The career journey....ups and downs!!

By Clive Mutame Siachiyako

Watch out for a couple of career related articles before I look at other issues. I will mostly I will focus on helping young people see things from another perspective possibly and re-engineering energy in right places.

A friend once asked children at church: “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Very interesting answers flew over going in different career directions. One of interest came from a boy who said “I want to be a bus conductor.” That caught my friend’s attention. He probed they boy further on why such a dream. The innocent boy said “conductors have money.”

This is a case of: money versus career choice! We all love money. We went to school, work hard in life, sleep late, and do our best in whatever we do to earn money and more money. Money rules the world. It is a deterministic premium exchange of value.

Money will be spoken about in days to come based on courses related to this driver of life. For now the focus is on career choices and pertinent aspects to consider when deciding on a career.

Careers are not built in a day. They can be launched, nurtured and pursued to fruition over a stretch of time. Knowing an appropriate career is a challenge for many people. This is coupled with the difficult of identifying your unique qualities and abilities. The process of identifying those virtues can be frustrating, as the journey of self-discovery is rarely easy.

However, knowing the careers available, the apt attributes and relevant subjects for entering a given career and opportunities that lay ahead is very valuable. Such information is power young people need in making careers.

I will begin by getting into the bible using the parable of talent found in Mathew 25:15. The parable sheds that "...each servant was given a talent according to their ABILITY.” Each one of us truly is given abilities to use and earn a living. We can’t be trusted with what we can’t handle, it will be too risky. It can ruin our lives. We can fail to put it to good use. Exemplified from the parable is a servant who threw the talent into the abyss and minded his business. It shows that talents given to ‘wrong’ people simply can’t handle them. They don’t see the value and don’t care what happens with that talent.

A talent is very pertinent in career choice. I am talking about inborn abilities (intellectual and psychomotor). This is about our abilities to use our brains and other body parts to work for others or ourselves. I am talking about intellect, artistic skills, etc. Those who can deal with abstracts, use legs [kick the soccer], hands or voice; let them apply themselves meticulously for the good of their wellbeing. No one then should claim there is nothing for them on earth. It is either they don’t know their talent or they have sat of them and killed them.

God is fair, He never send anyone to earth without anything to use to sustain themselves on earth. We got talents in one way of the other. Our talents represent our persona, our SHAPE (spiritual gifts, heart/intellectual, abilities, personality and experiences).

Why talents in career choice?

Talents are our means to create a livelihood...to earn income, to work and create something to live on. They are also useful in blessing others. We can use our talent to create wealth and bless others with a means of living by hiring their talent to add value to our talents’ creations. If I use my talent to sing, I may need a talent of a producer to package my singing talent into something marketable and sellable for mean to earn income. Talent is further paramount in career progression. Careers are based on our abilities...abilities to deal with abstractive things [mathematical], craft motivational words to shape others’ dormancy or use physical abilities to earn a living such as in sports.

I am zeroing it down to choosing a career at this moment. Talking to school going children or those deciding on careers is very interesting. You get all sorts of dreams about careers. “I want to be a doctor, I want to be a banker, I want to be an engineer, I want to be an accountant, etc.” are common career directions you get. Very good dreams, very desirable career goals...! Unfortunately, most children I have spoken to during career expos don’t tally their career dreams with their abilities, they are often driven by what their parents want them do, what their parents have done or they don’t know why they want such a career.

I always argue: your parents are not you. You have your abilities which are contrary from those of your parents. In as much as you share DNA elements with them, there’s no guarantee that you will have similar abilities. Your father being a doctor doesn’t mean you will also handle medical ups and downs. It goes beyond wishes to practicality. I am talking about handling subjects required to get into medical school, the ability to handle patients, the virtues required of a medical personnel, etc. I will get to this later.

What matters most in career choice?

Your talent is one of them. A career shapes what you will do for the most of your life. Either working for someone or doing your own things. As a business person, you need some business acumen to soar over business blizzards. It takes some anew attributes in this modern era to sustain your business. Knowing what you are good at; puts you up the ladder. It gives you comparative advantages over others. A Zambian idiom says: “what you have is what you use to hit a dog.” If you don’t know anything, you will fall for anything.

Your passion is another important element in career choice. Your passion drives you. Even when things get wild, your passion will push you. You will hold on and get pushing until the ice breaks and bingo your destiny is at bay!! Without passion, you will quit pretty fast. You will throw a towel and mourn for the time and energy wasted. You may not push any little further to get over a predicament on your way. A friend has studied so many courses in search of a career destiny. He started with IT, went into marketing and human resources, later law. I am yet to know if he will settle on this one. His had no passion to weather the storms in the fields he entered into. He quit and started all over again.

The third aspect is your ability. The abilities I am talking about here are related to subjects and some virtues relevant to that particular career. What are you capable of doing? Can you handle money? Can you be trusted with patients’ confidential information? Can you kick the ball? It’s key to be mindful about multiple abilities here. If you have varied abilities such using legs and hands to kick the ball and do architectural works; why not marry them? It would be great designing a house plan in the evening after soccer training. Extra income is a great undertaking in life. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Some abilities could be about subjects you are good at in class. It could be linguistics, mathematics or science. If you know what you are good at in class, see careers related to those subjects. I will talk about subjects’ combinations and careers in next articles. If you don’t know what you are good at in class, ask your teachers, friends or parents.

Who can help us in career choices?

People around us are a great resource in career choice and development. Those around us are able to see things we can’t see in ourselves. Your teachers are a great resource here. Talk to your teachers; ask them to tell you how they feel about your abilities in your subjects in relation to career goals. Your parents are the other resource. Parents know some habitus about us way from childhood. They can give you a good assessment of your abilities. Your friends too are useful here. Talk to them, use them, don’t just gossip and chase girls with them. Use them for real things that matter in life. Ask God. Pray and seeking spiritual guidance. God is the source of our abilities; He is the Alpha and Omega. Talk to your God in honest and sincerity. All the BEST!!