gasp?! what to do 4 future??

At some point in life, we're all eventually met with the looming question of what our future holds for us. For many, it's a constant tug-of-war rope game between various possibilities, amplified by the struggles of deciding on what road to take. Determining their future may take some people until their late twenties- or even older- to figure out. It can oftentimes be worrying to think about all the different prospects and potential opportunities with little to no sense of direction so early on in your life.

Nonetheless, don’t stress too much; you're not alone in this. It's okay if you aren’t sure what you want to do or where you want to go. There are many ways to narrow down the type of careers you may want to pursue and heaps of time before you’ll need to make a choice. To help you out, here are a couple of ways to assist you with the process.

Career Tests

Although it may seem futile to base your future on an unreliable internet test, it's actually a good kick-starter to base your decisions upon. To begin with, you can try All About Careers: free career test, https://www.allaboutcareers.com/career-test. This test matches your skills, personality, and interests with various industry sectors. In short, it narrows down your preferences but still leaves you with several options. It's a great way to list out all your skills and map out in which field you could potentially land. From there, you can carry out extensive research of the industries you have singled out and figure out which ones pique your interest the most.

Self-reflection

Before diving headfirst into a commitment or creating a mindset of what you want to do, you should first be aware of your excelling qualities. What interests and motivates you? What tasks bring you elation instead of dread? You must find joy in what you're doing, especially considering the fact that you may be spending the majority of your life doing it. It is estimated that the average person clocks over 90,000 office hours during their lifetime. That’s roughly 12,000 days, so you surely must enjoy what you're doing.

If you need time to reflect on your choices, you can take a year off after high school, also known as a gap year. Many post-graduates utilize this time to explore new possibilities and dive into different regions of expertise. Just make sure you aren't slacking off!

Following the idea of exploring new industries, keep in mind that it never hurts to try. You won’t regret scouting for different opportunities and gaining experience versus feeling guilt from another night spent procrastinating. You can avail these chances to help direct you to something you wish to spend time on.

To understand your feelings, many recommend journaling. With this activity, you will start to understand yourself better and find trends and threads you want to pull at in your life. It allows room for reflection without outside judgement, which leads to a clear mind. Additionally, it provides feedback over time that you can go back and look at to see what’s working and what’s not, helping to slowly change an ‘okay’ job or hobby into an almost perfect one.

Don't be afraid

Pursuing your desires can be intimidating. You're giving in to something you may be stuck doing for the rest of your life, and something like that is infinitely worrying. However, with a pessimistic thought process, you'll never make it to your goal. If you hold yourself back, pondering on what-ifs, you might miss out on numerous opportunities. The moment you feel that you’re not ‘good enough’ to follow your dreams, that's when you slip up and keep falling.

As said by Vanessa Tornblom, a motivational article writer, "Don’t wait for an “aha!” moment. Look for small glimpses of excitement instead. After all, discovering your purpose is not a matter of thinking, it’s a matter of doing."