Deciding on your career path can be a daunting task. The level of decision-making is comparable to deciding on who and when you want to marry. Imagine this context – you’re a guy, deciding whether it’s time to buy the engagement ring and plan a proposal, or you’re a girl who just got proposed to. A lot of things will be going through your mind and it can be pretty stressful because:
- This decision has life-long implications.
- It has far reaching consequences.
- It involves a huge amount of risk because there is a lot of uncertainty, unpredictability, and you have to make this decision with little information.
Here’s another context: You’re 17 years old, just fresh out of secondary school and you have to decide which course you want to take for college.
Choosing a career, getting married and deciding on a college degree are all big and difficult decisions that most of us would make in some point of our lives. So if you’re a 17-year-old who is having trouble deciding on what to study, don’t worry because you are not alone. Not all is lost and there are a few ways to help you make your decisions easier.
Courting your career
How do you decide if you want to marry a certain individual? Well, through your courtship is one way. The whole purpose of courtship is to see if you have compatibility with your other half.
- You spend hours on the phone having great conversations with each other.
- You try to find common activities to do together.
- You spend time with their immediate and extended family members.
- You also court for a prolonged period of time to ensure all the good deeds he/she is doing is not a flash in a pan or the actions of a charlatan.
Either you have done it or would be doing it in the future to get to know your partner better so that your decision to marry him/her is made with as much information as possible.
And how do you apply this to your career decision-making process? You court your career. The course you enroll in at college may be a reflection of what you might want to do after completing the course. How do you court your job? Well, you try them out, just like dating.
- Look for opportunities for part-time work.
- Look for internships.
- Ask and research about the people who are in the industry you are interested in.
- Scour your extended family for relatives who are in the profession.
- If all these fail, you could consult the modern-day “oracle” known as Google. There are many websites which contain the job information you’re looking for and you can check out www.onetonline.org.
Be as thorough in your online job research as you would with a potential partner’s Facebook history. All these actions should be able to yield you information about what the job looks like and hopefully would make the decision-making process less stressful.
You would feel some anxiety as you’re searching for your dream career and that is normal because even the most prepared individuals do feel some amount of anxiety. You would be wondering if you are making the right decision, one that will not make you regret in 5-10 years down the road.
There is no way to predict whether you will be truly happy in your current path in the future. So do what you can, gather as much information as possible before making that decision. Because there is no way to guarantee you will truly be happy with your job as there is to predicting whether you will be truly happy with your dinner later. Until then, happy dating.
If you have any other questions, feel free to drop us an email at contact@themind.com.my, or visit themind.com.my for more articles and information about mental health.
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