I Don't Know How To Choose A Career

Summary

In a discussion on "The Ramsey Show Highlights," Jose, a history major from Sacramento, shares his struggles with choosing a career path. Initially directionless, he changed majors multiple times before settling on history, but now questions whether he made the right choice. The show's host advises him to gain clarity on his career direction by spending time alone in nature to reflect on his goals and passions, and then researching potential careers. The key takeaway is that intentionality and purpose are essential for career satisfaction and success.

Highlights

• Jose juggled majors and ended up with a history degree. 📚
• He feels unsure about his future career path. 🤔
• Jose is advised to spend some quiet time alone seeking clarity. 🌳
• Intentional decision-making is essential for success. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• Take time to reflect in solitude to find clarity. 🌲
• It's okay to change career paths if your current one doesn't excite you. 🔄
• Having a clear destination adds purpose and energy to your journey. 🗺️
• Intentional actions lead to successful outcomes. 🎯

Overview

The Ramsey Show podcast featured Jose, a 21-year-old student from Sacramento, seeking career advice. Despite being just three semesters away from earning a degree in history, Jose feels uncertain and anxious about his career choice and future trajectory.

Jose shares how he has been on autopilot, taking the path of least resistance through school without clear career goals. The host suggests that Jose should spend a weekend retreat in nature, away from distractions, to brainstorm and reflect upon what he truly wants from his career.

This episode underscores the value of intentionality and self-awareness in career planning. It emphasizes that with a clear vision and purpose, individuals can navigate their career paths successfully, even if it means taking a few detours or changing direction completely.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Jose's Dilemma The chapter introduces a conversation between the narrator and Jose, who are in Sacramento. Jose discusses his uncertainty about his academic direction after finishing high school. Despite completing his general education quickly at a junior college, he finds himself unsure of what to pursue next in his studies.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Jose's Academic Background and Concerns Jose initially felt rushed and busy with academic planning due to working on weekends and frequent major changes. Eventually, he gravitated towards history, earning associates degrees in history and behavioral social sciences. He continued his education at a nearby university.
• 02:30 - 03:30: The Importance of a Clear Career Destination The chapter emphasizes the importance of having a clear career destination. It narrates the personal experience of someone with a bachelor's degree in history who is uncertain about their career path. The individual expresses worry about potentially ending up in a job unrelated to their degree. The chapter highlights the guidance received from the individual's mother, who exposed them to FPU (Financial Peace University), which was a positive experience. The current focus is on navigating the next steps, specifically baby steps four, five, and six, while dealing with the anxiety of an unclear career path.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Exploring Career Options and Next Steps The chapter titled 'Exploring Career Options and Next Steps' delves into the uncertainty and self-reflection one experiences when they feel misaligned with their current path. A 21-year-old individual, currently halfway through their history degree, expresses doubts about their academic journey, questioning if there are better opportunities outside their current pursuit. Despite dedicating significant time to reading, often up to 80 pages a day, the individual finds it difficult to retain information, leading to contemplation about the effective use of their time and potential alternative career paths.
• 04:30 - 06:00: Finding Clarity and Purpose The chapter appears to explore the theme of finding clarity and purpose in life. The speaker reflects on their recent experience with Black Friday, expressing feelings of regret over time not spent pursuing personal interests such as investing and learning about financial growth topics like compound interest. The speaker is currently attending school but feels that education is consuming valuable time that could be spent on things that truly interest them. Despite having just three semesters left, they question their impatience and lack of excitement about the future, emphasizing a metaphor that it's difficult to be enthusiastic about a journey when the destination is unknown.
• 06:00 - 08:30: Conclusion and Advice for Jose The chapter focuses on the notion of decision-making in the face of uncertainty, illustrating how choices influence emotional responses to situations. The speaker uses different scenarios such as going to the beach, skiing in the Rockies, or fishing to highlight that excitement and anticipation are subjective emotions we control based on our perception of the event. The key takeaway for Jose is the importance of having clarity about one's direction in life. Feeling like 'a rat in a wheel' symbolizes the aimlessness one might experience without a clear goal or plan. The advice given suggests that once you decide on a course of action, you can then choose to be enthusiastic about it.

