Family, Friends and Career Development
This blog is a continuation of a series of blogs that will be outlining what I have learned from the interviews and readings regarding careers and career development.
The most important attribute would be understanding yourself and using this as a starting point. There are some key categories that a person should review as a starting point. The points would be health, mental health or outlook on life, relationships (family and friends), work skills, the viewpoint on work and money. I will talk about each of these in more detail in individual blogs coming up.
This week it will be family and friends
As stated, the purpose of this series of blogs is to develop a good understanding of where we are now, and with this, we can drive ourselves forward in a trajectory that is more suited for us. This is the essence of career development. Understanding our past will help us better equip ourselves with our present circumstances. Our families do have an impact on us such as what are our values, work ethics, habits, interests, talents, and perspectives on the world. This may be from our immediate family members such as parents and siblings but can also be traced back to our relatives and yes even distant relatives. This blog will point out some things to consider in looking at developing our careers and how our roots that are developed from our family can affect it. This blog will also address some other issues such as generational differences and support systems.
With the interviews that I have done, there is a pattern where people have followed the similar career path of parents or immediate family members (close relatives). For some, this has worked very well as it was familiar territory and this could be why some of us do this. Even in these cases though due to the economic and social change that our society is encountering people have moved their careers in a lateral direction and they have done something different with their talents. An example of this would be the interview “What a person can do with a Math Degree” https://www.thecareerguy.ca/episodes/what-a-person-can-do-with-a-math-degree where Alistair points out that he was raised in a very science and academic setting and in pursuing these disciplines he developed his niche with this in the business world.
The Teresa Mitchell interview https://the-career-guy.simplecast.com/episodes/a-renaissance-women-from-chef-to-financial-planner-to-a-coaching-services-and-a-podcaster-Gc7AVSNA talks extensively about her upbringing with the family dinners that developed her interest in food leading to a career as a chef. However, life-changing circumstances from family and her upbringing initiated her to take control of her finances leading to a career as a financial planner.
As with both of these examples, family life and experiences did have an impact on their career choice. With that said our culture does change as I pointed out earlier. Therefore, new opportunities do prevail in areas that did not exist before. As I stated in the previous blog “Mental Health and Career Development” It is still just a matter of finding what interests a person and moving forward with that all the while enjoying the process and keeping an open mind to new opportunities as at times they surface unexpectedly.
The other avenue that is worth mentioning in this is generational differences. As mentioned, our world is not static and what our peers may not see as good opportunities due to past experiences, new generations may see opportunities in the same area. So, at times it is a generation gap that can create a lot of unnecessary anxiety and tension. A key point to address is that parents do want to see their kids happy and therefore it is a matter of developing a mutual understanding from both sides. For some families, this is easier than for others, which does come down to our upbringing.
Families and friends also offer a sense of belonging and support. This is a place where a person should be able to bounce off ideas. We think we know ourselves and we do but getting someone else’s perspective is important especially when dealing with careers. This is very important to be able to have a sounding board or a coach or someone that will point something out that we may have not thought about. People that seem to have this resource in their life seem to do better and that is because they are more open to options. Try to find someone that is supportive and honest that has your best interest in mind. In addition, with the daily struggles that we all face, it is good to know that there are others that assist us in getting over some of those trying times. We can never have enough support from family and friends.
With all that has been said in this blog, it is worth noting that not one of us has had the perfect upbringing. No one has had or has the perfect family. Some of us have had the fortune to have a better start than others but that is a matter of perspective as well. As stated at the start of this blog this is just one segment of understanding where we are in life. Looking at our family life and developing an understanding of what we like and what do not like and how we can use that to shape our future is the intent of this article and I hope people find this helpful.