We are back from the long break, and it is our first post for the year, on the first day of a new month!

Our aim is to help you impact your world, and this year we are more determined than ever to give you practical steps to start making impact in your world; hence we are launching our career development ideas with this post.

CHOOSING A CAREER

Career is a part of one’s life spent working in a particular field sometimes till retirement, other times for just a period of time. Some people try to pick up different careers in search of greener pasture, some follow the trend to earn a living, while some consciously choose a path, focus on that path and build their lives around it. That’s what we will be looking at in this coming series, finding a career path and building life around it without losing our family or loved ones.

For students and graduates, choosing a career is one of the toughest decision to make in life because there are various factors that surround such life changing choice. In the beginning, it feels like a path should be chosen for you from birth, sometimes it feels like you know what you want, and boom it feels like you are blank and the motivation is gone, more desperately it feels like you should catch on the train and grab the bag by any means possible, and it is perfectly okay to feel that way! Every successful career icon you know experienced one of these, if at not all of these at different stages of their career growth and development.

However, before showing you how to decide on a career path, it is important to share some of the factors that can consciously or unconsciously affect your choice of career or how you feel about choosing a career.

FACTORS THAT AFFECT CHOOSING A CAREER

Here are few factors that affect choosing a career:

1. Nature
2. Nurture
   

Every other factor you will be reading here falls under the two N (Nature and Nurture). We are a product of nature and nurture, in that we have innate traits, and strengths we inherited by merely being born or by gene, and these potentials become actualized and utilized based on our trainings, and largely our environment. Whatever a man becomes is determined by these key factors, and it is the anchor of our freedom, responsibility, and predestination as humans.

NATURE:

There are traits inherent in our lives from birth, they are usually genetic. The adage “an apple does not fall far from its tree” illustrates this more. A more practical exam is in the career path dominant in a family. There are families that have more people doing business, overtime their children begin to pick up businesses regardless of how they choose to brand it. there are cases of having a long family history of lawyers, teachers, doctors, writers, and what have you.

Now it does not mean that every child born any of those families will definitely pick up a career on that path, some children can choose different career paths giving that being born into such they have the knowledge of a career path and what they know about it helps them choose if to choose that career path or not.

NURTURE:

Our environment affects our choice of career. This includes school, church, social institutions where we socialize, and eventually home and its environment. As we go through professional trainings, interact with others and our environment, we consciously and unconsciously become open to changes, personal growth, and personal development which help our innate traits find expressions.

Overtime, our reception towards our nurture becomes a guide to what we want to do, and how we want to do it. It does not always start out clear, nor in a linear direction, it just unfolds as we progress towards time.

Nature and nurture are springboards of passion, and academic interest. Paying close attention to these factors determines a lot in one’s career path.

WHAT TO DO:

Are you on the verge of trying to choose a career path? Here is your first task:

1. List
   the vocation, jobs, career, or business of the members of your family
2. List
   the problems inherent in your physical environment (where you grew up, and
   where you stay now).
3. What
   activities did you enjoy doing as a teenager? Do you remember them? Do you
   still like to them?

I know this maybe new to you, but find time to be honest to yourself as you answer these questions. We are on a journey to make impact and you will not be left out.