I can list a hundred different examples from my private career counseling practice all with the same theme. Kids turned to their parents for career choice advice and were pointed firmly in the direction of better paying jobs. That's how someone who was better suited to being a chef ended up in accounting, an aspiring fashion designer wound up in banking, and a would be photographer chose law. It's also why so many successful professionals decide to change careers in their 30s and 40s.
The initial emphasis that parents and their offspring place on money is quite reasonable. After all, as a young adult, you were probably cast from the family womb without an apartment, a car or a charge card, and you needed to establish your financial independence posthaste.
Plus, you likely were anxious to meet the timetable that society had conveniently laid out for you: graduate from college, get a job, get married (or, in some cases, get married, then get a job), buy a house, have kids.
And after have kids?
Raise kids. Pay the bills. Save for college tuition. After that, your kids can do the same thing all over again; live your life, that is.
It's all very predictable.
It's also unrealistic.
Every individual has to make his or her own way in the world. There's no single right formula that works for everyone. Behind every successful and satisfied careerist is a process of self discovery and a journey down a personally meaningful road, not a simple prescription for happiness that didn't work then and doesn't work now.
No one is denying the importance of money. It has the power to relieve financial stress and make life infinitely more comfortable. But when you trade in your soul for a paycheck, you give up too much. The key is to avoid "either or" thinking. Stop believing that if you do what you want, you'll have to starve, and start thinking more creatively about ways to make money doing things you love.
Tom Peters, a noted author and management consultant, has said that when it comes to career choices, it's inconceivable to him that ambitious and talented people would do anything other than follow their hearts toward things they love. How can you possibly expect to be successful, Peters asks, if you don't care about and value the work you do?
Other People Are in Charge
When columnist Bob Greene asked, "How old are you supposed to be before you become a grown up in your own head?" he was reflecting on the consequences that come from living your life according to someone else's (or society's) agenda. Taking on the conventions of adulthood may make you a "cultural adult," but it can also keep you one step removed from your real needs and desires.
Author Tom Clancy remembers the moment when he reached that epiphany.
He was in his mid 30s at the time, living the traditional American Dream. He had a wife, two kids and a fairly successful (if uninspired) career in the insurance business. He also had a car (and car payments), a house with a mortgage, and other trappings of middle class respectability.
But he knew something was missing when he found himself asking for the umpteenth time, "What do I want to be when I grow up?"
Says Clancy: "The stunning and depressing realization hit me that I was grown up, and I might not be what I wanted to be."
What Clancy lacked was a dream of his own. He was so busy following society's agenda, he hadn't realized he was programming himself for unhappiness. The type of success he'd been taught would make him content turned out to be surprisingly un fulfilling.
To come to a more emotionally satisfying resolution, he needed to make more self directed choices. He needed a different kind of connection to his work and a way to express himself more fully. The result has been a bonanza for millions of readers and moviegoers.
Today, we know Clancy best as the writer of such military thrillers as The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.
Many dissatisfied careerists can recognize themselves in Clancy's dilemma. Surrounded with middle class responsibilities, it isn't so easy to "follow your dream" or even to find it under all the layers of conventional adult choices.
To uncover your career dreams, my friend and colleague Cheryl Heisler in Chicago recommends what she calls "the Hansel and Gretel" approach. To find your way back to your emotional home, she says, you have to look for clues in the things that you've abandoned along the way. Search your past for discarded interests, dreams and goals. You may be surprised to find them still awake inside you.
Heisler knows firsthand the value of such a journey of self discovery.
Originally, she chose law because her pharmacist father thought it'd be a good field for a bright, creative, articulate woman like his daughter (she'd been voted "Friendliest Person" of her senior high school class). But the law, as you may know, isn't the friendliest profession. It's filled with conflict and adversarial relationships, and it took Heisler only a few years of practicing law to figure out she didn't like it.
As she looked for clues to her next career choice, she thought about her college major, which was advertising. She decided to pursue a position in marketing advertising's first cousin and subsequently landed a brand management job at Kraft Foods.
If not her ultimate calling, it did prove to be a good outlet for both her creativity (which made her great at positioning new products) and her outgoing personality (which made her excel lent at client development).
She also discovered something new about herself, which leads to my next point.
There Is One Perfect Job for You
Marketing was definitely a better choice for Heisler than law. But it wasn't ideal. It involved too much number crunching for a woman who had never liked math much. Having changed careers once, she found herself again on the lookout for other options.
As it turns out, Heisler didn't have to search hard for her next career direction. Essentially, it came to her. Other attorneys, who'd found out about her successful career change, kept contacting her to ask how they could do the same. When she dis covered how much demand there was for such information and how much she enjoyed counseling other lawyers on their options, she founded Law ternatives, a career consulting firm that ad vises lawyers in transition. For her, the hardest part of becoming a career counselor was giving up the job title of "lawyer." Even as a brand manager for Kraft, she'd referred to herself as a "lawyer who was doing marketing."
In many ways, the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is itself problematic. When what you do for a living becomes synonymous with who you are as person, you may feel trapped into choosing an identity instead of an occupation.
Under these circumstances, it's no wonder many young people default into high status professions. Not only will they garner better salaries this way, they'll also gain instant credibility and respect. With so much psychological gratification riding on the outcome, it's hard to choose more amorphous or vaguely defined fields. Never yet have I heard a child say, "I want to be a meeting planner when I grow up" even though lots of meeting planners love their jobs. Nor have I heard parents actively encourage their kids to be physical therapists, even though it's the fastest growing occupation in the United States.
It's easy to get caught up in the stereotypes. A youngster raised on TV's Law and Order may be drawn to the glamour of the courtroom drama, but television melodrama isn't the stuff of which good career choices are made.
There may be more than 26,000 occupations in the labor force, but to hear most people tell it, I'd swear there were only three: doctor, lawyer and corporate executive.
Philadelphia career counselor Douglas Richardson acknowledges how difficult it can be to steer clear of jobs that are wrong for you when so many external factors are pushing you in the wrong direction. Under these conditions, it may be difficult to distinguish between what he calls your soul (basic temperament) and your role (outside factors that impinge on judgment).
Says Richardson: "Unless we're gifted with world class objectivity, we find it hard to distinguish what we really want from what we think we ought to want, what others tell us we should want and what it's unrealistic to want. Is it any wonder we can't tell whether we're driving or being driven?" For example, Heisler discovered that once she figured out what she really wanted to do and got involved with something she really loves, she lost the need to call herself "esquire."
"I have a job where I can be myself and be appreciated," says Heisler. "What better title can I wear?"
