Stop should-ing all over your career decisions!

By Bianca Praino

May 2020

I come across many final year students in my role as a university career consultant who feel really stuck in the lead up to their graduation to make a decision about their next step. These students will kick off a careers appointment outlining a list of options they have, and express their fear and anxiety about making the ‘wrong decision’. Their expectation is that I might be able to tell them what they should do to ensure they avoid making the wrong decision.

Firstly, if there is anything that my own career, education, professional training and general life experience has taught me, is that there is no such thing as a right or wrong career decision.  Sorry, if this comes as a shocking disappointment to some of you, but it is my truth and I will justify why in the rest of this article.

Think about a recent decision you made- what to have for breakfast; where to go on holiday; to have or not have that glass of wine, or to swipe right or left? How did you make the decision to go with one option over another, without knowing what the outcome would be?  Although you make over a hundred decisions every day, how aware are you of what your decision-making style is and your reasons for choosing one option over another? Knowing where you place value, what is important to you in life as well as other external influences as part of your social and cultural background is key for increasing awareness of how you can approach your career planning and development with more confidence authenticity and enjoyment (believe it or not).

In her Ted Talk, Ruth Chang  highlights that by realising how small choices can also be hard helps to give us some perspective for the bigger ones. In her inspirational talk,  How to make hard choices, she highlights that in the process of  choosing between two options, people make it bigger than it actually is because they perceive one to be better than another. She states how, it's a mistake to think that in hard choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we're too stupid to know which, and since we don't know which, we might as well take the least risky option. 

Essentially, hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance; they're hard because there is no best option. Choosing what to do when you graduate is a hard decision, but there is no should or shouldn’t ; right or wrong. Believing  that there is places significant pressure and stress on yourself, creating an agonising situation where you are consumed with a burden, when in fact it should be a really  exciting time  where you get to decide what you want out of life, and your career.

However, instead of it being an exciting time, the lead up to graduation and the pressure of having to make a decision, urges some students to create reasons  to try and rationalise why one option is better than another. These reasons normally come from external sources of influence and rarely reflect any intrinsic value or motivation. Chang emphasises the importance of turning our reasons inward, allowing us to exert personal agency and normative power. If you do not do this, you can risk becoming a drifter, and will let the world write your (career) story for you. Wholeheartedly, our choices should reflect who we are and what we stand for.

So, what I am really trying to say is, your choices should reflect who you are and what you stand for!

In my favourite ever Ted talk, Every decision is a career decision, Dave Redekopp speaks the truth of how there are very few big decisions we have to make in our lives. Choosing to have cancer treatment, saying yes to a marriage proposal, deciding to have a family. These are examples of big life decisions. The reality is that there is no such thing as one career decision. 

The other reality is that you have already made many  career decisions. Choosing to stay on at school to gain qualifications, choosing to apply to university, choosing what degree to study,  taking on a part-time job, doing some volunteering- these are all career decisions you have made, which comprise your career journey up to this point in time.  It is a journey after all, not a destination.   

So if you are a final year university student or recent graduate who feels stuck, anxious and stressed about your next step, look back at all of the other decisions you have already made and have confidence that you can also make this one. Just do not make it any harder than it has to be. Reflect on what has been your strategy and approach been  before?

 Whether it has been,

-  Writing a pros and cons list

-  Going with your gut feeling

-  Taking a logical and practical approach

-  Seeking professional support

-  Talking it through with friends and family.

Or has it been, procrastination and avoidance until you have ran out of time and have no choice than to make a choice, any choice?

Barry Schwartz argues  that in a world with so many options, having too much choice can create negative effects for people where they feel paralyzed rather than liberated  and even when they do make a decision, they are less satisfied wondering how things would be if they went with one of the alternative options. I would say this is definitely prevalent, and something which many of us experience, but these effects become more of an issue only if you do not understand yourself, know what you value, what motivates you, and what you really want out of your career and life. 

During my career guidance training, I came across a fascinating yet quite controversial technique to use with individuals who are struggling to choose between two options. Take a coin, assign each option heads or tails and flip!  Whatever side the coin lands on, is the option you have to go with.  Yes, controversial!  However, surprisingly effective for getting the individual out of their head and into their body, allowing them to become mindful and aware of their physical response to the option. This tactic takes away any external influences, rationalising, over thinking and logic and can generate a valuable and meaningful conversation about why their body responded in that way and it becomes more about the innate and intrinsic than external conditioning. One instance where I used this with an individual, they commented on how they immediately realised in that moment what decision they felt deep down was the ‘best one for them’. All I would say is, don’t knock it before you try it! 

A piece of advice I would give is to enjoy the process of making your career decisions and embrace the experience and allow your decisions to take you down a path where you are living your purpose and making a valuable contribution through what you do.  Getting this right, is the most important thing. This isn’t a rehearsal!

Become your hard choices.

Make them!    Own them!   Live them!

When we create reasons for ourselves to become a certain kind of person we want to be, we become the authors of our own lives.  Ruth Chang.

Thanks for reading.

Ciao for now!

Bianca.