Career Guidance

Choosing the right career.

With social life turning increasingly complex and careers multiplying
exponentially, choice of a career is becoming more and more baffling.
Some old professions have gone extinct and quite a good numbers have
emerged, making the choice not only cumbersome but stressful. It
wouldn’t be futile to go through some difficulty, even if some what
strained, if one would land up on the right path. The problem arises
when, after all the trepidation, one gets into a wrong track. It is
thus crucial, when deciding about the career to exercise utmost
caution.

It is a bizarre paradox and a pathetic irony of an individual’s social
existence that he/she does not know much about himself /herself in
terms of choice of things that suit him/her in accordance with the
temperament but others pretend to know all such things about him/her.
And tragically enough, we too have come to rely on other’s judgment
for what suits us. To this extent, it would not be an exaggeration to
suggest that the person so relying on others for one’s career choice
and connected matters, is playing with his/her life and exposing some
degree of bankruptcy of self –knowledge. In accordance with the
incontrovertible logic of life, I should choose my career in
consonance with my disposition, propensity and taste. This is not to
indicate that other’s views should not be sought. An expert opinion
should be had and respected. But as Shakespeare said more than four
hundred years ago, “Take each man’s counsel, but reserve thy
judgment”, the final decision should be ours. How can there be someone
to know me better than I know myself. The million dollar question
arises, why does this happen?

The origin lies in our childhood when our mind-set was frozen into a
conditioned attitude to advice from all elders. Not encouraged to
exercise independent choice then, we are scared to do it even now.
Understanding this fact with deep feeling and the havoc it plays with
our lives, is the first step we need to take to be self-possessed and
self assured. A beginning should be made with small things. The effort
should be kept up until we catch up with bigger things. Wisely has it
been said, “Take care of little things, big things will take cared of
themselves”. The crying need is to embark on this path right here and
now.