I Don't Know How To Choose A Career Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Jose is with me in Sacramento hi Jose how are you I did I'm doing good how are you doing better than I deserve what's up hey awesome can you hear me okay sure okay so right now I'm kind of wondering what I should do at school so right after high school I went straight to a junior college and I was really directionless I had no direction I had no idea what I wanted to do I finished my general ed pretty quickly and it came about time to find out what
• 00:30 - 01:00 I wanted to major in so every time I met up with an advisor I kind of felt a little rushed and um school always kept me busy and I always worked on the weekends too so I didn't really have time to think about what I wanted to do so I changed my major a bunch of times and somehow I leaned on history so I ended up graduating the junior college with an associates in history and associates and behavior on social sciences so I moved to the University actually right down the street from my house and now I'm going to school for a
• 01:00 - 01:30 bachelor's degree in history I don't know what I want to do after and I'm a little worried because I know people get jobs in a degree that they people get a job with a degree that had nothing to do with and so I'm in high school my mom actually took me to FPU and it was a really good experience I was very very thankful for it and so today I'm actually on baby steps four five and six and I'm just wondering like what my next move is I feel kind of worried because I
• 01:30 - 02:00 don't know I feel like I'm not doing the right thing right now I feel like maybe there's something better out there for me but I thought how old are you I'm 21 actually okay and would you finish your history degree so this is a year and a half but here's the thing so um no exaggeration here but there's times in school where I would read at least 80 pages a day and honestly I don't remember anything that I read and I feel like I could have used that time to
• 02:00 - 02:30 learn more about so for your Black Friday so I actually bought a bunch of your guys's books and I feel like I could have used that time to like read and learn more about stuff that I'm interested in like investing in and compound interest and all that stuff and I feel like going to school is just kind of killing my time I know it's only three semesters left but um I don't know if I'm feeling impatient or not you know and then yeah so well it's hard to be excited about the trip when you don't know what the destination is if I say
• 02:30 - 03:00 we're going to Florida to the beach you can decide if you want to be excited or not if I say we're going to the Rockies to go skiing you can decide if you want to be excited or not if I say we're going fishing you can decide if you want be excited or not you don't know where the crud you're going there's no way to be excited you feel like a rat in a wheel because you're a rat in a wheel yeah so we need if you need to figure out what you're gonna do and then you could say let's just make up something okay I'm just gonna this is not what it
• 03:00 - 03:30 is okay I'm not speaking this over you I'm just making up a dream a weird thing okay let's say you woke up and you said I want to be a commercial real estate agent and lease office buildings okay let's just pretend you said that all right now once you said that and you said hey you know that's got finance in it it's got compound interest it's got investing in it it's got a lot of those things in it I it's a real math nerdy job commercial real estate agents or map nerds the good ones are and you know if
• 03:30 - 04:00 you wanted to do that I'm just I'm not saying that's it it probably isn't it but once you say that then you can take a stop and go all right do I want to go ahead and knock this history thing out because I'm pretty close or do I want to go full stop and a hard right turn and go get a finance degree and let's investigate how far off the finance degree we are off the history curriculum and the history track how much of the how much you know if I'm adding eight years to this am i starting over no are
• 04:00 - 04:30 you adding four years no are you adding a year I don't know but once you know where your destination is then you can determine okay it's not going to add that much to change direction towards something I actually care about what you've you just went by the path of least resistance and I if you want to be a history writer and you love history and you want to be
• 04:30 - 05:00 a history teacher you want to get a PhD and become a professor of history there's nothing wrong with that as a career but then you have a you have a solid track that you need to follow to get there then but right now you don't know where you're going so there's no energy in it hard to get the kids excited about vacation when they don't know where we're going and that that's what you've got to work on you need to figure that part out so if I were you what I would
• 05:00 - 05:30 do is it sounds like you may have banked a little bit of money go to a a nice place in Northern California that's not that expensive for this weekend and booked a hotel room by yourself where there's some woods and water and beaches or creeks or something and go walk around and talk to God for the weekend and take a blank yellow pad with you and say okay what do I want to be when I'm 40 nobody stops and asked that instead
• 05:30 - 06:00 they get so busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy and look up and go I'm just a rat in a wheel people spend more time picking out a suit of clothes and they do their careers so go take a little time get quiet when it gets quiet things get more clear we
• 06:00 - 06:30 don't take enough time to get quiet so go somewhere where you can be around nature that you like the mountain was the beach I don't care what it is spend a couple hundred bucks on a hotel this weekend that's a super expensive buy yourself a couple cheap hamburgers and walk around and talk to God with a blank yellow pad in your hand and then go talk to some people in the field that you think you heard you're supposed to be in if it's commercial real estate
• 06:30 - 07:00 it's not but if it is go talk to commercial real estate people when you get home and ask them what it's like and what they did you know what it's like to get a CC I am which is the designation for that world and I want to go into financial planning what's it like to get a CFP because that's pretty rigorous a little piece of training right there and so on just go fit you know I want to be a welder good I want to be a sculptor good how's the history degree to fit into that well it doesn't yeah but is it have you got some base under you that you can
• 07:00 - 07:30 adjust and finish up with that degree and get some core classes out as you go out your senior year in the area you want in I don't care if you get a finance degree with 16 classes of I mean a degree in history with 16 classes of finance under your belt if you're going into finance but your degrees in history but while you were there you learned a bunch about your trade that could be your path I don't care but the problem you've got is you don't have a destination and you need a clear destination intentionality is where
• 07:30 - 08:00 successful people come from they don't always agree with them you don't always like them it's never a straight path sometimes it's a pile of garbage it's ugly sometimes it's icky there's all these kinds of things come up but intentionality doing crap on purpose instead of just getting caught up in the busyness of this world and that's what changes everybody's life and you know I thought I thought I was going to be a commercial real estate agent by the way
• 08:00 - 08:30 I ended up buying properties and going broke and residential properties primarily I had some commercial and actually God changed the direction because I did one of what you're talking about I went and selling a Lake Bank put my toes in the sand my butt in the chair as Zach sings I said okay God what do you want me to do because I'm really tired of trying to figure this out by myself and I started getting pretty clear pretty quick after that