“You can’t be anything you want but you can be everything you are.” Jay Sheety, author of Think Like a Monk.
Understanding your dharma will help you solve your career issues. I’ll stay away from the ethereal aspects of this Eastern concept. The worldly connotation primarily relates to your general situation in life.
Specifically, if you are a single mother raising two kids and you do not have a college degree or specialized training in a well paying field, your Dharma compels you to get whatever jobs you can that will pay the bills. If you are a college educated twentysomething with no one dependent on you for economic survival and have the luxury of knowing your parents can provide the basics if needed, your Dharma enables you more choices.
Still, when I work the latter, many seemed to be immersed in a morass of confusion regarding the vast number of potential career options they think are possible. My work brings a narrowing of choices – eliminating the “paradox of choice” (see Barry Schwartz’s book of the same phrase) – and thereby providing clarity on real versus imaginary choices.
So for example, those who were not blessed with the math gene really do not have the choice do head into engineering or other fields requiring a high math acumen. Could it be done? Sure, there are always outliers but in most every instance, the person’s Dharma (one’s general situation includes innate attributes) has determined career happiness lies elsewhere.
In running Career Counseling Connecticut for the past decade, I’ve seen the massive changes in our economy and how such changes have created confusion. We can help you sort through your choices and develop career clarity.