Choosing the right career for you is one of the most important things you’ll be doing with your life. It’s something that will take a big part of your time, in which you’ll invest so much efforts and exceed slowly over the years.
Professional expertise and becoming well-known in a field may take up to a decade. So choosing the wrong career path will be a waste of a whole phase of your life if you don’t think it through.
But how do you know what’s the ideal job for you, what field you’ll never get tired of, which market will be evergreen and will give you plenty of chances to achieve more and enough paying customers to support you for a lifetime?
Let’s begin by answering these two questions:
1. What’s the one thing I’m truly passionate about?
What is it that you can do for hours without getting overwhelmed? What can you talk and read about day after day? What engages your mind when you have nothing else to do? What’s the activity that makes you lose track of time and which leaves you even more filled with energy and enthusiasm after that?
The answer is your passion. And it’s different for everyone.
It may be hard to notice it at first. There are too many distractions in daily life. And if you’ve always lived in your comfort zone there’s a high chance you never had the opportunity to show off your talents, to see what you care about and what moves you more than anything else.
If your dream is to be a flight attendant, for instance, you may have never guessed it if you never stepped on a plane in your life so far. You may have watched movies about it and felt something inside you burning with desire, or you may be a person who always looks in the sky when outside and a plane passes.
So take the time today to get to the bottom of this. Find the one thing you’re passionate about more than anything else in the world. It’s your mission to pursue it and it’s the right career for you. You’ll exceed in it effortlessly, will enjoy working a job related to it and will be satisfied with this aspect of your life.
>> Check out my book: Finding The One Thing You Were Born to Do: From Recognizing to Monetizing your Passion
2. How does your ideal lifestyle look like?
Think about your ideal life in details. Imagine how you want your near future to look like. The best way to get specific is to describe one such day.
Write down how you want it to look like from waking up to the moment you go to bed.
Which people you don’t want to spend time with? What time would you go to work? Or will you be working from home? What projects will you work on? Will you have a daily workout and eat well? Will you have many tasks on your to-do list but only essential things that you simply get done in order of importance? Where will you live? How will you spend your free time?
Visualize all this. Then, turn it into goals. Start by removing the things in your current life that you don’t want to be in your future.
Then, think what job will best suit this lifestyle. Consider all aspects of it: workplace, colleagues (if any), commuting, whether it includes traveling every now and then, the chance to make more money if you work harder, the working hours, the influencers you can reach out to in this field, the connections you’ll make, etc.
Let’s take an example. The real estate market is full of competition. It takes some serious work before you become anyone. You need to be a people person, be good at sales, learn everything about the market, have exceptional attention to detail, be aggressive when you need to but still polite and professional, be patient and persistent at the same time, and more.
But if the game excites you, if you’d love to help people find the ideal home for them even before they know which one they want, if you’re interested in buildings and are good at preparing them for clients’ visits, if the idea of working with wealthy customers and making a huge commission with each sale excites you, then you can pursue a career in that industry.
You can become a real estate agent with the right preparation, determination and hard work. You first need to understand what it takes to get licensed and make sure you meet the criteria. Then complete the required number of hours for your education and pass the exam.
Once you do that, you’ll begin working for someone and making your first money. But what’s more important, you’ll be learning from your mistakes, getting to know the market inside out, seeing what works and what doesn’t, optimizing your approach, forming relationships, and more.
Until one day you’re ready to become something more and start a business on your own.
So, now that you have these 2 aspects in mind, what’s the right career for you?