5 Unfortunate Things People Are Reluctant To Tell You About Working In The Real World

1. You might not get it right the first time

One of my mentors once told me, “Making the decision to move from one career to another doesn’t necessarily make you an uncommitted person.” If you find yourself wanting to venture into another career even if you’ve already spent a couple of years in your current one, go ahead. It’s normal for people to not get it right the first time, or have it all figured out all at once. Of course, don’t use this as an excuse to jump ship or haphazardly make decisions in your life. Just be well aware that it’s not always about tailor-fitting yourself to suit the career you’ve already chosen, but about pursuing a calling that calls out to you just as you are. And just as that old adage goes – you’ll never really know unless you try.

2. You have to operate according to your strengths

We all want a job that can help us grow both as a professional and as an individual. And that’s great. But you have to make sure that for the most part, the work that you do allows you to effectively utilize your skill set, and cause you to operate according to your strengths. If you are in a work that only highlights all that you are not, it’s probably not worth it, no matter how prestigious or financially rewarding it may seem. Believe me, it will consume you full and whole. It will cause you to be perpetually insecure and forever blinded by your weaknesses. You will slowly lose sight of who you are, of your true potential, and of the kind of brilliant stuff you’re actually made of.

3. Most days you will feel that you are not enough

And even if you absolutely love what you’re doing, there will still be days when you’d feel that you’re not enough, especially if you’re working with driven, competitive, and highly talented people. That’s okay. In fact, you should surround yourself with such people. Doing so will, on one hand, pave the way for multiple opportunities for you to grow. On the other hand however, doing so will most likely cause you to be overwhelmed by this seemingly abysmal void between who you are and who you want to be. Don’t be disheartened. Instead, take deliberate steps to close that gap. If you’re not who you want to be just yet, keep going and going and going, until you finally are.

4. The world is not as unforgiving as you think

You will catch yourself thinking about how the world is such an unforgiving place –how it can use just a single word to make you doubt everything that you know about yourself, how a little mistake can give you countless blows into the gut –the kind that just would not abate. But the truth is, people are much quicker to forgive and move on than you would actually allow yourself to believe. The fact that you are the one replaying in your head the day’s blunders, desperately figuring out how what went wrong went wrong, the fact that you are the one constantly and persistently on the look out for your next mistake, makes you, frankly, the more unforgiving one. Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s only when you make mistakes that you can truly learn.

5. It’s bound to get boring

Day in and day out, it’s same old same old – yes, it’s bound to get really, really boring. But you have to understand that you weren’t made for the humdrum life. So don’t wallow in it no matter how convenient or comfortable it seems. Don’t get stuck in it, catch yourself even before falling into the trap of just going through the motions. Every one of us has that innate predisposition to seek excitement and thrill when things are going stale. Not many of us however, respond to it. So all the routine, all the monotony – that’s not the culprit here. It’s our laziness to go seize the day, to respond to that desire to seek out excitement and thrill, to deliberately infuse the day with things that can make it very different even if it’s exactly the same as the day before.