CLN is privileged to share a comprehensive 14 part series of articles on choosing a career – which will appear on a weekly basis. The content is thoroughly researched and reflects a sincere and personalised account by the author. Youngsters and parents will benefit from this practical advice and are strongly recommended to read and share their personal views with CLN for enriching the discourse. – CLN Newsdesk
First things first. What do you want to do or become?
Children, in finding the correct answer to this question will your future happiness or misery depend. Choose the wrong career path in a hurry and repent at leisure.
Ask any finance stream student, what he or she wants to become and pat comes the answer – investment banker! No application of mind! Why? Because everyone says so. Have you actually spoken to an investment banker?
My daughter is one. Ask her. She’ll tell you, you’ll make truckloads of dough alright but you can’t call your soul your own. Weekdays, weekends, holidays, vacations, working hours, off hours, all are same. It’s work, work, work, pressure, pressure, pressure.
You may say this much money is enough. But will your bosses, peers and underlings agree? They are involved in an unending rat race to make more money, chase higher bonuses and so on and you have no choice but to fall in line making more and more money, making yourself more and more miserable.
The poor thing has taken up mountain climbing in Ladakh and does it two to three times a year, just to get away from it all. She says the greatest thing about the Himalayan mountains is this – her cell phone isn’t reachable!😊 And everytime she leaves Ladakh on her return trip to Bangalore, she calls me from Leh airport, wailing that she doesn’t want to return.
So the question to be asked is, what will I be happy doing, for 30 to 40 years of the prime time of my life. And if you feel that a particular career path will make you miserable, don’t even look at it.
And for God’s sake, don’t decide on your happiness based on others’ parameters for happiness. Most people are unhappy precisely because of this.
Let’s say that a friend of yours is very happy owning a Mercedes or BMW. So you decide you’ll also be happy owning a Mercedes or BMW, and work your backsides off to buy one.
There’s an English saying: Don’t crave anything too much, you may get it. So you get your Mercedes or BMW and realise that it doesn’t make you happy at all. And to own it, you sacrificed a lot of your happiness.
Your misery is owing to the fact that you decided on your happiness based on your friend’s parameters for happiness.
Avoid this pitfall while shortlisting a few career options.
Once you decide on what you want to be, ask yourself, am I good at it? You may say I want to represent India in cricket or become a Hollywood movie star.
The question that you have to ask yourself is, whether you have the talent, the capacity, the willingness to put in hard work and the perseverance to persist and of course, the network and contacts to succeed. If not, drop those choices.
Remember, no one can judge you better than yourself. You know your strengths and weaknesses better than anybody else. All you need is the capacity to be honest, brutally honest with yourself.
Do a SWOT analysis. Analyse your Strengths, Weaknesses and look at the Opportunities available and Threats that you have to overcome.
The first two are internal. The last two pertain to your local environment at family, village/town, district, state and country level.
For instance, a kid in Europe has a much better opportunity of employment compared to you because there is a scarcity of labour there. Similarly a kid in Iraq or Afghanistan has more threats and obstacles to overcome than you.
Assessment and awareness of one’s own shortcomings and learning to work around them really helps one succeed.
Chetan Chauhan, who was Gavaskar’s longest lasting opening partner, knew that he could only play shots behind square on the off side. He was very successful leveraging on his strength and working around his weakness. Anything short or over pitched outside off, he cut or steered for runs. Anything else, he defended it, if it was on target and if it wasn’t, avoided playing either by getting away from or by getting behind the line. Simple.
How to work around your weakness? Let’s say that you have played hockey and badminton at school, college and club level. You are obviously familiar with hockey legends but don’t know much about badminton greats. That’s your weakness. See if you can gather information and internalise it so that you can confidently answer questions relating to badminton. Otherwise, don’t mention badminton in your resume. Remember, as a rule, most questions in interviews are based on the assertions in your resume.
After a SWOT analysis, the career options that remain, are those that you like and you are likely to be good at. Choose the one that you think is the best suited for you.
