From choosing a profession to a successful life

How to choose a profession to go to work extremely happy and satisfied? To get up in the morning without problems and be satisfied at the end of the working day, no matter how tense it is? If you ask these questions, you will be interested in this MedaboutMe material, which includes advice from competent professionals.

What are the qualities of success?

You can find your “place under the sun” if you show perseverance, if you are firmly aware of the ultimate goal and move towards it. But the process of professional development is lengthy and may depend on other qualities. In particular, it is necessary to assess your own abilities adequately, be aware of their strengths and difficulties. Being a true professional requires constant readiness for continuous learning and professional development. Because if you do not move forward and do not improve, you automatically “slide” backwards, without being interested in rapidly developing technologies.

Career guidance: first steps

In the 20s of the last century, Russia opened its doors to the work on professional self-determination. Modern counseling centers are ready to test people coming on the subject of personal characteristics and give individual advice on the choice of profession. As a rule, during such a consultation various personal characteristics are carefully analyzed: relationships with people, ability to create and recreate artistic images, love of nature or attachment to technology, ability to operate with mathematical numbers. If the child does not have a clearly expressed interest in a certain kind of activity, such consultation of a competent specialist can bring a fair amount of clarity to his future.

If the child cannot decide what he is most interested in

In our precarious times, some professions, respected by society and being demanded yesterday, may become almost obscure, while others, on the contrary, will rapidly develop and begin to bring both income and moral satisfaction. This fact can partly reassure parents. If the child is not ready for the realization of his professional path, there is nothing catastrophic about this. A teenager can enroll in an accessible educational institution, and by the time he finishes it, the situation in the labor market may change more than once. In the meantime, he will acquire knowledge and skills in order to pursue an adjacent specialty. Moreover, now in order to master an additional specialty, numerous short-term courses are opened, giving the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills.

Change of activity every ten years only prolongs labor activity

Change of activity - it does not matter. From the point of view of personal growth, it is useful for every worker sometimes to change, if not the profession, then the sphere of work.

There is a Lehman’s law, which says: in order to prolong business youth, you must have the courage to change the themes of your work and try yourself in different roles. Since approximately 7-10 years after the commencement of work, a person, as a rule, achieves an ideal fit for his position and “relaxes”. There may be a stage of regression, when the employee is working at the expense of the previously achieved and reduces his activity, inevitably losing qualification.

In 1961, UNESCO proclaimed the principle of the necessity of moral training of specialists for possible retraining and even a complete change of profession. Nowadays, this principle is even more relevant. Flexibility, readiness of a person for self-development are the components of a successful personality of the 21st century.

Expert comment

Nikita Khokhlov, Head of the Neuropsychology Sector, Career Guidance Department, Humanitarian Technologies Testing and Development Center, Lomonosov Moscow State University

Professional self-determination is one of the most important life choices. A good career choice allows you not only to earn good money, but also to feel yourself in the right place, enjoying the activity performed.

Career guidance is carried out to prepare young people for the choice of a profession – it is a system of measures that includes vocational education, counseling and psychological support. When conducting vocational guidance consultations, several parameters are usually taken into account. On the one hand, these are personality features, abilities and interests of a person, on the other - the current socio-economic situation in the labor market. Although at the time of vocational guidance diagnostics, personal characteristics, abilities and interests are at a certain fixed level, there is no doubt that during the life these parameters undergo certain changes.

The origins of the emerging abilities should be searched for in infancy. And even earlier.

A predisposition to certain professions in a certain sense is formed even before the birth of a child. Of course, it is not immediate and unambiguous. However, the peculiarities of the formation of the brain of the child determine the ratio of the development of mental functions.

In the presence of various pathogenic factors, whether the use of potent drugs by the mother during pregnancy or hypoxia during childbirth, brain damage is possible, which further limit the range of occupations chosen. The modern level of medicine allows such children not only to survive, but also to practically not experience difficulties in the development process.

