توضیحات ای جی

BEC : Careers - AJ

Hello, this is AJ and welcome to my final commentary in this program. In my commentary I want to talk about something a little more than just business. This idea of a life-long career, of course, it is a business topic. It’s an important topic for you, but it’s not all about money. Life is not all about just money and a great career or multiple careers is/are more than just money. It’s about satisfaction. It’s about happiness. It’s about a feeling of constantly growing and learning. It’s about having a feeling of real contribution to other people. All of these things, so it’s worth thinking about more deeply and it’s worth really going your own way and finding your own path.

This is a topic where everybody has an opinion. People in your family, friends, coworkers, media, the school system, and teachers, all of these people will be kind of pushing their ideas on you. Pushing their beliefs on you about what is the proper way to manage a career. I think the general idea out there is that you sensibly choose a job or career based on money and job security --kind of all these economic reasons --then you stay in that same career for most of your life or for all of your life until you retire.

That is, number one, a very old idea that just does not fit the new economy anymore, but it’s also kind of boring and probably will not lead to a great deal of happiness because it takes time to find your strengths. It takes time to find your passions. So, one of the first things you really have to do is to be aware of your conditioned beliefs. A ‘conditioned belief’ is a belief that you have that was basically put into your mind by someone else, maybe the media, maybe schools, maybe family, other people or a combination of all of those things.

We all have conditions beliefs. The problem is that we don’t realize it sometimes. So we may have, for example, a belief that it’s sensible to get a good job and stay in that job as long as possible and it if pays good money don’t leave that job. We may have a conditioned belief that says never leave a higher paying job and then get one that pays less. A lot of people have this conditioned belief that it’s a terrible thing to go from a job that pays a lot of money with a high prestige, you know with a high social value, then switch to something that pays less money with a lower social value.

These are conditioned beliefs. There’s nothing true about them. They’re not true and they’re not false. These are just beliefs, things people believe. The danger is to believe a bunch of things that other people believe without thinking about them deeply and without really thinking and analyzing and considering if these beliefs are making you happy or not, if in the long term they’re going to give you a fantastic, amazing career or not. Generally, I believe not.

This goes with our theme of constantly being different, being unique, making yourself special, going your own way, finding your strengths, all of those things, but it’s deeper than that even. It’s about living your own life, living a life true to yourself, living a life true to your values, living a life that brings the greatest amount of happiness and contribution to you and to those around you.

There’s a great quote by Joseph Campbell that talks about this topic, this idea. His quote is this. Follow your bliss. Follow your bliss. ‘Bliss’ means extreme happiness. That was his advice for life. His general advice for life to anybody was, follow your bliss. In other words, follow the path that makes you the most happy. Not just a little happy, but blissful, super, incredibly happy, excited, alive. That’s how you know you’re on the correct path.

If you’re not feeling excited and alive in your career, for example, then you’re probably not on the right path and you need to keep looking and trying other things. If you are feeling excited and alive every moment in every day, at least most times, then that’s a good sign that you are on the right path for yourself.

The great thing is that when you follow your bliss, when you are generally more excited, more happy and more alive, you also benefit other people much more. If you’re grumpy and sad and depressed, low energy, then you’re not really a very good influence on people around you. You don’t inspire the people around you. You don’t give as much happiness to the people around you. But if you’re feeling confident and alive and excited and happy and blissful then you have this incredibly strong positive affect on everyone around you, your friends, your family, your coworkers, customers, all of that. It’s very powerful so follow your bliss and enjoy the ride. This is very important.

So you know eventually in my life I created great business success and a tremendous amount of freedom, but it took time. It was a path and it wasn’t a path I planned when I was 18. I didn’t decide I’m going to make a lot of money. That was never my goal really.

My goal was to follow my bliss, so I just kept trying different things and doing things that seemed to make me happy or that were really, really interesting and exciting to me.

I ended up as an English teacher because I was excited and interested in traveling and living in other countries and then after I tried English teaching I was excited about teaching people my language. I just loved the process of coaching and teaching and training. Then I realized I’m really happy doing this. It’s really fun. I feel like I’m contributing and giving something valuable and useful to my students and so I kept following that path and getting better and better and then starting my own business, but I didn’t start off when I was younger planning out every step of the path. I had no idea where it was going to go. The main thing that got me to this point was following my bliss and that’s what you need to do. You’ve got to do it.

