1. What do I do if I don't know what I want to study in college or am undecided on my career?
Follow the steps below:
A. Take some time to learn and discover your strengths, talents, and passions before picking an education. There are many workshops, trainings, and programs that can help you learn more about your strengths, talents, and passions. Just do a simple research online.
B. Write down everything that you have discovered about your strengths, talents, and passions.
C. Circle the top 3 strengths you believe best fit you. Choose the strength that you are most passionate about.
D. Do some research on the different types of careers that fit with your top strength.
E. Research the education that best supports your chosen career.
If you are afraid to declare a major, then you can start slowly by just taking a course to test out your strength to see if it is what you want or not. And then, move your way up by enrolling in a small program such as a training or certificate before pursuing a degree.
You must understand that your education and career is a lifelong journey. This means there will always be something that you can learn to understand your strengths, talents, and passions better. Sometimes you might discover a unique strength of yourself later in life that might require you to make a shift in your education or career. And that is how it should be. You are a human being, which means you will never know your true strengths, talents, and passions. The only thing you can do is learn and develop yourself to make the best decision in the present moment and move forward from there.
2. At what age or when should I start my career?
Your career should start the moment you decide on an education. Your education and career should be parallel to each other. This means the moment you learn something from your education; you want to see how you can apply it to start or make your career stronger. You want to go out and test your learned knowledge. Testing your knowledge not only helps you discover if your education best matches your strengths, talents, and passions or not, but it also gives you experience, which is essential to have in the workforce.
3. How do I start and grow my career?
You start your career by using your current knowledge and skills. You do not want to develop the mindset of believing that you should wait until you have enough knowledge and skills to get started. No matter how much knowledge and skills you might have, there will always be new knowledge and skills that you would need to learn in the future to grow your career. The key is to start, learn, and grow from there.
You must become a lifelong learner to continue your education to grow your career. Continuing your education does not mean you have to get another formula degree at a university but continue to learn in some format to grow. There are three common ways to learn: formal, informal, and self-education. Formal education is when you attend a college or university to get a degree. Informal education is by attending training, workshops, or programs that are not credited by the educational system. Self-education is when you do your own research and learn through reading books, watching videos, etc. With the internet and the advanced technology you have today, there are many ways and opportunities to help you learn and grow yourself and your career. It just depends on your effort of learning and applying.
Your education should help your career grow. Your career should help you pick the right education. They pay off each other to grow your career and yourself. You must also learn and do something different to get different results in your career. Do not expect to get a different result with the same learning and effort. Your career is a part of you. As your career grows, you should be growing as well.
4. How do I determine if something is my passion or not?
Your passion gives you enjoyment daily. Even though you will encounter challenges, you will enjoy learning and growing to make your passion a success.
You wake up every morning feeling excited and motivated to do great things with your passion.
You feel that you can positively contribute to your community, society, and the world.
You are proud that you can discover, learn, and grow to become a better person because of your passion.
5. How do I approach a career change? How do I fix college failures?
Follow the steps below:
A. Develop the right mindset: Understand why you want to make a career change. If you say that you want a more fulfilling career, you want to ask yourself if you know what fulfillment is. If you want to experience meaning and purpose, you want to make sure you know what meaning and purpose are. Many times, people want to experience meaning and purpose, but they do not have a good understanding of what those qualities are.
You also need to have the mindset that switching a career does not mean you will be wasting the knowledge and experience from your old career. You can use the knowledge and experience from your old career differently in your new career. Remember that knowledge and experience are never wasted, no matter how different a career you are switching to.
B. Develop a plan: Create a plan for becoming successful with your new career. With the internet and advanced technology today, you can learn to achieve anything. Do simple research on the internet of the steps you need to take to achieve your new career and create a plan to make it happen.
C. Willing to start small. Do not be afraid to start small. Do not be fearful that you might not see the result immediately. You must keep your hope and faith alive that you can make your career possible, especially at the beginning. Make sure that your career change aligns with your strengths, talents, and passions. When you are passionate about a career, you will be motivated to keep on moving forward, even though you might not see the result initially. Success is about the process and journey of making your career possible because that is where happiness, meaning, and purpose lie that will increase your motivation to move forward.
6. How do I show leadership traits?
Leadership is a quality, not a title. Some of the qualities of a great leader are taking the initiative to do your things, being creative and innovative, the commitment by following through, being a team player, and being a role model.
All these qualities must develop from within you first by applying them to your lifestyle. For example, are you doing and living according to your own beliefs and values in your daily lifestyle? If you are copying others and not taking the initiative to make your life possible, how can you take the initiative in the work environment? For commitment, do you keep your commitment to yourself and others in your daily life? Are you a role model by doing positive things to improve yourself and others?
When you can build these qualities in your personal lives first, it will become easier to show them in the workforce and the real world. Whatever you apply in your life can also be applied in every area. You just have to use those qualities differently for each environment. Still, the qualities are the same in all life areas.
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