Meanwhile, the effects of early brain damage can occur when a child goes to school and is faced with increased learning loads. It is usually in elementary school that minimal brain dysfunctions begin to appear. Some areas of the brain may work better, others worse. All this has an impact on the ratio of abilities. In case of normal development and the absence of any brain damage, the individual profile of abilities also depends on the peculiarities of the development of certain areas of the brain, in this case there are fewer restrictions.

Preschooler and his interests

How do preschooler's tendencies manifest? It is usually extremely difficult for a child to determine on a conscious level what he does better and what he does worse. But he responds to this with interests. He is not interested in what he is doing bad. For example, with functional weakness of the parieto-occipital areas of the right hemisphere of the brain in a child, structural and spatial abilities are usually reduced. He finds out about this when he is given a game constructor for the first time. And the child says that he is not interested. In such cases parents usually offer other activities to the child. Thus, the development of strong abilities is supported, and the weak ones remain reduced.

Any abilities can be developed, but if they are initially reduced, they need more time and effort to develop, including through “I do not want”. The younger the child is, the easier it is to develop one or other abilities and thereby expand the range of possible professions in the future. This also applies to the correction of possible brain damage, which is best done with the participation of a neuropsychologist. With age, the plasticity of the brain decreases and it becomes more difficult to develop the child.

How do abilities, interests and personality change with age? The child gets into the children's team (kindergarten, school). There he sees that other children are engaged in various activities, they play together. He also wants to play with them, although it may be difficult for him to perform the same activities. Then he begins to look for workarounds, compensatory strategies. For example, he makes a constructor not by spatial rotation of elements, but by connecting elements one to another. Other brain systems are already working here, but the child gets the same result as other children. This allows him to play with everyone.

With age, all new functional systems are built, some abilities begin to depend on others, rely on them. Interests no longer depend directly on ability. In addition, personal changes occur. The child is involved in new systems of social relations, tries different models of behavior. Often personality traits are formed in direct relationship with abilities and interests. For example, a child could not find a compensatory strategy for performing a certain activity. Because of this, he could not play with other children, they stopped communicating with him. He can decide that he does not need it, and keep one, not  really communicating with others. At the same time he will have a feeling of conscious choice - they did not accept me, but I decided that I was better alone myself. These are, of course, already personal changes that remain and can manifest themselves throughout life.

Meet the professions

By school age, the student usually meets with the main groups of professions, begins to show interest in them. In junior adolescence, a key moment arises when abilities and interests may diverge. A teenager may like a profession, which for successful development requires a high level of those abilities that he lacks. And here there is a volitional decision - a teenager is trying to engage in the activities that he initially fails. At the same time, he does not lose interest in it, he lacks arbitrary regulation in order to continue self-improvement, to develop the required abilities. It is good if a person comes to this age with an approximately equal level of development of various abilities. Then he has something to push off from. It is worse, if from an early age, the child developed some abilities, completely ignoring the development of others, and then he grew up and decided himself that he was not interested in the profession which his parents were preparing him for. Then it becomes more difficult to develop.

Conscious choice

It is extremely difficult for a teenager to understand which profession suits him. Any training sessions cannot fully recreate typical professional situations. The image of the profession is often distorted. In this case, it is best to look for adults working in the relevant specialty, to communicate with them, to come to work, to observe, to be interested in certain nuances of professional activity. Then, it is less likely to choose a profession only by visual appeal without understanding the real essence of work. No need to force a professional choice, you should only push the student to the fact that he himself should be interested in various professions. The lack of accessible information about the professions and the labor market, being fixed on certain models of professional behavior (for example, only on those professions in which family members are engaged) can lead to the fact that by the end of school a young man or girl will not have an adequate plan of professional self-realization.

Of course, certain talents, regardless of whether they are innate or acquired, must find their application in life. But this is not always possible in the professional field. The demand for talent does not depend on the person himself. It is rather a socio-economic situation, particularities of the labor market. In this case, you can learn another profession, and realize your talent in your free time, doing something for fun. For example, a person can work as a programmer, and in the evenings - go to a music club and practice opera singing. Here differentiation of profession and favorite activities happens.