ALT-1 Why you shouldn’t let other Peoples Opinions Affect your Career Choice
It is difficult, when you are trying to choose a career. Your parents, with the best of motives, may try to influence you to choose a particular career. They may want you to choose a steady and stable job that will keep you financially secure. Friends, or partners, may try to sway you for less worthy reasons. You need to choose a career that is right for you, not for someone else. It is good to take advice from other people, but the decision is yours, and yours alone. You cannot blame everybody else, when you are stuck in the wrong career, if you allowed them to persuade you, against your own instincts. It is possible to change careers later, but, in practice, most people, once they set out on a career path, tend to stick with it.
You will probably work for more than forty-five years, so it is important to have an interest in your career. If are not interested in your career, it is hard to sustain the effort necessary to ensure success. You may have to study subjects that you do not enjoy, for many years, to qualify for the career. You will then spend years doing something in which you have little interest. When you feel that your work is pointless and it holds no joy for you, it is hard to muster the enthusiasm to do it properly. Your lack of enthusiasm and productivity will be apparent. Others will get promotion and you will not, you could even lose your job.
Forcing yourself, against your nature, into a career will cause you years of unhappiness and sour your character. Square pegs do not fit into round holes. Your unhappiness, and the feeling that your work is pointless can form the idea in your mind that you are pointless. Many middle-aged people bitterly regret their original career choice. This bitterness can cause stress, and mental and physical health problems. Your happiness and well-being are crucially important.
Other people’s advice, and counsel, is important, but you must decide on your own career and, therefore, you must concentrate on what you want. Your mother may want a doctor in the family, but, if you hate science and the sight of blood, you will not be happy and you will not make a good doctor.
It may be that your parents are trying to make you be a little more realistic in your choice of career. You may be potty about art, and want to be a painter, or sculptor. It is a precarious profession, and your parents may just be worried. There is room for compromise, there are hundreds of careers, connected with art, that you could choose that will at least pay you a wage. Unless starving in a garret appeals to your romantic sensibilities, it might be better to go for an art related career, such as graphic design, art teacher or many others, that pays you a salary, and do your own art in your leisure hours, until you are a famous artist.
If you allow anyone to pressure you into a career, s/he is the person that you will blame, when you are stuck in a job that you hate. Square pegs do not fit into round holes. Your career choice is an important decision and, whilst other people’s advice and counsel is important, you should not allow anyone to make that decision for you. Part of being an adult is making your own decisions and being responsible for them and their consequences.
