnson said; instead, think about what you want to do for your career and do it now – if you like it, keep doing it and getting better, if not, look for something else!  “Practice your passion!  Every day is a gift,” Johnson concluded by saying, “open up each day the best way you can.  Live it the best way you can.  Enjoy that gift, it means so much.”