One of the biggest impacts on your mental health in life is your career. When it comes to deciding on your career goals, you’re expected to know what you want to do with your life from the age of about 11.
The moment that you start high school, people are training you into a career that you want. For example, the subjects that you take in high school could determine what you take in college, and what you choose to study in college is going to determine the rest of your career – unless you choose to go back to education as an adult.
It’s perfectly okay to not know what you want to do with your career, or to feel a little bit unsure, and you can use a free strong interest inventory to help you to decide. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, you need to carefully consider your options and do the following things.
#1 Ask yourself the right questions. If you want to figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life, you have to ask yourself some questions to cut through the stress and think of yourself for a minute. You are important, and being able to consider you is a good way to ensure that you can figure out which careers will match. It’s about your personality type, and what kind of work setting works best for you. For example, high stress hospitality settings may not be as fun for you as say, a leisurely tour guide in another country. Self-awareness is key to being able to discover what you want to do with your career, and that means asking yourself the right questions first.
#2 Consider going back to school. If you’ve already been through college once, the chances are you may not want to go and do it all over again, but perhaps what you started in college just doesn’t align with who you are now as a grown-up. Consider going back to school and studying something completely new and see what you can do with your life from there.
#3 Make sure that you cultivate a good balance in life. It’s not easy to juggle a busy work schedule, school demands and parenthood at the same time. You need to make sure that you have enough time in the day for everything, and the things that you do are things that you enjoy. When it comes to choosing your career, you need to choose something that’s going to bring you joy but also give you balance
#4 Get a mentor. If you’re struggling with choices related to your career, you need to think about what professional step you should take next. Sometimes, you need somebody else to tell you what to do and that person can be a mentor to you and they can help you to get from one decision to the next without feeling guilty or worried that it is the wrong thing. They also should be able to tell you how the new career you want will look because they’re already in it