Have you decided what direction you want to take with your career? Do you know what you want from your career? These are some of the questions we asked in a recent focus group. Some people said yes, they are very sure of what they want from a career, some said maybe, they sort of know what they want from a career and what direction to take, and some had no idea what they wanted from a career or in what direction they want to take their career.
What determines what you should do in your career? Perhaps you already have a qualification or some sort of education behind your name, surely then that is the field you should be getting a career in? But what if you want to do something completely different than what you studied? Do the people around you have opinions on what you should be doing or what career you should want to pursue? Perhaps your parents have different opinions than you about what you should be doing?
All of these questions can be quite overwhelming. When you are faced with them, ask yourself these three questions:
- What is important to you, what are you interested in?
- What do you enjoy doing? What inspires you to work harder?
- Why do you think people are in jobs that they don’t like?
You need to understand how what you want for yourself and how what others want for you can influence you so that you can make the right career choices. You also need to know what gives you joy, what inspires you and what you are interested in. Lastly, you need to reflect on why some people end up in jobs they do not like, so that you can avoid ending up in a job instead of a career.
