“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”- Confucius
How we spend our days is how we spend our lives
Most people spend about a third of their lives at work. That works out to about 90 000 hours over the course of your lifetime. This means that our job has a huge impact on our quality of life. If you don’t enjoy your job, you’re unlikely to have any energy or motivation left over to take care of the more important things in life, such as relationships, health and passion projects.
Loving your job makes you better at it
If you love what you do, you’ll not only have a happier, healthier and more fulfilling life, but you’ll actually do better at the job you’re doing. Being engaged and passionate about your work fosters true creativity and innovation, and doing something brilliant will make you feel happy and confident.
Take cooking a meal as an example. We can all follow a recipe and cook something tasty, but only master chefs can come up with something new and exciting, moving the industry forward. You want to be the master chef of your career, not the person who’s just thoughtlessly following orders.
Life plans rarely work out
That may seem like a depression notion at first glance, but it’s actually a liberating thought! It means that there’s no certain strategy for success; the most well-thought-out plans can crumble at a single misstep, and following your passion might transport you to greatness.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan. Rather, your plans should be short-term and flexible, allowing you to take advantage of any new and unexpected opportunities that come your way. If you’re rigidly sticking to a paint-by-numbers career path, you might miss a chance to do something truly amazing.
But how do you decide what to do?
Ah, the crux of the matter. Everyone tells you to follow your passion, but what does that mean to you? Some of us have a burning desire to follow a certain pathway, and some of us don’t find our passion until much later in life. If you’re in the latter camp, there are a few things you could try…
Take a career aptitude test to see what skills and interests you have, and how these align with the fields currently available to you. Don’t confuse talent with passion, however – you might have an amazing skill that would make you miserable if you focused your career on it.
Chat to friends and family. You may find out that the successful people you know only found their success after years of trial and error. This will help you realise that everyone’s path is different, and everyone’s journey takes time. You may also find that certain people close to you have spotted a talent in you that you didn’t even recognise in yourself!
Follow your curiosity and see where that takes you. If you don’t know what to study, just choose something that you think might interest you and go for it! Any studies will boost your CV, and at the very least you’ll get some clarity on whether you want to turn your area of study into a career or not. You may even unlock a hidden passion that will open new doors!
Chat to a Student Advisor to get a sense of what your options are. They might highlight some career paths you hadn’t thought of, or help you figure out your first move if you’re struggling to decide between different possibilities and point out a few stepping stones to get you where you want to be.
Just pick something! If you’ve done all of the above and haven’t felt a drastic pull in any particular direction, the most important thing is to quash any nonsensical feelings of defeat and keep moving forward. At NewBridge, every academic programme is accompanied by a Professional Development Programme which is designed to prepare you to make the most of every opportunity life offers you long after you graduate, so you’re guaranteed to get a positive outcome from any qualification.
Whether you know what you want to do or whether you’re still not sure of your next step, get in touch to have a chat with one of our Student Advisors, view our range of academic programmes or apply today!