Right around the time I graduated college, I remember being at a friend’s house talking about finding a job.  My friend’s dad gave us this piece of advice: “Everybody needs to start somewhere and everybody needs a job.  But, I wouldn’t be surprised if over the years your career finds you.” 

He went on to explain that if we spent too much time planning our career, we might not fully evaluate the opportunities presented to us; opportunities we might not have known existed when we were putting our career plan together.  He suggested paying attention to what interested us in our various roles and what got us excited about our day.  “Follow that path and your career will find you,” he said.

As a counselor, I think about that conversation often when working with people who are unhappy in their job and career path. They will say things like, “This isn’t what I wanted to be doing with my degree, career, life, etc.”  I tell them the advice I was given and recommend they go to work paying attention to what makes them happy in their current role.  Many times people come back realizing they greatly enjoy several aspects of their current role, including the number of opportunities for promotion, and what they actually needed to change was acknowledging the reality that any job was going to have parts they didn’t like.   For them, focusing on all the positives of their job made the negative moments less substantial.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t spend time thinking about our future or switching roles when it’s having a negative impact on us.  But, we also need to accept that life is going to come along with unexpected opportunities, and if we’re not willing to explore them because they don’t line up with some plan we decided upon a long time ago, we could very well miss out on a career that could make us truly happy.

Mark is a mental health professional who has worked in the EAP field since 2004.  During this time, he has provided telephonic crisis counseling, workplace consultations regarding behavioral risk issues, trainings on various work-life topics, and account management services.