If you look around you, probably many of the…

If you look around you, probably many of the people that you are looking at go in a similar direction. They may go into the nursing home business, they may go into accounting field, etc. To what extent do people do these things because they are following somebody else or to what extent are they doing it for themselves. I am sure that a lot of these people will wake up one day 10 or 20 or 30 years from now and look around and say oh, this is not really what I wanted to do. Everyone should try to create for themselves a goal or a destiny or a definition of what it is that excites them or you intellectually and emotionally, and what kind of skills and values and aptitudes do you have that would fit with these interests and exciting things. You still might end up being a lawyer or an accountant or a nursing home administrator. But at least you're doing it with enjoyment. Create for yourself a list of potential paths that you can take and put each one of those paths on a piece of paper or a card and then think about what would happen if you went on in that direction or if you went in a different direction. You can still end up going in the first direction but at least you have given yourself the opportunity to explore. You do not have to do this only at the beginning of your path. You can stop anytime in the middle and do it again. Anytime that you have big questions. Create options for yourself and evaluate them carefully.

— from Leadership & Business (Leadership/Business)

In the book

Don't be entitled about it. And don't wake up at fifty in a career you chose because everyone around you was walking that way — create your own options, lay them out, and pick the path that excites the real you. I got where I did partly on a plain, stubborn drive to make it on my own — call it a dream, call it a need to prove myself — and partly because I paid attention at the turning points, since the most important lessons of a life rarely come on the smooth stretches; they come at the inflection points that could have sent you somewhere else entirely. — Leadership & Business (Leadership/Business)

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