How much do our parents influence our career choices?

With Father’s Day approaching, it’s got me thinking about how much our parents' jobs affect our own career paths, and is that actually a helpful thing?

I can clearly remember the excitement I would feel whenever there was school holiday or teacher training day, and my dad would announce that he was taking me with him to work.

He worked in TV production in London and his ‘office’ for that day could be anywhere from an edit suite in Soho, to a studio in Park Royal, or a location anywhere in the city. There would usually be camera equipment, lights, tapes and scripts piled high everywhere I looked, and always a buzz and sense of urgency in the people working around him. They would be dashing around, clutching Filofaxes (remember those?) and downing espressos, or holding important sounding conference calls on giant desk phones (this was pre-mobile) with clients in exotic places like New York or Los Angeles. To a 10 year old this seemed like THE most exciting way that anyone could spend their time. So was it any wonder that I desperately wanted to work in TV when I grew up?

A recent survey found that over 48% of respondents felt that their parents strongly influenced their career choices, and 40% said they felt pressure to follow their parents’ career advice.

This may or may not be intentional from the parents’ side, but it does show how powerful their influence can be. If a parent clearly loves their career then that may well rub off on their children too which is not necessarily a bad thing at all. However 57% of the survey respondents said that their parents simply wanted them to enter the same field or profession as theirs. Whilst this may stem from familiarity and wanting security for their children, it may also be doing them a disservice because it doesn’t take into account a young person’s unique combination of strengths and personal interests that will help to motivate them and excel in their career in the longer term.

So what can you do if you feel like you were steered down the wrong career path earlier in life, or if you are now a parent yourself?

Firstly, I’m a great believer that it never too late to discover your vocation. Whatever experience and self-knowledge you have gained to date is always valuable, and you will now have a much better understanding of what your core skills, strengths and motivators are than you did when you were younger. And also bear in mind that when our loved ones give us advice, it can be heavily influenced by their own life experiences and fears which may not be relevant or helpful to you now that you are older.

Secondly, if you are a parent yourself, it might be worth paying attention to the messages you’re already sending to your kids about what they might be want to do when they grow up. Take a step back and think about your own expectations and also any unfulfilled goals you have. Are you unwittingly pushing these onto your children? Also try to give them room to experiment and experience new things without being judgemental. As we all know, if they say they want to be a doctor today, they might want to be a circus acrobat tomorrow. So let them explore what gives them joy and what they’re most suited to, without fear of disapproval.

Personally, I did follow my dad into TV and had an exciting 8 years in that industry. However I eventually I realised that the Producer track I was on was not fulfilling me creatively in the ways I had expected and I eventually changed careers and moved into journalism. A few more years and a couple more career moves later across travel writing, charity communications and eventually advertising, I finally found my calling as a career coach but there was quite a bit of soul searching and frustration along the way. In the end I don’t regret any of the different career paths I tried out, and each one taught me something new about myself, but ultimately what I think I was searching for was the same passion for my job as my dad had for his. And I definitely did find that in the end.

Why we've got the happiness equation all wrong

I’m a real sucker for a good personal development or business book. I have stacks of them by my bedside, and it’s taken me a while to get to the one I’m currently devouring, but wow what a game changer this is.

Author Shawn Achor wrote ’The Happiness Advantage’ after spending over a decade researching and teaching at Harvard University, and conducting one of the largest ever studies into happiness and human potential.

He discovered that most of us have been taught from a young age that if we work hard, then we will be successful, and then we will be happy. 

We hear this message at home, at school, at work and from society in general. Which explains why we chase those high grades, and promotions, and pay rises, and the bigger house or the bigger car, thinking this will eventually lead to happiness.

And yet in the course of his research, he was finding amongst his own students at Harvard that many of them were distinctly unhappy.

Achievement in itself didn’t seem to hold the key.

During his decade long hunt for the keys to happiness, he came across new research from the growing areas of positive psychology and neuroscience which showed that we have had this backwards all along:

In fact, happiness leads to success.

Happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement, and a more positive brain is more motivated, more resilient, more creative and more productive.

So where do you begin if you want to feel happier? Well a great place to start is to understand our capacity for change. Many of think we are just born a certain way:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
“I’m just not a very positive person”
“I’m good at certain things but not others, it’s the way I am”

But in fact, new research into ‘neuroplasticity’ shows that our brains can adapt and grow throughout our lives. We aren’t stuck with a certain skill set and personality that we thought we were born with. We can in fact continually learn new skills through practice. 
 
So it’s perfectly possible to learn to be happier!

I’ll be sharing one of my favourite happiness tips later this week which you can apply in your daily life, and I’d love to hear how you get on! Feel free to comment and let me know.

So here’s to all of us turning that happiness equation on its head, and seeing how more happiness = more success!

Why failure could be the key to your career success

We are often told from a young age that failure should be avoided. At school, top grades are rewarded and low grades are penalised.

When we fail at something, it can feel embarrassing, painful, and can even damage our sense of self-confidence.

But what if I were to tell you that in fact, you can re-frame how you see failure and use it to make you more resilient and propel you towards success?

If you start to look around you, you can find many examples of well known figures who have embraced failure and pushed on through to achieve great things:

• JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it

• Michael Jordan was actually cut from his basketball team in high school

• Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the lightbulb before eventually finding a model which worked

• Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a news anchor and told she "wasn't fit for television"

What we can learn from these examples is that you can change the way you see failure. Or even what you call it. Why not call it an opportunity? An opportunity to refresh, to refocus and become more resilient.

This alternative way of seeing failure is also called having a 'growth mindset'.

When you operate with a growth mindset, you don't allow yourself to be held back by your perceived limitations and abilities (also called having a 'fixed mindset'). Instead, you allow yourself to see failure as an opportunity for growth and development.

It's a much more empowering and confidence-building perspective to go through life with.

So if you do one new thing this week, allow yourself to do it badly! Be brave and have a go at something you've never tried before, and be ready to fail, learn and grow your resilience muscles. You'll soon start to see that this process is all part of your path to career success.