What path ?

As a student, I spent a great deal of time wondering what path I were to choose for my advanced studies. Therefore, for my life career.

Funny, right? The fact that one must choose a single education path on which their entire livelihood will depend on.

And if that person happens to be as undecided as I was, then the moment of the fateful choice will become more and more dreadful.

Such choice is made on a quite young age. I was 16 when I had to make such choice. Too young in my opinion. On top of that, having a gap year wasn’t an option for me.

In order words, that decision was basically an irreversible one for 16-year-old Lorraine. Not to mention that I really enjoyed learning other subjects and disciplines.

So, what way did I choose? What were the bases of my choice?

 

What path did I go for?

The answer is simple. Unbeknownst to myself, I did what a lot of kids in my position would do. I looked around me, and see what profession inspired me.

As children and as people, our inspiration comes first from those that surround us on a daily basis. Our close family. Our parents, for most of us at least.

What professions were my parents exercising? What was their education background? Well… my parents were in law enforcement and engineering.

Now take a guess of what professions I shortlisted. Yeah. You are right. Law and engineering. Long story short, I went for engineering – only after I realized the timing wasn’t right to study law.

But… You may be wondering…

 

What exactly is your point, Lorraine?

And that’s a great question. And I partially answered that question earlier on when I said I looked around me to see what profession inspired me.

It goes deeper than that. How often is it to see children of employees becoming entrepreneurs?! Rare, right? Very rare, actually!

If their parents, teachers, and friends’ parents are employees, it is only natural for them to wish to be employed.

Sometimes, it is even the parent that would encourage their children to become a peer in their own profession. For example, a doctor would wish for his children to take the Hippocratic oath.

The same would apply for lawyers, who’d want their kids to become an officer of a court of law. Same goes for engineers.

When you start children off on the way they should go, they will not turn from it – even when they are old. It is a biblical principle, written in Proverbs chapter 22 verse 6.

This works even when…

 

It is not intentional…

When a parent exercises a profession for their livelihood, sometimes they would not want their children to end up in that same profession.

I witnessed this first-hand. My grandfather, a law enforcement officer, did not want any of his children to end up in the police force. It didn’t stop my parent from doing so.

That same parent did not want me to end up in law enforcement. Ironic, right?! But that’s not the reason I chose engineering. This can be a post for another day 😉.

Anyways, I never really thought of becoming an engineer. Until I felt I had no other option. Why? Because that’s the environment I grew up in. One of admiration, of inspiration and of respect.

An environment that I kind of knew. I was familiar with it. And it was associated with good memories of my childhood. I associated it to respect, inspiration and admiration. In my mind, it was an excellent path!

 

Guess what?!

The same reasoning applies for entrepreneurs. If your child sees one or both of their parents in entrepreneurship, the probability is high for them to end up as entrepreneurs.

I have seen very little people accepting to be employed when their upbringing was done by entrepreneurs.

They would have the same mindset as entrepreneurs. They usually are leaders. Most of the time, working for an employer isn’t fit to them.

I, myself decided to start my entrepreneurial journey as I started chatting more with entrepreneurs. Both in my family circle and friend circle.

There are obviously ups and downs. I will expose them into other posts. But one thing I can say is: it’s the best boat I have ever decided to board on.  

 

What about you? What path did you choose? Was it one far away from your parents? I’d love to read your thoughts and feedback in the comment section.

This post aimed to give you an indication of what path your children may choose. It also aimed to explain why we chose most of our paths. Feel free to comment and share.