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Hello. This is Jonathan with cpacareercoach.com. And I just wanted to share
a quick video explaining to you some of the factors that you need to
consider in choosing a career. So here we are in the online whiteboard, and
I've drawn three circles as a way to represent three different areas that
you need to consider in choosing a career. And this can apply to all ages,
it doesn't really matter if you are 18 and just entering college and you're
really trying to think through this idea of what major to go after, or
whether you're in your 40s and 50s and looking to make a mid-career shift
into doing something a little bit different that kind of aligns with your
passions a little bit more. Regardless of what age, these principles apply.


So the first circle we're going to talk about is called your natural
strengths. And oftentimes your natural strengths are things that are under
the radar, you don't see them always right away. These are the things that
come easy to you that when you do them you get lost in the flow. And you
just can effortlessly work on these type of activities for hours at a time
and still have plenty of energy. One of the ways that you can identify
whether you're not working in your natural strengths is when you're
constantly tired or frustrated or drained or worn out with your work.
That's a good indicator that you're working in an area that's not your
strength, so it's taking a lot of mental, physical energy from you.

If you want to really understand and discover your natural strengths, then
ask somebody who knows you well to tell you what it is that you do well.
And it might surprise you. You might oftentimes be surprised with the
answer that you're given because you may have thought that that certain
task or that certain strength was something that inherently was good for
anybody and everybody and that everybody just has that strength and that's
just easy for everybody. But that's not always true. So it's important to
understand your natural strengths.

Number two. It's important to understand your personality type. This is
where oftentimes in America, we often get this wrong because we follow
after money. We think this will be a good stable job, it will provide lots
of money for my family and all we see is the lifestyle that we want to
create. And so we kind of fake it until we make it. We force ourselves to
do the best we can at maximizing our strengths and try to do our best to
even do better with our weaknesses and concentrate on them. But what
happens is we end up frustrated because we're trying to become something
that we're really not.

And then, the last circle represents our passions or interest. Now
oftentimes people make this idea of finding their passion too heavy, or
they put too much pressure on themselves. But the truth is your passions
really are where your natural interests are. So I often use the
illustration of think about walking into a bookstore, Barnes and Noble for
example, and you walk into Barnes and Noble what section or area of Barnes
and Noble do you gravitate towards? What books do you like to read through?
Those can be an indication of your passion or your interest. So if you are
gravitating toward the computer tutorials, then computers are information
technology, the real detailed type of work might be something that fits you
really well.

Now here's how you put all this together. When you take your natural
strengths, personality type, passions and interests into play, then you'll
find your sweet spot. So your sweet spot is where all three of these
intersect. And this is where it can become powerful for you because you
have found your sweet spot, it's something that you're energized about, you
can work for hours at a time, it's an area of interest. It's also an area
of natural strength, it's something that you enjoy doing and it's just
something you're excited about waking up and going to work about. So for
more tips, go to cpacareercoach.com.