What’s the right direction for you? What career would suit your needs and abilities and help you realize your goals?
What most people focus on when they ask these questions is finding out about careers, getting more information about what’s out there. But before you can make sense of what’s out there, you need to understand yourself.
The details of a job are trivial compared to the importance of knowing who you are, what you can do, and what you want to do.
Cindy Deppe owns one of the last drive-in movie theaters in Pennsylvania. Cindy faces the same pressures that have driven almost everyone else out of the drive-in business. The land is too expensive to use for movies. People don’t want to sit in their cars when they can sit in air-conditioned theaters with reclining seats.
Yet Cindy is still in the business. In fact, she says she’s doing quite well.
Cindy has marketed her theater to attract not only the traditional local family movie crowd, but also the people who live hours away but are nostalgic for the old-time drive-in movie.
One of her friends calls her a master of marketing. Cindy says, “Well, I guess there’s some truth to that, but I couldn’t sell something I didn’t love, and I love this place.”
Those who are indecisive about their career and long-term plans are 66 percent less likely to feel that they understand their own identity.
Guerra and Braungart-Rieker 1999