THE COLUMNISTS:CHOOSING A CAREER

Choosing a career path or changing one is,for some of us, a perplexed and anxious experience. Many will tell you that “follow your what you have passion for” or “do what you love”. But that will seriously overstating because there are so many things we have passion or love for in life, should we base our career on only love or passion?. At the end of this article, I hope we will be convinced about what it takes to choose a good career

           Let me take succor in the first and indigenous president of the Republic Of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, which says “There is passion to be found in playing small in settling for a life that is less than you are capable of living’.  We all want to choose a career that will make us happy, but how can we know what that will be?. Findings postulate that human beings are partially bad at predicting how they feel when doing something in the future. It is not very hard to find someone who at initial stage love a chosen profession only to conclude hating it. To be fair enough, how are you supposed to know if you will be happy as an investment banker, or a lawyer, medical doctor, nurse, a professor, if you haven’t actually done all things yet?

Furthermore, if passion and expected happiness can’t be your guides then, what can be? You can begin by choosing a career that fits well with you skills and values. Since you actually have some sense of what those are (hopefully), this will be a good staring place. There are two ways you can be motivated to reach your goals. Some of us tend to see our goals at work and in life as opportunities for advancement and achievement and reward. Some of us see our goals as being about security that is about not losing everything we have worked so hard for. When you are 100% focused, you want to avoid danger, fulfill your responsibilities, and be someone people can count on. You want to keep things running smoothly
In addition, everyone are motivated by  both prevention and promotion, but some tend to have a dominant motivational focus in  particular domains of life like work, football and others. What is germane to understand is that promotion and prevention- focused people have because of their different motivations, different strengths and weaknesses. To give you an eye opener of what I mean;

Promotion focused people succeed at:

1. Embracing risks
2. Work quickly that is time conscious
3. Generating a lot of options and alternatives
4. Abstract thinking 
5. Creativity and innovations
6. Seizing opportunities to think and go ahead

Perhaps, they are also more prone to mistakes, overly optimistic and more likely to take risks which land them in hot water.

Prevention-focused people excel at;

1. Thoroughness and being detail-oriented
2. Analytical in thinking and in reasoning
3. Accuracy
4. Reliability
5. Anticipating problems

However, they are also wary of change or taking chances, rigid  and work more slowly. Diligence takes time.
Conclusively, these are the two ways among others that you can get motivated to reach you goals. By now you might a sense of your own in your career. Knowing your dominant focus, you can now evaluate how well-suited you are motivationally to your career. On this note, let me say this “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing say nothing and be nothing”

OLATUNJI S.  TOLULOPE
08164005213
www.proft37@gmail.com