Pallavi Gupta Are you feeling unsure and confused about your career? Read this article to learn what you can do to find the right career path & enjoy a fulfilled life.
Most of us are forced to make a career choice without much thought.
For a few lucky souls, this decision might come somewhat naturally.
Still, for the majority of people, the choice is usually influenced either by their parents or their peers.
What else can they do?
Is it possible to know yourself and what you want to do with the rest of your life at the young age of 16 or 17?
The number of people dissatisfied and stressed out with their jobs makes it clear that it is not!
I am Confused About My Career
There is no shortage of people realizing ten years into their chosen career that it is not for them.
They spend fortunes to get a professional degree, spend innumerable hours to study the subjects and pet a dream of a successful and satisfying life ahead, only to realize and fail miserably, that, the career doesn’t fit them at all, once they enter the actual work life.
Leaving them sad, disappointed, and unable to muster the courage to quit, the wrong career makes them exhausted and in some cases, eternally discontented.
Choosing a career, thus, becomes a crucial decision that should be made only after enough soul-searching.
Expecting a teenager to figure out this, all by himself, without enough life experiences, is not only irresponsible on the parts of his guardian and teachers, but it is careless as well.
What to Do When I am Unsure About My Career Path?
The research and development in the realms of the psychology community may have advanced in the last few years than what it was thirty years ago, but, the insights and applications are yet to reach the common man for him to enjoy the benefits.
However, with some guidance and a zeal to make a long, satisfying career, one can gather ample clues about himself which would help in making the right career choice.
Here are a few questions, for starters, answering which might give you a better idea of what kind of career would fit you:
1. What’s Your Temperament and Personality
There are several ways to know more about your personality, but the best among them would be taking the help of a career counsellor.
Personality assessment tests like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or Big 5 could be a good starting point.
Taking these tests sincerely may provide you with enough clues to winnow down the list of careers that suits your personality and temperament and which ones do not.
MBTI measures you on four pairs of opposites — extroversion and introversion; intuition and sensing; feeling and thinking; perceiving and judging. For more accuracy, many counsellors prefer MBTI Step II.
2. Are You An Extroverted or Introverted person?
An extroverted person may find jobs that require long hours of concentration, not much interaction with other people, and the company of reserved colleagues stifling and dull.
Similarly, throw an introverted person among loud, expressive, fun-loving, gregarious, frank, and outgoing extroverts, for eight to nine hours, day in day out, he will be overwhelmed to the very marrow of his bone. The mismatch between their personality and the chosen career will create a mental discord for a lifetime.
3. Do You Have an Intuitive or Sensing Temperament?
An Intuitive person may find it challenging to be in the present, concentrate on practical things and be satisfied with what he already has, unlike a person with a Sensing temperament.
His ability to look for possibilities, potentials, imagine and expand the future, and his love for new ideas, sources of inspiration, maybe of little value in a job that requires you to be in the present moment and deal with practicalities of life, based on facts, examples, and evidence.
Someone more ambitious by nature would be permanently restless in such a kind of career.
4. If You Have a Feeling Temperament, Jobs Requiring Thinking Functions May Not be For You
An individual with a Feeling temperament may find himself lacking in his abilities in the jobs which may require Thinking functions such as analyzing, dissecting, being thick-skinned, showing ruthlessness, and tough-mindedness. Their lives, naturally, are more inclined to humans and their relationship with them.
Someone valuing warmth, friendship, peace, the welfare of one another, a forgiving and passionate nature, may not have much to give in the jobs which require using the mind, in a composed manner, to achieve or accomplish a goal, in ambitious ways.
Their tender-heart may not tolerate the dry and coarse jobs, leaving them bruised and unfulfilled, for life.
5. A Judging Temperament Stuck in A Job Requiring A Perceiving One?
A person with a Judging temperament would aim for clear goals and objectives, loves to finish projects he starts, work steadily, and is known to be extremely decisive. Think of the fate of a Perceiving individual, who loves to keep his options open, works in bursts — sometimes at a stretch and at times not at all, explores everything and finds it fulfilling to start new projects than finishing them, in a career which asks for Judging temperament preference. What do you think would happen? You know the answer.
Having a reasonable idea of your personality and temperament and using that information to choose a career for yourself may save you from a life full of misery and sleepless nights.
6. What’s Your Natural Talent
When a child is born, he enters the world with his unique set of gifts, the abilities or talents to excel in a particular role, he would find himself inclined to perform.
With proper education and training, later in life, these talents can be developed and expressed effortlessly fully in a rewarding career.
Whereas, ignoring your innate abilities and getting in a job that utilizes entirely different talents than that of yours, may make you look incompetent, lazy, or dull!
Unlike skills and interests, which we learn over a period, talents come with us the day we are born. Understanding one’s talents could help you immensely in choosing a satisfying career that would give ample chances to use them.
It’s good to know that all of us are talented or intelligent, in our own ways. The scientific community, now, recognizes different types of abilities such as linguistics, kinesthetics, mathematical-logical, musical, spatial, interpersonal or intrapersonal, rate of idea flow, diagnostic reasoning, and analytical reasoning. No one has all the gifts, but everyone has at least a few.
With the help of a career counsellor, you can take tests that would help you recognize your talents.
Conclusion
A satisfying career is one of the crucial aspects of a fulfilled and peaceful life. Feeling stuck in a career that sucks the joy out of your life could be frustrating. Not only does it increase your feelings of worthlessness but being in the wrong career can make you feel very lonely.
A little self-awareness and self-discovery could help you find out the right career path. Being aware of your personality type, temperament and natural talents are some ways to guide you on the right career path and clear all your confusion.
