You've Got To Start Somewhere..

The following has been copied from my personal notes on Facebook:

Most people around my age or my friends haven't the slightest idea. They are still mostly basking in their dwindling youth, enjoying the day like there's no tomorrow - thanks to the media pumping lie after lie that parties, booze, clubbing, and mindless expenditure are fundamentals of people in this age group. Until they reach the age when they finally graduate, from whatever they are studying, and then they panic. "Oh no, I'm graduating in months and I don't know what I'm going to do."

For some fortunate souls their parents have a gold mine where they can simply dig through when they graduate. They can easily pull strings and land jobs even before they graduate (I'm sure those who know people like that are sniggering hard.) For the majority, the moment you end education is the moment you're thrown into the far end of the pool, and before you know it, you're drowning.

There are those who prefer to bitch, moan and groan, showing their discontent and "why wasn't I ...", and shimmery eyes of envy. Teenage angst is passe, youth discontent with the world is vogue. So they endlessly ignore the deep pit lurking in the front closing in, and continue to discuss their daily rantings and 'mishappenings'. Oh so melodramatic, oh so emotional.

Instead of spending time on such pointless pursuits, I do think it's better off if you start planning for your future. It doesn't differ much if you plan earlier or later than others. The point is to START PLANNING. Rome isn't built in a day, so everyone has to start somewhere.

It's not hard. All you have to do is to have an aim of what you want to achieve eventually. That's your long term goal. Then place a 5/10 year aim that is challenging but achievable. There is no hard and fast rule of what's feasible and what's not. There's no one who knows you better other than yourself.

After all the goals are set in place, you start to jot down what have you done so far to work towards what you want. If this list is empty, it simply means, yeah, you've got to work harder in this field. Since starting out on this journey may be hard, I suggest start by taking small steps.

Of course, before you set your goals, aims and steps to achieve them, you need to know your own strengths and weaknesses. Notice I used the words strengths and weaknesses NOT likes and dislikes. There's a distinction between the two. Knowing yourself is important, I recommend Kaplan's articles on self discovery. Once you are pretty sure of these you can set forth to get your goals aligned.