Find your WHY before you decide on a career path
If you are graduating from 10th, 12th or college, you would be making an important career decision.
You would either be choosing a career stream or a profession, and you would be engaged in it for the next 40-45 years of your life.
But it isn’t an easy decision to make. I mean, just look how lost this person is.
Can you relate to this? Most of us can.
And then we look towards our teachers, parents, relatives and friends to help us out.
The problem with that is they would give you every opinion and career advice that they think is right.
The ideal thing to do would be to identify what you are great at, become self-aware and then select a career or profession that plays to your strengths.
For that, you could go to an experienced and certified career counsellor, and they would help you find your ideal career.
At Swot Careers, we encourage everyone to go to career counsellors at least once in their lifetime, preferably when they take career decisions.
But even that might not give you job satisfaction or a sense of fulfilment.
You might not be happy with your professional life.
There’s one crucial component to make your professional life the happiest and most fulfilling phase of your life.
I mean, isn’t that what we all want? What’s the point of all the success and wealth if all we have after retirement is regret?
The missing piece of this career puzzle that could bring you success, wealth, happiness and a sense of fulfilment is – vision/purpose.
Why having a vision is an essential part of career decision?
Have you ever played with Legos?
If you wanted to build anything out of it, you would first envision it in your mind and then work backwards to select the suitable Lego shapes to build it.
Without having an idea of what the end design would look like, you can’t build it.
Selecting random Lego shapes won’t get you anywhere. You might end up building something entirely different.
Career selection is similar.
You can select a career path or a profession or get yourself a job, and all day every day and not have a sense of accomplishment.
A sense of accomplishment comes from knowing that you did something that brought you closer to making your vision a reality.
Your vision could be anything – build a multi-million dollar business, become a VP of your favourite company, give your parents a comfortable life, have the financial freedom to do whatever you want or simply work with a charity organisation to help people in need.
Once you have your vision, you can then work backwards to figure out what you need to do today to get there.
Then you can use your knowledge of your capabilities and your vision to find the right career path or profession – the one that would help you bring your vision to life.
You must believe in your vision
Just having a vision isn’t sufficient.
You must believe in it with all your heart and soul.
Your vision must align with your core beliefs. Just picking a vision because someone cool has the same vision isn’t going to work.
If you don’t believe in your vision, you will not stick to what you are doing.
And sooner or later you will realise that you are in the wrong profession and instantly you would become unhappy.
That’s why you must ask yourself,
“Why is this vision important to me? Why do I care about it so much that making it a reality is all that I can think of?”
As Simon Sinek says, you don’t have to create or come up with a vision. You can find a vision.
And the way to do it is to listen to leaders. Listen to what they believe in.
When you listen to many leaders (irrespective of their field of profession), you will come across some who believe in the things you believe in.
And suddenly you will find yourself,
“I believe in what he/she believes in. That’s what I want in my life. I want what they have built for themselves.”
Or,
“I want to work for a person like that.”
That’s when you find a vision.
Then you can put this newfound vision to the test. As I mentioned, ask yourself why you care about this vision and why it’s important to you.
When you are absolutely sure you believe, breathe and live this vision, you only have one thing to do – bring it to life.
And the process of using your talents and abilities and slowly watching your vision come to life is what gives a person the greatest happiness and sense of fulfilment in their professional life.
Conclusion
Making a career decision isn’t easy.
You shouldn’t let other people make this decision for you, no matter how close or dear they are you to.
Making a career decision starts with a Why.
Why am I doing this?
What is the purpose of this?
What am I working towards?
When you can honestly answer these questions, you have a vision.
Once you have a vision, you have the destination.
All you need now is the road map – the How.
And the answer to the How is the career choices you make based on your own abilities, talents and personality traits.
That’s how you make the right career decisions.
What’s your vision for your future?