Yes, sometimes you’ll have jobs where you’re not happy, but maybe you have to keep them for awhile because you need the money. You’ve got to pay your bills. You’ve got to eat. That’s okay. I had many times like that myself, but I didn’t give up. I didn’t quit. I didn’t stay stuck in that career forever. I was always thinking about how can I get out of this? I’m really miserable. I’m not happy. What can I do to get out of this? I’ve got to get out of this. Sometimes I went back to school. Sometimes I just studied on my own. I tried many different strategies until I could jump - change - to something that made me happier, that was more interesting to me.

So again, it’s not a linear path. You can’t plan it all out perfectly. That’s what people will try to tell you. You’ll get all this kind of advice like you should go into business because you’ll make money and you’ll have good job security. Well, if you’re unhappy doing that that’s crazy. Don’t do it. People will say that too.

Nursing is one I hear a lot in the United States. Oh, there’s a high demand for nurses and they pay well and it’s good job security. So, nursing, you should go into nursing.

That’s a good field. Well, maybe it’s a good field. If you love working in hospitals and you love working with sick people, you love the process of nursing and you love studying it that could be a fantastic career.

On the other hand, if you don’t love all of those things, if they’re not interesting to you then it could be a terrible career for you. Even if it does have security, even if it does pay well, it would be a terrible thing to do. The same thing with being a doctor or a lawyer, that’s kind of old advice. Become a doctor or a lawyer and you’ll be rich and happy. The truth is if you don’t love those things you will probably not be rich and even if you are rich you’re probably not going to be happy.

So follow your deepest happiness and excitement, what you’re passionate about. That’s the path to follow. That’s what you should always be looking for. That’s why in the beginning of a career when you don’t know, just try lots and lots of things and it will take a long time. There were many times in my life I thought that I’ll never find it. You know oh, I just really don’t like any of my jobs and they’re all kind of boring.

Eventually that made me realize I need to start my own business because the truth is I’ll never be happy working for other people. I’m too creative. I need to do things my way. I need to be able to innovate and change and try things and make mistakes, so I realized I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a business owner, that’s what I really have to do. I did it, but it took me many years to figure that out, to realize that.

A final note about the really bad times, which we all have, when you look backwards into the past you will often realize that the worst times in your life were the best times. This is especially true with your career. Now, of course, when it’s happening the bad times don’t feel good. You can never imagine that at any time in your life you will ever think they’re good, but when you get older and you look backwards many times if you look at the really tough times then you realize I’m so happy that happened because I learned a lot. It taught me how to be more patient. It taught me to be tougher. It forced me to look for different solutions. It pushed me to go back to school, whatever.

You will eventually realize that the times when you have almost no money, the times when you were miserable in your job, that those are actually good times. They can be blessings, if you learn from them. Now, if you don’t learn from them then they’re just miserable and you will continue being miserable, but if you have really horrible tough times they can actually be fantastic because when you’re experiencing a very, very, tough time in your life, especially in your career, you are motivated at that moment to make a change. You’re highly motivated at that time to learn new things.

You’re in pain and you want to get out of pain, so there’s an incredible energy and motivation there to learn and grow and find a different solution. Use that, use that and do it. When you’re feeling bad, when you’re miserable, when you’re poor, use that as motivation to learn different things, to explore different things, to try different things, to keep learning and growing, learning and growing, to read books like crazy, to have as many experiences as possible, to work in order to learn, to find your bliss, to follow your bliss, to follow your greatest strengths and your greatest happiness.

Use those times and when you do all of that then eventually it will lead you to the best times where you can work for learning, but you can also work to earn where you’ll be paid a good amount of money, whatever that means to you, where you’ll be, more importantly, happy in what you’re doing, where you’ll feel like you’re really contributing in your career.

So, it’s a long path that’s going to go up and down and left and right. The key thing here is be flexible and follow your bliss and do your best to enjoy the ride, to enjoy all the moments. See you again and, hopefully, I’ll meet you in person some day. Bye-bye.

The End.