Does Your Career Define You?

Introduction:

It is your career that helps you get through life with an identity and perspective. While many people shift careers throughout their entire life and some stay in one. When you think about your career, you may feel burdened with the societal expectations around you. These expectations could pave their way to you through the family or circle of friends. Considering the impact of technology today, it could also come from the social media influence. Amidst all this, it is important that as a person, keep a stable mindset and take things on.

Many people hire career experts and gurus in their early teenage years (of course their parents do). These experts and gurus try to take the students through the journey of their life in a set manner. They divide years into phases and explain to them the importance of each. This creates a stigma among people while growing up, leading to a loss in self-decision. It leads to a stage where people face a dilemma and have to counter the thought of being involved in one profession. With the amount of increasing competition nowadays, there is also a fear of not being specialized enough. So let us understand this notion in depth further while answering if career defines you or not.

Does Your Career Define You?

This question has hung around since the time millennials countered it. Inevitably, everyone can observe a shifting trend in society. People, usually young adults, are not choosing the ‘safer path’ of being employable. Rather, they are looking to solve the problems faced by people in society and create job opportunities. This has been possible because they have realized that their career does not define them. While parents since a younger age try to explain to children that the only viable options they have in life include the mainstream ones. These include being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, banker, etc.

There are very few parents that try to talk to their kids through the possibility of pursuing their passion. Of course there is, no fault of the older generation as they lived in a time when the internet was non-existent or not booming. Today, with the amount of information spreading on the internet and the speed with which things are going, everything is different. An average child today learns way more online than he can in the class. This makes them realize that there are more opportunities than the ones that appear.

With newer jobs, the field of arts and entertainment opening up, people are diligently going behind what they love. Now, a struggling actor does not have to wait to break through any film industry. But he can go over, make a YouTube Channel, or audition for a web series. The Internet has helped streamline things and bring in a new perspective. Now, college students easily run businesses online while dealing with their studies or traveling. This significant change would increase in the later years as people would realize that there are more opportunities. The ease of entering a field or market would also help shift careers to those people who want to do so after a few years. Globalization and social stigma would be the key players.