Life is your Career

Forget about the ones who “have it all.”
          –Land of Competition by Bad Religion

Like most people in our society I was taught at an early age there is a path to follow. Work hard in high school so you can get into a good college. Decide on a major and work hard to get the grades needed to secure a good job in your field. Work your way up in the field to make more and more money and prestige. It’s the standard path that is laid out before us by influences such as our parents, what we see on TV, successful people, and teachers.

The big question: How can you know at 12 or 18 or 20 years old what the right career path is for you? That’s crazy to think that a decision made at that age can shape the rest of your working life which may very well be 50 more years! But that’s what is expected of us. Just think about the questions you get about college. First question is usually, “where did you go to school?” and that is followed by the second question, “what did you major in?” And people who major in something like History or English are bound to get asked what they plan do with their “useless” major. And if you studied one thing but want to work in another field…. good luck explaining that one!

I know people who are 2 years into college and don’t know what they want to be. That isn’t weird. That’s normal. After finishing both college and graduate school and being in the working world I still don’t know what I want to be. I know people who are 50 who don’t know what they want to be. And the truth is that’s fine. “The future you had yesterday is not the same as the future you will have tomorrow”. Just because you chose one path when you were 16 years old doesn’t mean you have to follow that forever. People change. When someone breaks up with their boyfriend/girlfriend we don’t think that is strange… they changed and grew apart. The same is true of career path.

I saw a study that said people who test as being “fully content” in their career have gone through 5 to 8 different jobs on average before finding the right fit for them. That makes perfect sense. You can’t know exactly what you’re getting yourself into with any given career until your actually trying it out. And if you don’t like it then you’ve learned something and it’s on to the next opportunity. Just like with ice cream favors it’s good to sample before picking a favorite.

Society looks at people changing their careers as rebels and as going against the grain. There will be a lot of naysayers who will point at the “successful people” and show how they followed The Path. But so what? Just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. All the ideas of, “but maybe I won’t be successful”, “I might not make as much money”, or “people will think I’m crazy” are flawed. The one thing that matters in your career is that it’s something you can enjoy doing for 20+ years. If you only do it grudgingly and are just giving your time and not your interests then you are going to be in for a long painful road.

Just because you wanted something in the past doesn’t mean you’re required to want it forever. It’s perfectly normal to change career path and to sample different jobs until you find the one that fits you best. Next time someone asks you what you want to be, give them a sly wink and tell them “Whatever strikes my fancy”.

Tags: career, career path, choices, entrepreneur

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.