The Importance of Career Planning
Where will you be ten years from now? What will you be doing? Who will your colleagues be? It’s questions like these that can make the undecided mind swim. People headed into their higher education are not strangers to notions like you have plenty of time to figure it out and lots of young adults are unsure of what they want to do; but let’s be honest with ourselves, putting off the stress of career-oriented decisions adds onto the stress later and doesn’t serve the future self’s best interest.
Implementing career planning in high school can impact the trajectory of a student’s future, and alleviating the stress and confusion of choosing a career path is a likely result of it. But how does one narrow down their options to a fulfilling and successful profession?
It's All About Utilizing Available Resources
During the career planning phase it’s important to regularly take part in things that will ultimately create an opening and ideally a path. This means doing things like assessing your skills and interests and honing in on your passions and dedicating time to practicing them, which will help to see yourself potentially doing it full-time in the future. It also includes taking aptitude and personality tests and discussing your career path – however vague it may still be – with a professional career adviser, your professors, family, and friends, which provides both objective advice and advice from those who know you. The purpose of all of these actions is to get you to a place of confidence, hope, and direction, all which are necessary to developing a career path. When it comes to making important decisions about the future, try to streamline the inevitable stress and anxiety into a focus that will allow you to use it as fuel to move forward.
Own Your Success!
Taking action and making decisions that you will thank yourself for in the years to come is something that no one really talks about, despite being a significant component of long-term success. So get to know yourself! Doing so now versus five years from now could make the difference between enjoying a long, fulfilling career versus getting stuck in a perpetual series of menial jobs. When it comes to your professional timeline, what you don’t know can and very well might hurt you; so do your best to figure out the big stuff now and the details will come in time.
