What are You Good At? How to Choose a Career Path.
What do you want to be when you grow up? If you’re anything like me, your answer to this question has changed drastically since the first time you heard it. I wanted to be a lawyer like Clair Huxtable, a singer, a teacher, a chef, and, of course, a McDonald’s drive-thru worker. Or maybe you’re not like me. Maybe, it’s remained the same since your preschool days. Either way, choosing your career path is not as simple as having a good answer to a question. It takes serious thought, advice, and exposure to decide.
You may not immediately know what you want to do. In fact, a study by OnePoll showed that only about 34% of high school and college graduates have a plan for post-graduation life. So, you’re not the only one who is still trying to figure things out. Even if you’re well into your adult years, a lot of adults are in careers that they hate and are seeing little to no success. Fortunately, you don’t have to walk aimlessly through life forever. I recently heard a successful businessman, Doug Pace, say something that forever changed my outlook on career development. He said (I’m paraphrasing here), "Don’t worry about finding what you’re passionate at. Start with what you’re good at.” I had heard a very similar phrase from a successful businesswoman, so it really solidified this concept for me.
So often, we’re encouraged to be passionate about what we do and eat, sleep, and breathe our careers. But very few people are aware of what they’re passionate about immediately. I’ll even go so far as to say that a passion can be developed for anything. So, where should you start? If you want to choose a career and start growing in that field, I encourage you to start thinking about what you’re good at. What do you do well? What do people know you for? What did you enjoy doing as a child? You may have to expose yourself to and experiment in more fields to discover what you’re good at. This is where I started.
Enrolling in college early gave me the opportunity to explore various fields of study and take my time deciding on a major. I eventually took an intro to business course and realized I could become a business owner/entrepreneur. I decided to explore the business path more thoroughly, which led me to take an introductory marketing course. And this is where I fell in love! I realized that marketing was more than making commercials (which is what most people assume I do when I tell them I'm in marketing). I discovered that marketing would allow me to be creative and use my intellect to create strategies and analyze data. As a result, I made it my aim to focus on marketing for the rest of my time in college. I discovered that I enjoy everything about marketing. I enjoy making social media posts, conducting, and analyzing marketing research, creating new products/services, etc. Most of all, I enjoy creating strategies to help businesses reach their target market and scale into large, successful businesses. More importantly, I was good at it.
For you, it may happen the other way around. You may become good at something and then learn to love it. Here is an article I found on how you can become passionate about anything: http://dosomethingcool.net/turn-passion-4-steps/
If I had to create a full tutorial on how to choose a career path, the first step would be to expose yourself to everything that interests you. Even if you don’t think you’ll be good at it or enjoy it, you’ll never know until you try. Once you’ve found something you like, be diligent in it until you become good at it. Finally, immerse yourself in it and find a way to integrate it into your daily life until you find yourself passionate about your new field. This isn’t an instant process. It may take a few years, even decades, to truly discover where you want to go on your career path. Thankfully, there is an abundance of resources to help guide you and steer you in the right direction.
So, I want to know. How did you choose your current career path? Or what steps are you taking to choose a new career path? Tell me in the comments!
