Make the Best Career Choice:
From Confusion to Confidence
In any situation the best career choice is usually unclear. Confusion arises because there is an inner conflict between the criteria for ‘the best’ and ‘most fulfilling’ opportunity.
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Decisions are usually based on ‘common sense’ criteria. These are things like salary, benefits, and location. However, ‘common sense’ is based on a variety of assumptions. By exposing these hidden assumptions, the tension between ‘the best’ and ‘fulfilling’ options can be resolved. This awareness transforms confusion into the freedom to make new confident career choices.
What is the best career choice?
The ‘common sense’ criteria for making job decisions are all external factors. Salary, benefits and location are tangible facts that describe the various options available to you. These features are largely quantifiable. People add up the numbers and choose the opportunity that ranks the highest. This is a very calculating method, with little ambiguity. So how come the right choice is often obscure?
Hidden Assumptions
A calculation based on external criteria can provide useful information. However, what this information means is rarely questioned. The structure of society conditions us with certain assumptions like ‘the higher salary, the better the job’. When in actuality all a high salary tells us, is that there is a high salary. What the feature of a job mean for you arises from a personal interpretation. For instance, if you have had bad experiences managing large sums of money in the past, then you may subconsciously be wary of acquiring a high paying job. Confusion arises when societal and personal interpretations are in opposition.
The Worst Career Mistake Ever…
When career conflicts arise the first reflex is to not make a choice. Instead people gather more information about the external criteria. This approach assumes that the conflict will be resolved when enough information has been gathered. However, once you have a basic understanding of what a career involves, the value of additional information quickly declines. The worst career mistake is trying to make a perfect choice by gathering all the information. You will never have complete information. The unknowns make career decisions seem inherently risky. Career confusion is rarely due to lack of information. Career information is a list of facts. The facts do not get confused. It is the people interpreting the facts that become conflicted when their ‘common sense’ criteria and what they really want.
Resolving Internal Conflict
Inner conflicts can be resolved by applying a key distinction between the most fulfilling and best career choice.The ‘common sense’ approach of examining external factors results in a decision based on the societal assumption that “bigger is better”. Unfortunately, the best choice is often not the same as the most fulfilling choice. Typically the ‘best career choices’ lead to a mid-life crisis. Fulfilling career choices are determines by intangible facts. Your personal standards of fulfilment are different from the external standards of success. Awareness of what you really find fulfilling gives you the freedom to make choices that may not conventionally be the ‘best’, but that will bring you fulfilment. The 7 tools to Top Career Choices provide a map which guides you on an internal journey that resolves the conflict between what you ‘should’ do and what you ‘want’ to do. When you have this clarity, career choices stop being leaps of faith and start becoming steps of certainty.
The Best Career Choice
Career choices can be evaluated by different sets of criteria. Confusion arises when the internally fulfilling and the externally best career choices are assessed by different criteria. You can resolve this conflict by enquiring about what really makes you fulfilled and choosing this. In the long term the best career choice is the one based on your internal criteria for fulfilment.
Return from Best Career Choice to Choosing a Career
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