Gone are the days we simply follow the plan our status and family provided. Now we have choice. Isn’t it amazing/terrible? Talk about a blessing and a curse. It’s exciting and terrifying. To some, this is a challenge that inspires us to explore possibilities and develop our abilities. To others, this leaves us curled up in a ball afraid to move while others make a move and then second guess everything they do. I remember as a teenager being a dreamer. I would imagine how great it would be when I was done school and doing the job I believed would give me the happiness I thought my life lacked. Spoiler alert to anyone like me: If you can’t find happiness where you’re at, you won’t find happiness anywhere else. I have spent most of my life thinking “I’ll be happy when…” which can give you some hope at the beginning of your journey, but eventually you end up broken if you don’t achieve the dream (obviously) and broken if you do (hey, Lindsay Lohan) because you’re still not happy.
So how do you choose what you’re going to do for the rest of your life? People say things like follow your heart, or pursue your passion not your pension, or go to my seminar and spend lots of money, so I can tell you nothing (that’s not what life coaches and self help speakers say to advertise, but it’s in the small print). As someone who has pursued different dreams that all fell through, I’ve had my share of time to reflect on this. First off, what everyone needs to realize is that a career doesn’t make you happy. Being happy makes you happy. We overcomplicate it. To be happy, we simply need to appreciate what we have and those around us while seeking healthy personal growth and fulfilling our regular responsibilities. That’s it. A job rarely makes or breaks our life. Your emotional health does. You can have the best job in the world and still find reasons to be sad. If we want to be happy in the future, we need to find reasons to be happy now. The second most important thing to realize is that feelings can be liars. Feelings are great for giving tips for direction, but feelings shouldn’t be the GPS of our lives. We need to make decisions like career with careful consideration. The questions below are a good place to start. Knowing feelings can be liars is particularly helpful when we realize the thing we love to do the most is usually the worst thing we can do as a career. Why? Because a career usually sucks the joy out of doing something. Ask most professional athletes and artists. The smartest way to develop the thing you love doing into a career is to have another job to pay the bills and then do the thing you enjoy on the side. If it develops into something more, you have the choice of leaving your other job or keeping things where they are. But regardless of what we do as a career, we still have the choice of how we will live our life: Resentful of how life and/or God wasn’t as generous as we wished He was, or we can look for ways to be grateful and how we can improve things when they’re not at their best.
Practical questions to ask when choosing a career:
- Have I looked into options? The best way to pick a career is to talk to every adult you can (parent’s friends, friend’s parents, relatives, etc.) asking what they do, if they like it, how to get into it and/or is there something else they wish they did or would recommend.
- Can I tolerate doing this every day? People who want to “love” their job are putting too much pressure on their work to make them happy. Aiming to “tolerate” gives you room to be okay with okay and fantastic when things are better.
- What do I need to tolerate this job more? I enjoy being a marriage and individual therapist, but in order to enjoy it I need proper breaks, friends at work, and outside social time.
- Can this make me enough money? Money isn’t everything, but it’s something. It should always be considered when choosing a career path because it will affect our lifestyle.
- Am I setting myself up to be a slave? We need to be careful to live below our means, so we don’t end up going to work because we “have” to go to work. That’s a great way to end up resenting your job.
- Can I see the good? No matter where we are, school or work, we need to be able to see the good in our situation. If we only see the negative now, we’ll be good at only seeing the negative later.
Bonus: Keep a list of why your job/school is a blessing where you can regularly see it, so you won’t become complacent to the blessings it offers.
Bonus for Christians: Lots of Christians want to know God’s Will for their careers. Here’s my rule: If God wants me to do something He will make it clear; otherwise, it’s like the Garden of Eden where God says: “Here’s the Garden; take care of it and be fruitful.” God tells us to be fruitful (Gen 1:28b) not change the world. That’s His job. Prophets and the Apostle Paul experiences where God tells them what to do are the exception not the rule. Early Christians didn’t worry about what career to follow; they just worked to survive and worshipped God where they could. The best thing we can do is to try to create opportunities, take smart opportunities when they present themselves, and have things in place so we can hear God speak like listen to Christian music, read our Bible, do devotions, and spend time with good Christian people. The more ways we open ourselves up to hear God speak, the more likely we’ll hear Him if He has anything in particular to say. And if you don’t hear any specific directions enjoy the freedom because this can change at any time.
Rev. Chad David, www.ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people