Share your feelings with supportive people. There will likely be times during counseling when your feelings about your ability to make an effective choice will be particularly acute. You may feel unsure, afraid, depressed, angry - and these moods may alternate with periods of hopefulness, euphoria, or eager anticipation. These shifts are quite normal, given your circumstances. When you have feelings that you are aware of, career counselors would encourage you to express them openly to your counselors and, once again, to loved ones or other important people in your life. Ask for their support and take it when it's offered. Expressing and resolving your feelings will provide important additional information to use in making your choices and reviewing your options. Often, when feelings remain unexpressed, progress in career counseling goes more slowly.
Be a reasonable adventurer. Some years ago, Dr. Roy Heath described the ideal learner as a "reasonable adventurer." By this, Dr. Heath meant that one should be open to new experiences and see each new or novel situation as an adventure and an opportunity to acquire new skills and understandings. You may also need to take some calculated risks. These risks will probably be neither trivial nor enormous. Sometimes when people fear failure, they take risks that are either much too small or much too large. Career counselors would urge you to take well calculated, moderate risks when they are appropriate (e.g., relocating or trying something new).
Explore the occupational world. The best way to clarify your occupational preferences and test them out against reality is to explore your options as fully as possible. You should engage in all of the following exploratory behaviors: (1) Read books, articles, occupational briefs, and any other relevant occupational information about the options you are considering. Get and read a copy of Richard Bolles's What Color is Your Parachute? (1988) and investigate the Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook (1988). (2) Visit as many possible occupational sites as you can. Bring along a list of 5 to 10 questions you would like answered. Talk to people in jobs in which you have an interest. Ask them what they do and how they like it. Usually, under pressure to make a decision, most people narrow or restrict their exploratory behavior at the very time they should be expanding it.
Remember that everyone has unique skills and abilities. Even though you might have doubts about your skills, most people have many more abilities than they realize. Recognizing what these skills are and how they translate to job options is a very important part of counseling. Think about what you do well. Write your skills down on 3" X 5" cards, and try to review them in a positive way. Be specific; ask people who know you well for feedback about what skills they believe you have.
Prepare yourself to make a commitment. One of the more difficult tasks you will face is the forging of a new vocational identity that you are willing to commit yourself to, at least tentatively. The choices you make now will probably not be permanent ones. Nonetheless, you should be prepared to make some kind of serious commitment, even though it may be temporary. Making this commitment can be frightening, but it is absolutely necessary to successful career counseling. The first commitment you should make is to set aside adequate time for this career exploration.
Be aware that many people can derive some benefit from counseling. Your success depends upon how hard you work, and your willingness to make a commitment to one or more tentative choices. You could choose simply to "go through the motions" of counseling and not show progress. The more willing you are to invest yourself in making an appropriate choice, however, the more likely you will be to make gains. There is a fair body of research evidence that shows that clients do benefit from career counseling on a fairly consistent basis. The responsibility for your outcome is yours, but your counselor can help in some important ways (e.g., by helping you to integrate knowledge about yourself).
Career counselors would urge you to follow these few important suggestions and to read them over periodically. During the course of counseling, you may be exposed to new information, including an occupational history, vocational interest inventories, projective techniques to help you understand how you make career decisions, fantasy techniques for projecting into your future, exercises designed to facilitate your exploratory behavior, interview skills training, and other techniques to help you make your decision. If you have questions about any of these procedures during counseling, please ask.
Fantasy techniques can be done silently, with no interaction between client and counselor, or with constant interactive feedback and coaching. Obviously, the silent fantasy is preferable in the group setting. Variations of this technique are consistently rated as the most effective and enjoyable interventions by both clients and counselors (Kirschner, 1988).
