I found an incredible article about careers that I think will help a lot of people.
It ties into some important life lessons my parents had taught me, and I wanted to share my experiences with you because it ties into the article really well.
Have you ever wondered if you are making the right choices in your career? Thinking about my future career was always something I never really was concerned about for most of my life.
My parents taught me that if you work hard, you get to play hard and you will be successful. They defined success as being able to hold a job and earn a steady income. But that was the extent of what I was taught. My parents didn’t go to college, and I grew up in a very tiny town where going to college wasn’t important to a lot of people. What was important to them was spending time with their families and making enough to support their families. But my parents wanted me to be different. To have a better life than them and pursue college if it was what I wanted.
I decided to go to college, and I was opened up to a whole world I didn’t know existed. This world had the same values that my parents had taught me, but I was introduced to other values that I never even thought about. A lot of what made the values possible was the rise of the current digital age we live in. My parents didn’t grow up with the technologies we have today. Careers that people have today were unheard of back then.
As I worked different jobs and worked to start my career after graduating college, I saw that what my parents said had been paying off. The hard work and long hours was producing the results I wanted! But I noticed that the 6o-70 hours a week over 4 years was burning me out. I was stressed, tired, angry, and upset. I realized that it was not healthy to feel that way. I wasn’t living a healthy lifestyle, and I could see how it was affecting my mental health.
So I did what any normal person would do, and I consulted my parents. They told me that work could be that way sometimes and that you need to work through it. That what was important was that I had a job and was able to support myself. But if I was burning myself out and my mental health was at risk, then I needed to consider making some life changes. I needed to figure out what was causing these problems for me and try to eliminate those problems to help simplify my life. The following are 3 things that my parents taught me about career life lessons that I think provide a lot of value:
1. Nobody On Their Deathbed Wishes They Worked More
At first, this was a difficult idea for me to understand because I come from a culture of the working class people and work was an essential function of life. A lot of people love to work, and I didn’t see why someone would regret trying to become more successful or make more money.
At certain times in our lives, I saw how poor my family was compared to other families and kids in school. From a young age I have always been concerned about money and if we had enough. I remember asking my mom if she was sure that it was okay if we went to the movies or out to eat on the weekends. I always valued money because I felt like it was something that we never had. Now I am not saying this because I want anyone to feel bad for me because you should’t. I was lucky enough to never have to go without anything. I just wanted to explain why I felt the way I feel about money and why it was some important to me. But very wise mother explained to me that there are more important things in life than money. More important things than material objects that won’t last as long as the people in your life. Your best friends, your family, and the memories you create with them are far more important than any amount of money. It’s something that you can’t even put a dollar value on in the long run because those things makes us truly happy. If you don’t do enough of what makes you happy in your lifetime, you will regret it in the end.
2. The Need To Disconnect
Our family didn’t have money to travel, so we spent the majority of our weekends in the mountains camping. We would go hunting, four-wheeling, fort building, and shooting. When I was little, it was the best thing in the world, and I didn’t understand how important it was to be in nature, and to disconnect from our connected world.
My mom reminded me that we are more connected today than we ever have been. With emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and event reminders I realized that the amount I was trying to keep track of was making life seem more complicated than it needed to be. And the best way to get away from all the stress and connection is to go to a place where there is no connection. A peaceful, quite place called nature. She explained to me that the reasons we spent so much time in the mountains was because it was how my parents disconnected from their work lives. Without the ability to be outside my family may have gone crazy. I don’t think people utilize nature enough, but it is an incredibly powerful tool.
3. Simplify Your Life
A common theme that I have talked about throughout this article is the idea of simple. My dad pointed out to me that life is way more simple than it seems. We complicate our own lives and bring in a bunch of extra stress and complications that we really don’t need.
We have a lot of nice apps that serve great purposes in life like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, but you don’t NEED them. What is important is discovering what is really making you happy and doing those things. Focus on those hobbies that make you happy and differentiate you from everybody else. Don’t let outside influences determine what you like and what makes you happy. You get to choose your life and what you love can only be decided by you. Figure out what they are and spend a lot of time doing them. And the things that you thought were important, won’t seem so important anymore.
I was incredibly fortunate to grow up where I did because the idea of a simple life is something that I learned from the culture I grew up in. I was lucky enough to get the education I wanted but to also understand the importance of living in the now and experiencing life now because we may not be here tomorrow.
The following article talks a bit about this, and it comes from Bernard Marr who is an influencer on Linkedin, and he is a pretty incredible guy. It’s about “10 Important Career Lessons Most People Learn Too Late.” I believe that this article he wrote will truly help you change your ideas about your career and help you in finding happiness within your career.
Let me know what you think in the comments! Thanks for reading.