Do not do what you like!

“You should do what you like in life and make a career out of it” All of us millennials get this phrase chirped around us at all times and every one of us is trying our best to abide by the wise statement. DO NOT DO IT! I repeat do not go after what you like and this is a very important thing I have realized in the last 18 months. I am not advocating rightfulness of my thought just sharing an experience which took me out from self-destructing mode.

The deal is the majority of people do not know what they want to be or what they like which is normal and very few are working on things which they “think” they like. I do not know what it means to work on something you like, how can anyone explain that to an average 20-year person? my liking’s used to change every second month about my career and that is the problem every one of us faces, how many of you will agree that you will feel strongly about something and after a while, it just fizzes off and you are like no it’s not working? every one of us faces these kinds of confrontations and we just end up doing what everyone does. That’s it! and the surprising part is we end up working hard on those careers which we know that they will lead us to misery. Thus the notions come “I am successful but there is no inner peace”.

I am saying instead of searching what you like search who you are, sounds intellectual! Let me explain whatever you like right now at this very moment depends on that state of your mind, body and specially environment and all these variables are highly volatile. Right now let us say you are working hard to be in the IT industry and you know very well you will not like working there and yet you are working hard for it. You might say there is no other option, ask yourself is there no other option or your sate of mind and body are not allowing you to have your real option.

Let me give you my example I’m a 3rd year IT engineering student and I got myself into web development and all, doing great too and I loved it (Note: I’m in that environment of coding and IT). Last year I started working harder and harder on coding, got into an internship, started getting myself to discipline because for obvious reasons so that I can boost my productivity. I left social media, started waking and sleeping early, stopped slacking off it will be better to say that I reduced my bad habits. What I realized is that as I got myself disciplined my interest in coding started fading and I started to know myself much better I started getting much clear about what I like what I don’t want to be etc. I lost complete interest in IT industry because I could not see myself there and then a point came one day out of know where I had two options in mind Indian Army and Civil Services and I realized that these two are the only careers which fit my nature and characteristics and I can not explain to you I was so satisfied, I never felt such clarity in my life, a sense of achievement was there it was just unreal for me. I realized that if I would not have disciplined myself I would have never come to this closure and acceptance.

The amazing ability of our brain is that it judges the effort and time any particular work will take for example when we sit down to study and we open a chapter first thing our brain does is to analyze how much effort it will take for us to prepare that chapter and let us say it will take 6 hours of serious study and our mind is not disciplined enough to do that then we won’t do it. The same thing happened with me when the thought of Army and Civil Services came to my brain at that moment my brain calculated the amount of effort and time it takes to be there and the amazing part is I wasn’t scared and I was ready to do it. So what I found out is because I started disciplining me I got to know about myself better and because of that it was just a natural selection of careers and I was ready to work harder and be very strict with myself because I was not scared as I knew exactly and clearly what I’m working for. The portion I want you to understand is 3 years ago I was told to prepare for Civil services and I out rightly rejected it because the first thing that hit my mind was too much work, too much sacrifice, too much study. This happened because I did not know myself. After all, I was not disciplined enough to have a state of mind to know myself.

Get one thing straight discipline, time management, efficiency, productivity, and all others are highly essential to sustain your life and career irrespective of you love it or not it’s a fact! A successful manager in Corporate is very discipline although he might hate his job and a successful YouTuber is also very discipline and he loves his thing. The thing is all of us have two options 1) get discipline ourselves or 2) life will force us to be disciplined there is no escaping from it. What I am saying is and this is very important you can not make a decision on a career without knowing yourself and you can’t know yourself without reaching a standard of discipline. In simple terms, any particular person has to have a set of good habits which are common and required in all possible careers out there. Is there any career out there that says do not eat healthy food or do not take a proper sleep?. Like if you are someone who wakes up in the afternoon, eats junk, have screen time of about 6 hours and who works hard only when there is “FEAR”, how can you tell what is your real nature is? And the problem is all of us start thinking that we are grinding. You need to understand everyone has a unique nature and nature never changes you can only polish your behavior and control your nature.

Let us say there are 3 people of the same amount of discipline and they are above that discipline line where they have a stable sense of mind of decision making and all of them have the same skill sets. The first one is not adventurous and very close to family for him becoming a professor might make sense, the second one is adventurous and is attracted to power for him being in the army might make sense, the third one is creative and enjoys risks and freedom for him entrepreneurship might make sense. This is nature I’m telling you to find.
Let us say you came across your dream career but you are not disciplined enough trust me your brain won’t even entertain the idea if it will think that it is tough to achieve.

Now a tip on how to know that the career you are working on is your career? just write down its cons (according to the public) every career has cons and see that do these cons scare you. I’m not saying that you see the cons and say ya! it is no big deal I’ll handle them, it’s called fooling yourself. What I mean is you should look up to those cons as much as you look up to the pros. For example in Army uncertainty of life, staying away from family, cruel environments all these don’t scare me I look up to these things in a positive manner, this might sound crazy but it is true. If you have these feelings even towards the cons of your career then rest assure you are on the right path at least according to me.

You know the day you will exactly realize about your nature the career options will naturally come to you and the effort to achieve them won’t be effort any more for you.