Now you’ve made the most important decision in your life. In the next post, let’s look at how you go about implementing it.
Raja P Areyada
Retired Banker. Expertise in International Finance, Payment systems, Treasury automation, Trading platform development & deployment, Information security, Risk Management, Financial Inclusion, IT software development.
Wide array of interests including Philosophy, Quantum Mechanics, Macro Economics and Parapsychology.
The role of Parents and other Influencers of career options should be one of “encouragement” and removal of “obstacles”.
This is a very insightful and thought-provoking article! Would completely agree that career decisions should be guided by self-awareness rather than societal pressure or perceived glamour. The emphasis on doing a SWOT analysis and being brutally honest with oneself is particularly powerful. Too often, people chase external symbols of success titles, salaries, luxury items only to realize later that these don’t bring true happiness. The example of the investment banking lifestyle perfectly illustrates how every choice comes with trade-offs.
Thank you for this meaningful reminder that real success lies in finding joy, balance, and fulfilment in what we do, not in what others expect of us.
Great start to this series! The insights shared here are genuinely helpful, especially the focus on doing a SWOT analysis and choosing a path that aligns with one’s strengths rather than just following trends. Looking forward to the next articles in the series.
Awesome, more such articles should be published in CLN. 👏👏
As always, the articles in CLN in this category is highly educative. It is heartbreaking to see how many young minds are steered into careers not of their choice but of their parents’ expectations.
In our society, success is often defined by pursuit of traditional professions like Doctors, Engineers or Civil Servants leaving little room for creativity or individuality. But true success comes from pursuing one’s passion and purpose, not compulsion. Parents must learn to guide – not dictate, to support, not impose. After all a “fulfilled” child is far more satisfying outcome than a forced achiever.
Choosing a career should come from the heart, not from pressure. Thank you CLN for inviting such erudite authors by publishing this valuable article.
Looking forward to the series. Career choices during our time were very limited – good students became Doctors, Engineers, Covil Services, Armed Forces; the next rung were Lawyers, Accountants, Teachers, Forestry…. and only those who didn’t make this grade stayed back on the plantations.
With the benefit of hindsight, I will now submit that I would not trade complementing one’s life as a planter with adjacent business (hospitality, trading, teaching and so on) and remaining in Kodagu for anything in the hustle and bustle of a large city. Imagine after all the so-called success what are we aspiring to do – settle down in peaceful surroundings with a relatively clean environment. We can grow our own produce, eat safely and get back home for every meal. I hope the author of the series covers this attractive aspect also – to be a hard-working and satisfied Kodava planter!
CLN is doing the community a lot if service by publishing such articles and must be commended for their efforts.
This is amazing for our young people who need more exposure to the realities of the job market, career options and how to exercise their choices. Parents will do well to read the articles too – kudos to CLN!
A very insightful article. As somebody who has been working for a little over a year now, it’s great to read a post that talks about analysing strengths and weaknesses and having that be the guiding factor as opposed to looking at the monetary gain a job can offer, alone. Looking forward to the next articles!
Enjoyed reading the article. Liked the anology with Chethan Chauhan. I enjoyed my career as a tea planter, especially being out in the open every day and ensuring my workers were happy. Money was more than adequate, but I have wonderfully happy memories.
Yes, 90 % of kids don’t know what they want and are pushed my parental pressures. I see it here at the Light & Life Photo Academy. People in their late 20’s / 30’s quitting tech, marketing, IT jobs and going into photography, finding their calling!
I see young people often, with loads of money, but their eyes lack brightness, sparkle and inquisitiveness; they just don’t want to listen to the other person!
A truly insightful and practical article! It’s rare to see such honest advice on career choices that encourages youngsters to think for themselves instead of simply following trends. The examples and the idea of doing a personal SWOT analysis are especially useful for both students and parents.
Choosing a career should be about long-term happiness, not just money or status — and this article captures that beautifully. Looking forward to the series and more discussions on how schools and families can help children make well-informed career decisions.