A Journey of Gratitude

     Did you ever feel pressured by someone very close to you, to go into a career that you didn't want to pursue?  Or even your first job in high school?  Did they convince you that your first job needed to lead towards your career?

    While wonderful people have great suggestions and ideas for your career or job, just remember that they're not the enemy!   There are good people that want what's best for you, but sometimes they don't realize how their criticism and feedback can affect you.  Then there are those that believe that your passions will not benefit you in anyway.  They don't try to understand you and your dreams, because they would prefer you to pursue their dreams.  

    Here's an example from my own personal life: My older sister had a dream to become a cosmetologist after high school and wanted to pursue that as a career.  My mom didn't like the idea and encouraged her to try the medical field instead.  I'm not sure how the conversation went down, but my sister wanted to make my parents happy so she entered into that field.  Years later, she worked hard and became a Nurse Practitioner.  I think she enjoys it now, but it was definitely hard to adjust into something she didn't have a passion for.  You know what her biggest passion is though?  Traveling!!!  She is an avid traveler and goes at least once or three times a month with her husband.  I'm honestly impressed and amazed how much those two see the world.  She seems very happy, which makes me happy!

    At one point in her life, she wanted to travel to China and teach English to little kids.  Since she missed that opportunity during her single years, she suggested me to travel out of the country.  With a lot of persuasion, I applied and went to Voronezh, Russia for 4 months!  The experience to travel and get out of my comfort zone felt so amazing!  I definitely want to thank her for that and pushing me to try new things.  Now I have a love for traveling!  As for Cosmetology, I didn't have a desire to learn about hair, make up, skin, or nails.  My sister somehow convinced me that cosmetology would be so fun.  She's say things like, "You should be a cosmetologist! You'd be so good at it!"  She went into full details of how fun the program would be, so guess what?  I ended up going, because I wanted to make my sister and parents happy.  The moment I transferred to a different location for the program, that's when I broke down in tears to my mom and said, "Cosmetology is not for me mom! I'm not doing this for me.  I'm doing this for you guys!" Luckily, my mom remained calm about the situation and asked, "Are you happy? I just want my kids to be happy." We had a long conversation about life and my dreams.  To be honest, I couldn't think of any dreams, because people perceived me as something else for as long as I can remember.  Friends and family would either see me as a medical assistant, teacher, doctor, health coach, etc.  I truly believed I wanted to specialize in one of these occupations, but in the end I realized, "I don't want to be a specialist."  

    As Stan Christensen states, "Don't do things because you think it's what other people want you to do... I think the people end up in the wrong careers often, and I think part of that is that they make unhelpful assumptions..." So don't take a job or pursue a career just to build your resume. Specialization is NOT the best route to success. "I think that we live in a world where there's increased specialization pressure.  People want you to specialize.  But actually what you want is to be a generalist, and for a bunch of reasons.  Number one: It's more fun to have different projects.. One of the dangers of specialization is it's going to become irrelevant whatever you specialize in.  And I think that what you want to do is put yourself in a position to take advantage of opportunities when they come up."  

 If you want to learn more about the two, click below...

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Generalist or Specialist??

    So with that said, even though your journey is not what it turned out to be, find gratitude from every job and career opportunity!  When life throws a curveball, throw it back and show them what you're made of!  If people don't think you're capable of pursuing your dreams, prove them wrong.  Be confident in yourself, especially with your abilities and skills!  Then think of YOUR passions and goals in life. What are they?  Write down those things which you love most and are important to you. So with that said, follow YOUR dreams and aspirations, not someone else's!