Career Counselling and Career Choice: What Direction Is Best?

Picking a career is one of the harder decisions we face. It gets easier, though, once we have a clearer sense of who we are and what actually suits us. Most of us will shift direction more than once anyway. The statistics back that up.

My own start had nothing to do with psychology. I enrolled in a Science degree with no thought of ever becoming a psychologist, mostly because psychology wasn't even offered as a subject back when I was in high school. What the Science degree gave me was a way of questioning the natural world and digging into it. Somewhere along the way I realised how much I loved learning, the scientific method, and the philosophy behind science.

To figure out which career fits, you first have to understand yourself. That is the part people tend to skip.

In primary school I wanted to be either a vet or a lawyer. I had no clue what a lawyer actually did day to day, but the word alone sounded impressive to me at the time. Then I spent a summer working in an office, and that settled one question fast: office administration was not for me, even though plenty of other people are happy in it. Teaching swimming during university was a different story. I found out I loved teaching and loved working with kids, so I gave school teaching a go. The interaction with students was genuinely good, and I enjoyed the creative work of planning lessons. But once I'd covered the material, I was already restless for the next thing. And the politics, and the marking (ugh), wore me down. Eventually I trained as a psychologist and completed a master's in Educational Psychology. That was the one that stuck. I had finally landed on work I loved.

So where do you turn when you're trying to choose? Career assessments are a useful place to begin. They help clarify the kinds of jobs a person leans toward and the areas that genuinely interest them. Career counselling tends to help younger people in particular, because it gives them room to talk openly about different paths and weigh up options somewhere that feels safe and supportive.

Beyond any formal process, talk to people. Lots of them. Ask friends, family and teachers about their jobs and how they ended up where they are. Those conversations do a surprising amount of the guiding, especially for someone young and still working it out.

The approach I keep coming back to is to follow a path with heart. What does that actually mean? It means heading in the direction your heart points you, and making sure the work connects to your real values. When those line up, you end up doing something you care about, and satisfaction tends to follow.

Jack Kornfield put it this way: what matters is simple, that our path is connected with our heart. When we ask, "Am I following a path with heart?" we find that no one else can define exactly what our path should be. We have to sit with the mystery and beauty of the question and let it work on us. An answer surfaces from somewhere inside, and understanding comes with it. Be still and listen closely, even for a moment, and you'll know whether the path you're on has heart in it.

School Psychology Services provides both career assessment and career counselling for young people aged 14 and over.