If you think about your life and all the things you enjoy – they’re not (usually) all related to the career field you’d like to go into, right? You might have a lot of other hobbies and interests, such as crochet, dog walking or lacrosse. It might also happen that you have interests in a number of different areas. For example, you’re working hard towards becoming a doctor but you also LOVE painting and spend a lot of your free time creating works of art. Is it all important? Because we try a lot of different things in our life, shouldn’t we do this with our careers too?
Useful Skills
Let’s use our example above, you’re doing the required learning and you’re on the path to becoming a doctor. When you’re not studying, you relax by painting. You might be worried that you’re wasting your time with the painting when you could be cramming in more studying, but aside from it being good to have downtime, your hobbies can benefit you in ways you might not have imagined! Through painting, you might have developed a very steady hand – a skill desired by many doctors for performing a number of procedures. Furthermore, to get to the correct diagnosis, you will have to use your observational skills and think outside of the box, which you will have worked on through your paintings.
This is just one example, but the list is endless. Other examples might include:
- You’re a keen puzzler (problem-solving skills are useful in every career, especially computer science).
- You’re a dancer (working in a team and attention to detail are important for dancers, and workplaces too).
- You love to run (dedication and personal growth often had by runners are highly sought-after skills).
There’s never such a thing as a useless skill, and our talents can show up in so many different places!
Get Rid Of FOMO
Passion is a really important thing, and it’s good to go where our passions lead us. After all, it can be disheartening and upsetting when we see somebody do what we wish had done. So, if there is even a tiny part of you that fancies a change, why not try dipping your toe into the subject of your interests? Give it a go and you might love it. Alternatively, you might find it’s not for you. Either way, it is better to have tried it than not give it a go at all and feel like you’ve missed out on something huge.
You Could Be Even Happier
So you’ve taken the big step to try something new and you love it – maybe enough to change your current path! In this position, you might feel like sticking with what you know. After all, you’ve been doing it for a while and it might be difficult to swap courses. But remember; it is easy to settle into something you are comfortable doing. But shouldn’t you put your happiness first? Besides, exciting things happen outside our comfort zone and if your lifestyle means you can change your path, why not!
To conclude, as humans, we are ever-changing and it’s ok if our interests change. So don’t be afraid to give something new a try!
