How to Make a Happy Career's Choice in Your 20s

Each moment of our life, we make decisions about what we need, things we love to do, and what we want to become in the future. 

Many 20-somethings today, do not give much thought to how their decisions and actions during this period will ultimately create their future identity. 

They expect they’ll be able to make changes later, but that assumption usually turns out to be wrong. Why? 

Your 20s are a powerful decade of your life. Where your journey continues... 

During your 20s you may think of your career path as having many options. Just like facing multiple doors with their various keys in your hand. Each; leading to different destinations.

 

Your choice and possibilities are endless. 

At this point in life, you believe you could do many different kinds of work, which is technically true.

But later in life, however, people have a tendency to wrap their career paths into their identities. 

So is the saying; ‘you become what you eat’. 

As they, becomes what they do. They don’t just do a job. They are that job. People in their 40s don’t just do customer service; they’re customer service representatives. 

And it continues like that - as people don’t just program; they become programmers.

Many times I’ve seen people in their 20s fall into a temporary line of work, knowing that it wasn’t something they wanted to do for the rest of their lives. 

They just do works or took a job to cover their expenses for a while, expecting to get into something more inspired a bit later, later and later (as it continues). 

Fast forward 20 years though, and they’re still doing that same type of work, except now it’s not just a job. It has been part of their identity, part of their lives. 

They don’t say, “I’m doing some accounting work.” Instead, they say, “I’m an accountant.”

It could be they never wanted that temporary job to become their long-term career. It just sort of happened. 

Somewhere between one, two, three and ten years after the initial decision, they lost the ability to keep the job separate from their identity or their identity separate from the job. 

At some point they had to admit (perhaps only subconsciously), “I’ve been doing this for so many years that I guess I must be an accountant.” You see? 

And when they have to say this aloud, you’ll see a glimmer of sadness in their eyes. Boy, did I see a lot of that at my last high school reunion! Seriously.

When you’re in your 20s, you need to be extra careful about the risk of getting sucked into a long-term career path by doing some temporary work to cover expenses; as it could easily cloud your vision. 

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you’d still like to be doing that job in 10 years from now. 

Sincerely, if your answer is something like “hell no!” or cynical laughter, then, maybe you should pass and wait for a better spot.

If you’re desperate for money now, fine, but be careful about the possibility of short-term decisions becoming long-term patterns. 

As it is, if you don’t have a clear exit strategy now, you may find that the exit is decades (very far) away. 

So search for the black bird while it is yet day. 

If you see there’s a change to be made, the time to begin is now.

This is your moment... Make that change now.

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