Unlike centuries ago where the most important priorities were family, food, health, relatives, neighbours etc the priorities of the world today have certainly taken a shift. Career, Ambitions, Goals, Dreams, Success, Progress, Productivity, Growth etc have become jargons very familiar to even teenagers. Doctor, Lawyer, Grocer, Cobbler, farmer, Blacksmith are not the only careers available to masses today. 

The career options have become seemingly infinite. There is no end literally to the no of possibilities of making a good career for an individual. They say nothingness is optionlessness but sometimes abundance of options is also a state of optionlessness for, you are confused of what choice to make not because of the lack of choice but because of lack of guidance of what might be most right for you. All of us want to live choices that don’t make us regret in future and career is one choice you can’t alter many times in one life unlike choices of your garments or probably your hairdo. 

Since the no. of variations in one life time of a choice like career are limited to few, one needs to make informed or at least well thought through choices. In this regard, the 10 most important things that one must keep in mind while opting a career are as below:

1. Understand Yourself:
A majority of us think we know ourselves, while the truth remains that life is an unending journey of discovering oneself and in that case the more efforts you put to understand yourself the better it is.. (of course i don’t mean that over do it and sit over irrelevant things). We are majorly hit by confusion that arises from what’s right and what interests us or what we feel passionate about. Not everything that looks like passion is passion & most importantly Don’t confuse interest for passion and passion for interest. Understand that working on strengths is always rewarding and it may not always turn out to be interesting in the beginning.

2. Know Your Weaknesses:
All of us have them and they aren’t the MUST NOT HAVEs. It’s normal to have weaknesses and we all have them. What we must not have is extra focus on all of them. Some that hinder our strengths or are correlated to our main areas must be attacked and rest must be taken like aliens and treated as guests if they arrive and curiosities if they don’t, not treated like precious metals or archeological sites of infinite value to be dug.

3. Get Mentored & Find Mentors:
You must know some people who have done something substantial in the field you are aiming to master or master of strengths you are looking to build in yourself. Don’t hang on with people who are just good by heart or sound like gurus. It’s important to understand that you can respect such gurus or those who are otherwise wise, but that doesn’t mean you end following all of their advices because they just haven’t been masters of your arena/domain.

4. Be Honest To Yourself:
You have to extremely honest to yourself while arriving at right answers from first 3 points for yourself. Your conclusions are the foundations on which you will build a lot of things, so it’s logical that if you fill it with flaws then your building shall collapse to debris in no time. Be utterly honest to yourself even if sometimes you can’t fully be to others (including your mentors sometimes - though this must never happen either).

5. Set Right Expectations From Yourself:
Having right expectations from oneself is very important. You cannot set out to lift a 100 kg weight getting motivated from TV clip of world’s strongest men when you know you will rupture your muscle and haven’t done anything till date that makes you any closer to be able to do it. Attempt challenges one step or two steps beyond your strengths they shall push you to grow, anything beyond that is going to push you into the ditch of failures.

6. Understand The Vastness Of Options:
You must know that anything that you once fail is not final and repeated failures is not end of life. Options are many. Work like there are no options but live life like you are BORN to WIN at least something to its best heights. Cyclists may not be runners, runners may not be swimmers, swimmers may not be scientists and scientists may not be cyclists, but all have scope of excellence laid on their table.

7. Build Multiple Abilities:
Just know that one area is alone not enough to achieve success that is larger than life, you must master the meta space of your abilities or sometimes even the neighbouring spaces to your areas of excellence. The world is simply moving towards high levels of competence and survival of fittest is certainly true. It certainly doesn’t need to make you a tensed, unhappy soul. Knowing that there is something you have as a purpose to chase for a lifetime is a blessing and not a curse you must be the happiest soul at all stages even if you had discontent of lot being unaccomplished in your life still. 

8. Don’t Get Over-Advised:
Just know everyone is a seeker, and must advise you on core values of being an excellent seeker and not always on what to seek, why to seek etc. Too many advises leave anyone confused even the experts for that matter, a beginner is bound to get over-educated and reach no where in the process.

9. Experience It To Know it (Get on the ground):
Mere knowing things is not even the beginning. Many have illusions that they are wise when they have lot of knowledge, but i truly believe wisdom is applied knowledge and contemporary wisdom is what moves life stories to create history. Get on the ground yourself in any work that you do and don’t just rely on data provided by others all the time for framework that you build for your life.

10. Be Happy & Love Whatever You Do:
Even if you are failing it just know it’s someone’s life, so respect it and love it till you do it and then jump on to something you are more capable of and can love more. This makes you grounded and love everything you do and this is the MOST IMPORTANT attitude that pulls you out of hardest or toughest times because you would be expected to do a lot of things you don’t love at all  during your tough times and hard phases. SO be happy and LOVE whatever you are into irrespective of the interest it is capable of generating in you. 
I am sure you have terrific commandments to walk on now and are way more clearer now with many aspects of your career than when you started reading this. Nonetheless this article wasn’t meant to spoon feed you on what you need to do for a living or an extra ordinary success, it was meant to tell you how you could be extra ordinary in any career you pursue and help you choose the right path algorithmically for yourself where you are bound to excel or excel wherever you currently are.

I look forward to reading your feedback and story of life, and how you discovered your career and arrived at what you are doing and what you are going to do.. Comments column needs you to log-in and take that step ahead to be able to comment, don’t give up sharing what you are feeling like just because of that additional step, share your thoughts irrespective of that extra step and make a difference to the next reader.