God Gifted Abilities: It has been seen that some people are born with some natural talent. For example Sachin Tendulkar has natural talent of hand eye co-ordination for hitting the cricket ball, Lata Mangeshkar has natural talent in singing, Amitabh Bachchan has natural talent of his heavy voice etc. In such cases it is very easy to identify the goals. However, it is still needed to work or refine such natural talent. The challenge in such cases is to identify it and finding the right guru to refine such God gifted skills. Also it requires a lot of commitment and dedication from the person itself as well as his supporters (parents, siblings, friends, society etc) to achieve the real success.
Available Opportunities, Information and Options: The atmosphere around a person plays a significant role in deciding his goal and career path.
Options here mean access to the right training and mentoring at the required time. For example people in small town do not have options to get proper education. There are no or not enough schools in small villages. Schools are running with low or no proper teaching staff.
Information here means access to right data and right time. Suppose someone wants to become an engineer. Information required in this case could be which all the good institutes are, what are various different engineering braches available, what different branch offers (e.g difference between computer science and information science). Usually in smaller town people finds it difficult to access such type of information clearly. Recent revolution in internet has bridged this gap up to some extent, but still there is a long way to go before internet reaches the common man in our country.
Opportunity here means getting the chance to really perform. In our country, due to various reasons, does not get the proper chance to show their talent. It could be due to family restrictions and demands, it could be due to ignorance or it could be due to time factor.
Current Situation: Current situation of a person is another factor in deciding the goal and career of a person. For example, it is very difficult to figure out the peak of a mountain if you are standing in the valley. Generally, people aim depending on their current situation in life and based on their success or failure in life they keep on revising their aim. Since the goal changes, career which is a way to reach at the goal, also changes.
Advice from well wishers: Deciding the career and goal is one of the most complex decisions in the life. Career counseling from a professional is still in a very nascent stage in our country. Mostly, people look out for their family members, friends, and relatives for their career advice. It is most natural in such cases that people can choose the career that they can see and feel around them. As a result mostly we see a single profession in the family hierarchy. Children of doctors will most likely be medical profession, Children of businessmen will most likely be in business, Children of Engineer will most likely be in engineering profession, and Children of a lawyer will most likely be in law related profession and so on. Career counseling from professional counselors can definitely help in choosing the right profession and exploring the goal which is more aligned towards one’s internal self.
There are a number of hurdles that one face during his journey towards choosing a proper career and goal in life.
- Perception
- Social Environment -> A lot of pressures
- Lack of infrastructure
Perception: In our country there is a general perception that any career or goal related to study is good. Most of the parents want their ward to study and excel. This is also true to some extent as there are not many opportunities in other fields. Suppose someone chooses sports as their career, money is there only in some sports and that too at a very high (national and international) level. Career like farming etc are treated as below dignity and mostly the least skilled son of the family takes care of the farming.
Social Environment: India is a socially and culturally rich country. Being social is good in many senses, but then everything comes for a cost. Some of the problems are listed below:
- It develops a lot of competition among individuals. Everyone wants to do better than his/her friends or neighbors or relatives. This puts a lot of mental pressure on individuals. In order to do better than others, some time people don’t know what/why they are doing something. They just do because someone in their close relation has done it and he is doing well in life. This way a people neglects their internal self and keeps on running for something which takes them away from their internal self.
- It gives rise to a tendency of show-off. People try to adapt and project something which is far from their internal self.
Lack of Infrastructure: Lack of infrastructure is again a major issue in our country. People generally struggle to access the basic things itself. Lot of people doesn’t get access to proper education, nutrition, water, medical facility, electricity, recreational facilities etc. Due to this our country is unable to utilize its human resources to its fullest extent.
Conclusion:
Career is a path followed by a person to reach his goal in life. Every individual born in this world is having a unique skill set. Therefore it is very important to identify the right goals and based on available options and opportunities coming up with the right career path to reach the goal. It is very important to set the intermediate milestones in career path. Career path can be reviewed and refined at each milestone. Once a goal is achieved, we need to revisit it.
A life without a goal is like a ship going in the sea without any destination.
“Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.”