What are the suitable career for you/your children?

Part 2: what are the suitable career for you/your children?

How many of you and parents are not thinking that universities are not the only and the best solution for you and your children career development?

maybe it is just a few percentage of people in general and parents in particular are not thinking so and they are those out of the box thinkers and very brave enough to go against the common trend/belief in their society where all of children are expected to go to universities after they finish high schools in Vietnam and some other contries.

As parents, everyone hopes that their children will be grown up happily and have good life in future and many have believed that in order to achieve it, their children must study well in schools, get admission to study in universities by any cost to ensure they can get a good and permanent job, which can secure them to have a bright future. Well, this is such a wrong thinking mindset!

The reality has proved that students study well from schools and graduate from universities even from well known ones from overseas doesnt mean they will be successful in their careers. and there are many evidences that people who are not outstanding in their studies during their school years still being successful in their careers and proven to be talented and productive in their performances.

Given some examples from our surroundings, there were at least 6 youths from our cousin family side who studied from even talented schools like hanoi amsterdam or likewise, with financial supports from their parents they have been sent to Singapore, UK and the US for studying from highschools to universities, which cost considerably ( billions of vietnamese dong), however one among them had given up their studies not because they could not perform, in fact they had achieved many high awards during their years of study, but they got bored with the subjects and the enviroment from where they studied, the rest after graduated from universities returned to Hanoi to live and applied to work for government offices or banks where their parents have some connections to do the jobs with monthly salaries of only a few millions vietnamese dong, which equal to few hundreds of us dollar.

Additionally there are other realities which have proven that not only people can study well are intelligent. there are varieties of intelligence, such as: languagestic intelligence, logical intelligence, space intelligence, body intelligence, music and other art forms intelligence, etc, just a few to mention. All of these with their own characteristics traits, and capabilities, have been creating diversities and adding different values and making great contributions to societies and nations and well appreciated in many ways. And once these intelligences are utilized in the right places and environments, they will be fully making used and adding invaluable values in returns.

So the question is whether universities are the wise choice for career destination to assure people with better life/future?

In fact there are consirably numbers of people who cant make use of their strengths in their whole working life because of making wrong choices in the fields of study and jobs to work when they were young. Only later after doing their chosen jobs, they realised that these are not their passions or they are not good in these. Though they regret, it is too late for them to start again and it is such a waste of both time and financial investment without fruitful reaping. In a bigger picture, it is really a waste of human resource, the most valuable and highest assets of human being.

And in reality after reading many bazi for many children, I have noticed that many among them dont have interest in studying and are not born to be successful academically. They dont like books, but they are smart children in other ways and have affinities with doing business, or talented with high potential becoming artists or artisans.

For such cases, I often advise to their parents that they should not orient their children to pursuade high degrees and make investment in academic careers for their children and dont stress themselves and their children to have to study well like other kids. There are many ways to lead to achievements, just to find which is more suitable for them then they definitely can reach to their destinations. However, not many of the parents can understand this and do listen to our advice since they are influenced too much by the trends of society and carry old fashion mind set and if their children dont study universities like other children, they will feel shame on it. In short, they make their own stress for themself and their own children by living for other people’s ideals and without concrete goals.

And there is one more example I want to share when I visited Japan, I have observed that in Japan there are many people doing artisan works and just purely working as farmers, which account for not modestly in their population. And they are found not only useful for themselves but also for their families, communities, and their country, with high or medium high and stable incomes and always are well respected by others in their society. While the career perspective of people that have high degrees is not promising as if they lost their job because of retrenchment or redundancy during working ages they are not easy to find another similar job. It is sad that people with high degrees are those indeed not hand on skillful, and there are many, while the needs are limited, therefore, it is difficult and highly competitive to find an alternative job or to do self employing for living. For survival, they have to accept to work even as taxi drivers, security guards, MLN, waiters or waitresses, or those jobs they never thought one day they would have ended to work since they used to work in high salary or senior positions.

Now the question is among people with high degrees and academic background and those without but have hand on skills who is more successful?

Personally, success in career is when you can create your outputs which have high value of utilization, implication for self, other beneficaries, and societies and you wont never become jobless since you are capable to earn for yourself and family living sustainably and your skills can be inherited to your younger generations as the heritage which is more appreciated and lasting longer than any material dowry.

In summary, we really hope who are raising kids having chance reading this note will be thoughtfully in their children career orientation and not repeat the same mistakes from other people surrounding them and older generations, as well as dont stress their own children to fulfil their ambitions and interests but not their own children’s unconsciously which they had yet fulfilled it when they were young or occupations that they are successful due to their lucks rather than because of their well informed decisions. Instead they should apply what we have shared in this post by identifying i) what is the useful element? ii) passion/interest; iii) strengths/posibilities/talents/potentials; iv) long term vision about career; v) self luck cycles. This actually is similar to doing SWOT (strength/weakness/opportunity/threat) analysis that you may be familiar with when doing strategic business plan.