CHOOSING CAREER AS A PROFESSION

So I was in a room with my friends (guys), chatting and gisting one day, then suddenly I asked this question- “*What is a career?*”. It was as if I asked a forbidden question as silence engulfs the whole atmosphere. And the following convo ensued...

And suddenly one of them broke the silence by giving his own definition of career. He said “it is something you’ve been building for over the years, like five or ten years upward”. So I looked from him to the other guy while he also supported the motion with just a slight difference. Then I said, that means we all as we are in this room, don’t have a career? They said yes! Because obviously, we don’t have what we’ve been building for that long years. Meaning we are career'less, I said jokingly and we all laughed over it.

But truth be told, I wasn’t that satisfied with their definition so I asked someone else and he really brought us out of the dark and we realized that we are careerful😁

Let me not bore you with my story. I will move further by defining what career really means.

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According to Google, A career is an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.

Therefore, from the definition above, we could see that my friends were wrong after all. Career is a long-term endeavor that we build towards and work upon everyday. When we talk about career, it is that job or profession that you’ve been trained for, and which you do for a long period of life.

Just as we have people that choose Doctor, lawyer, teacher, hairstylist and so on as a career. Yeah! I’m a hairstylist, it’s what I have passion for and I’ve been doing in for some years now, and I’ve envisioned how successful I’m going to become in it. That’s my career and I’ve got to pursue it.

Guess what friends? While I’m writing on this, my mum’s call just come through now and over the conversation after she asked about my well-being, she brought it back to me one job she once told me to go and learn because there is money in it. Gosh! I was pissed. I literally told her, I was not interested in that profession because of my personality (an introvert), a shy type indeed and now telling someone like me me to go for “Alaga iduro and Alaga Ijoko” (They are important personalities that conduct Yoruba traditional marriage ceremonies). I don’t have passion for it and I will just be shooting myself in the leg if I venture into it because of money and to please my mum.

Now, back to our topic... you will agree with me that, what we don’t have passion for cannot last without having a strong why and it will definitely end when that career faces challenges of life.

What we are depending our future on must be sown in passion. When choosing a career, we need to examine ourselves in the profession we are choosing to become and should not be taken with levity because it may affect our life when not careful.

Necessary Things In Choosing A Right Career

Understanding oneself — When we don’t even understand what we want to do with our life, it will be difficult to know the right career to choose in life and it is important that we know, because we need to understand that whatever we want to do in life requires strength materially, mentally, physically and so on.

Knowing the perfect career to choose — If your aim of choosing a particular career is because of your friends, family or money. I will say it is not healthy enough. To choose a career must be something you love and have passion for because we tends to loose focus when we do what we don’t have mind for.

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No matter what type of field/career you choose, you need to know if your strength can take the profession.

Developing Ourself In That Skill/Profession —

After knowing the type of career to choose, the next thing is to work towards developing more on that skill. We should seek knowledge from an expertise in that field, reading books from great authors. As we know that the day we stop learning, we start dying. Also, it is essential that we seek wisdom in the career we choose.

I will end with these words from one of my mentor. 👇🏼

“A career that you want to choose is like a single matches in darkness, once you light it and guide it you can light it with a thousand candles.”