From 14 to Future

From 14 to Future

14-24 is the formative years of a human being’s life. It is the age where a lot of changes happen in a child’s mind and body that have the potential to influence a majority of their life changes in their whole of a lifetime.

The most important part of a person’s life, his career takes its form during this period. The courses a child studies drive it. With this being today’s plight, it is high time to ensure that the students of today choose a right career of their choice and not based on the opinions and trends of the society.

The best way to make a great career is to choose one which is most relevant to their fields of interests. A lot of self-introspection has to be done to identify one’s own interests even. Next step is to find out all their skills and talents. Then comes the important step of exploring all possible opportunities available to match all the three factors and choose a pertinent course of interest. We can always seek the advice of career counselors, mentors to decide it. After all, it would be the base for our future.

From the below given  chart, the first step is to explore oneself and this is the primary step which is given least importance by parents and students these days. But this is the foundation to plan one’s career. When one becomes clear on this he can focus on what exactly are his needs and set goals accordingly to take necessary actions.

This is one part. But there is an altogether different perspective of looking into Living a Passionate Life. Life is not only about Profession and Career. It is beyond that. There is always a life beyond a 10am-5pm job. For a person to enjoy the life he must live every element of it. A person may have infinite interests, which may or may not be relevant to his profession. But nothing should stop him from pursuing it. We may not know at one point of time our passion may turn into our profession. When our passion becomes our profession work becomes play and life becomes awesome.
The basement of the whole process starts at the school level. What one should do is to explore different things right from school days itself. One must go beyond books, think beyond marks, Try as, many new things as possible, Experiment, develop a good attitude, practice soft skills.

A student knowing all chemical compositions of different fuels and their calorific values and not knowing the price of a litre of petrol or a student learning about balanced diet and nutrients and eating only fast-food are examples of bookish knowledge.

As parents and teachers, we have the duty and responsibility to guide the student rightly in all possible ways. We should clearly understand that every single child is unique in its own way and we have to accept that. We have to tap their innate talents and mould them to shine in their pertinent field of interest. The schools must provide a platform for the students to exhibit their skills and encourage them to build more of their skills and at the same time create interests to know basic things to be learnt beyond the academic curriculum.
We can be cautious of setting up a secure career but at the same time, it should not be the case because of our over cautiousness we pursue a career which is totally irrelevant to our area of interest or our skill-set (IT industry which gives homes to people of all interests, studies, and skills). The first step is understanding the self, knowing what we want, what we are capable of, what gives us happiness. This should be the input of the whole next process of career planning. 14 is where all future planning starts. When we plan early we get a lot of time to explore options experiment stuff, know ourselves better.

The child must be exposed to many constructive and creative environments so that he can develop a positive mindset. This is the age where an emotional maturity starts developing. Things like social impact, patriotic mindset, leadership qualities and decision-making skills develop. If given a platform to exhibit these traits, the kids will turn out to be responsible citizens of the country, leaders of the future.
A lot of awareness is needed in the society to understand the true purpose of education and Real purpose of Life. Let the message spread everywhere. The purpose of life is living a life of purpose!!

The author M.Mohammed Aslum is the Chief Passion Mentor of Mine2Shine School of Passion Navigation and he can be contacted at amine2shine.blogspot.in/9789186428