Vocation Discovery
Seek Vocation
There’s something happening here. What it is an’t exactly clear.
Til now.
Plug Into The Dream
During the last sixty years, the American way of lifetime success has been delivered in an increasingly expensive, gift-wrapped puzzle, pushing histrionic behavior. It’s an up-side down, inverted, distorted process, that costs parents and students their lives time, their lifetime earnings, their credit, their self-worth, and their dreams of betterment. It is “the college promise.”
Though the “education system” mainlines college degrees, sometimes vocational education – and result, is the same heavy promise – higher education pays for anyone that tries – regardless the personal costs.
Hey! Graduate college – and you are some body. You’re credentialed, baby! Step out the door, and into success and admiration. You have made it!
Then, Reality.
However, now it is painfully clear to parents and students, that the way they buy college, is screwed-up. They also realize that the college path may not work at all, for most people. If the college track does make sense, for career and profession, then the way they buy college, really is wrong.
What is not clear to parents, is the “traditional” pathway of success for them, and for their children, is purposely laid with financial traps of lifetime debt, and academic traps of failure. Some parents notice that the colleges, the high school counselors, the independent consultants, the national publications, and all of government push “student loans.” Why do you suppose that is?
Ever hear this one about a car dealer?
After a round of hard bargaining with a customer, the dealer realizes he is about to lose profits. The customer will not “finance” the car purchase.
He will only pay cash.
The dealer cares less about the final purchase price – he wants the customer to sign the financing package – that’s where the profits are really made.
What To Do?
So, let’s begin at the beginning. This approach is a “problem solving exercise” – once worked, results in great confidence.
The exercise requires honesty, clarity, thought, and consideration. It also requires writing our organized thoughts. We are about to make a map, a chart, a schematic of our life past, our present, and our projection of our personal future. We’re talking about life planning.
Life planning is not an attempt to foresee the future, or predict exactly, what will happen when, to us. It is a documentation of the present and the past, with a meaningful projection of where we would like to go next.
Imagine a vacation.
You are going to travel extensively. Your trip will take at least a month. During your travels, you will be transported by every imaginable mode, known – jet, train, bus, ocean liner, car, horse carriage, camel, donkey, and walk.
You will stay in a wide range of accommodations on land and sea, and eat foods you would never have considered before – some of which are highly suspicious in origin, quality, and sanitation.
You will be served by the good, the bad, and the ugly. It seems that every one of them is wanting a handout, a tip, a bribe. You will have items stolen from you. You will be glad to leave with only your life!
And yet, in some of your encounters with the local people, you will find gracious and warm receptions from every social status – but they expect nothing at all, from you. You are made to feel like a long lost brother, uncle, or child. They show you every consideration, listen to your every word, laugh with your stories and your attempts at jokes. They are deeply moved by your losses. They are happy, your shadow graced their doorway. Yet, you must move on. You are very unhappy to part from them – you wish you could stay there, forever.
In the end, you will arrive at your destination. The place is like nothing you could imagine from the travel brochure, and online pictures and videos.
This is a perfect location – you claim this for your new residence.
From this place, you decide the most important thing you can do, during your life is right here. It is the one thing, which you would be most difficult to replace, by anyone else. You can do the greatest service.
Interpretation: the vacation destination is your vocation. Your adventures and excursions, are the career, the profession, the jobs you really wanted, and that you fell into, along the way. What you learned and accumulated, during the travels, is your education and your learning.
Assess.
This is one way, how we can start our written life plan. (Assess phase.)
- Imagine.
- Then write it down, in clumps and single words, phrases and paragraphs – in reflective moments, during a quiet lull at work.
- Set it aside for a few days – let it rest a bit.
- Take it up, once again for organization. Circle ideas. Add connecting lines. Add numbers of importance, or sequence.
- Re-write your notes in a rough outline. Make additional comments, revise, re-order.
Sequence Of Action.
From a young age, the general sequence for one’s life plan, is this:
- vocation selection – the most meaningful trip of your lifetime, then
- profession choice – what will you be known for, when available for hire, then
- career track – what is your history, then
- job entry, and employment track – what income producing occupations will you work, then
- education, internship or apprenticeship – what and how do you learn, acquire skills and usable knowledge.
Note: If you are well along in career and profession, and have not figured your vocation or calling in life – consider how rapidly you can advance by going through the Sequence in a modified fashion. It’s quite powerful.
Focus On Vocation.
A vocation is that principle occupation for which one has a lifetime dedication. It is the one thing, which you would be most difficult to replace, by anyone else. The one occupation by which you can do the greatest service.
Sometimes one’s employment is directly related to one’s vocation: tree assessments (job), employed as a forest ranger (career) complementing a profound lifetime study of tree diseases (vocation.)
Sometimes, one’s career and profession are very wide of one’s vocation. Charles Ives and Alexander Borodin are two examples – both are known as famous composers of serious music, today. Who could have imagined that one was a highly successful insurance salesman, and the other an equally successful chemist.
Our problem is selecting that vocation that equally works with our aptitude, skills, and ambition – as early in life as possible. Once identified, our course of life decisions, is relatively easy.
Thereafter, we can chase the complementary employment, identify those employment options, assess the means to get into the career and job track, and then develop and act on specific goals in our own written life plan.
Traditionally, this “…assumes a linear path between your major and your career. And the lure of the linear path is powerful. It’s embedded in our thinking. From the time you played with fire trucks and people asked you if you wanted to be a firefighter, linear paths to careers have been assumed to be the natural state of things. So it seems only logical that you would pursue a major that would become your ultimate career.”
“Where is my linear path?”
You Majored in What?: Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career
Suggestion.
Have the desire to change for the best, by using your present and past, re-shaped for the future. Start your life plan now – here.