Career Choices and the Life Path

Perhaps this article is a little late in offering support to those who have had tremendous upheavals in life due to health reasons, economic downfalls, and job instability, but there are new chances out there that can help turn life around and truly make things better for you than you may have previously imagined.

We are trained early on to set career goals for ourselves.  Children are often asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Often, they consider the jobs that their parents have.  Sometimes they fantasize what might be a glamorous job, like acting or modeling.  Rarely do they get in touch with just what they would like life to look like when they have reached adulthood.  So many people end up in careers that they don’t like, that don’t really fit who they are as a person, or just seem tedious and stressful.  How can we avoid this or how can a course correction be made if we find ourselves in the wrong place lifestyle-wise?

I cannot stress enough how important it is to be able to visualize exactly what you want from life.  The trouble comes in when you just don’t know what you want from life.  Part of that is the trouble with our society and the ways we expect success to look like.  We think in terms of the home we live in, the recreational options at our disposal, the children we have, the vehicles we drive, and so forth.  When we think about how we look from the perspective of other people, rather than what we want as individuals, we are treading a path of failure.  We are failing ourselves.

Perhaps one way to get back to who we are as a person is to consider what we thought we would be when we were young.  Ask yourself that question:  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  You have an answer.  Think about it.  Don’t allow yourself to dismiss any possibility, just because it is nowhere near what you have done in the past, or would require retraining, or seems simplistic compared to where you are now.  This is your starting point.  All you have to do is to make a conscious choice to turn it into a reality.  If you need to go to school to get a degree or some type of training, take the steps necessary to make that happen.  You can do whatever you set your mind on. 

Something that happens to artistically-gifted individuals with regularity, is that they have found deep dissatisfaction with their jobs.  They get stressed, depressed, and while they are on this downward spiral of emotion, they find themselves failing at their careers.  They may just stop going to work, whether by choice or out of emotional necessity.  It is so very important that artistic individuals have that creative outlet, so they may require a day job to pay the bills, but they also require the time to express themselves in a creative way.

Some individuals need to be their own boss.  This is not just because they can’t follow the instruction or supervision of another person, rather, it is because they have such a unique perspective on the manner of applying work tasks that they become anxious or irritated when what they see as an inferior manner of doing things is presented.  These people need to be given their own reins and allowed freedom to go as far and as fast as they can.  More than anything else, they need to learn how to pace themselves so they don’t burnout from pure exhaustion.

The last group I would like to address are the people pleasers.  Some individuals are willing to work as hard as they can, doing as much as they can, just to get an attaboy. They want so much to gain the approval of the boss that they are willing to go above and beyond the expectations put on them, and these are the ones who eventually cause themselves emotional and sometimes physical injury in so doing.  It’s great to do a good job, but going to extremes can be harmful. 

You may have heard that the best key to career success is, “Do what you love and the money will follow.”  We would like this to be true, but it isn’t always the case.  Do what you love and you will be happy with what you are doing, unless you expect to get rich doing it.  Certainly there is money to be made.  But you need to be reasonable in your expectations.  You know your ability to work.  You know how much energy you have, what skill set you have, what your best skills are.  When you can apply these to what you are doing, you are going to be better off, career-wise, but there may be additional skills that you need to make yourself a success in your chosen field.  Once you write a book, you have to sell it, for example.  There are many variables that affect the success of that book.  You must take all of those variables into consideration.

Changing jobs, because you feel that you have a higher calling, and then expecting that you should make more money doing the latter, just because it is a higher calling, in your perspective, is not realistic.  Again, greater job satisfaction must be taken into account.  All in all, when you go from a trade that pays you great sums of money, but puts you in a bad place emotionally, spiritually, or physically, suggests that you are not fulfilled.  It is the low road.  Choosing to make the change, visualizing and affirming what you want, will help you to create a career and lifestyle that you can live with.

May you be richly blessed.