Diverse Career Paths and Things You May Encounter Along the Way

Kurt Tyler, Kurt Tyler, Kurt Tyler

• Publisher: Kurt Tyler
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780999404331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Counseling in Career Development

This book was written for students who are preparing for their future, and for adults currently in the early stage of their career who: 1) are still trying to decide what they really want to do, 2) believe they need more information before they can feel comfortable making their next career decisions, or 3) would just like some meaningful guidance that can help them develop their career plans. This book is a compilation of over thirty years of actual diverse experiences and lessons learned that can help the reader answer critical questions, enlightening them of risks and hidden workplace related challenges, stimulate forward thinking, confidence, individual plan development, and the innovative qualities needed to recover from mistakes, increase viability, and to be in position to Do Your Own Thing. Diverse Career Paths is a game changing book focused on providing the reader with a wide set of tools and knowledge, far beyond what is taught in classrooms. Anyone without this information could find they are consistently vulnerable to risks that are manageable. Diverse Career Path helps the reader identify opportunities that can lead to entrepreneurship and brings attention to emerging careers currently on the horizon where training is ramping up and the job lines are still short. Diverse Career Paths helps the reader to gain self-awareness of their subtle financial profile, morale compass, personal success criteria, and provides suggestions for managing work related stress. Diverse Career Paths heightens the reader’s awareness of external impacts, evolving market needs, evolving customer expectations, and global indicators that can alert you when you’ll probably need to make adjustments to your career path. Diverse Career Paths introduces adaptable plans, recommendations, innovative solutions, approaches, concepts, strategies and calls out some pitfalls associated with work environments.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Greetings, everyone. I hope you are well and have started your journey toward working on creating an environment where you will be able to live in some semblance of enjoyment and happiness.

I’ve written this book to give back, with the hope that it can facilitate some long-lasting blessings for you, your family and your friends.

I invite you to read with an expectation that you will need to mentally process, apply your own reasoning, and not blindly accept everything I've written without challenge; but instead, be consistently aware of the need to filter according to your unique situation, and consider any contemporary issues, practices or policies of the day, along with any experiences that might be an influence on you. You will need to ponder, debate, and challenge what I present to you with the hope that you will discover some value from the message and adjust as needed so that it can best apply for you. In this case, selective cherry-picking is in order.

I hope you will be able to take on a mindset where you can visualize us having a casual conversation where I’m sitting at a table across from you, with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, and we are about to talk about a whole variety of career-related stuff. In this conversation, I’ll share with you some of my actual experiences, some of which where I was the participant, while others I was fortunate to have observed events, like a fly on the wall. More importantly, I’m interested in what is your perspective and point of view. What are you concerned with or thinking about? What challenges or questions you might be trying to figure out. And so, in my writings, hopefully you will notice that I’m trying to answer some questions which I think you might have. And that empathetic perspective is the result of me having similar questions at some point while moving along my own career path.

But let’s be real: I’m not God, and would never profess to be. But I believe the Spirit is in me, and so, I’m confident that I will be able to answer some of your questions, but not all. But I can tell you, as I write, I’m thinking about the curiosity I had when I first began on my path (a path I’m still on at the time of this writing) and the curiosity I still have. And so, I’m thinking empathetically, and will be sharing with you my consciousness that allowed me to navigate boldly along my path with the confidence instilled from my parents, faith from my beliefs, and conviction resulting from having goals and plans I had thought out and believed in. My faith and curiosity helped me discover priceless gems of knowledge and uncover various obstructive strategies planted upon an ever-changing game board where I plotted my career path. I hope you noticed the game board analogy because it’s game time; it’s on, and you are in it. I truly believe by having a mental visualization of your career planning and strategies as being a FUN game, may, be just the mindset that will enhance your strategic thinking. Make it fun, not work.

Earlier I mentioned that I wrote this book to give-back with the hope that it can facilitate some long-lasting blessings for you, your family and your friends. My belief is by sharing good things from my heart, they will in turn bring forth good things for you. My expectation is there will be something that hits home and you will then be a wiser individual to manifest additional good things, which I hope one day, you too will give back.

I hope you can put on the lens that you will gain some wisdom by seeing, through reading about some of my mistakes, or from becoming aware of information I will share which comes from the book of “If Only I Knew Then, What I Know Now.”

So, I’m going to share with you many experiences so you will know in advance, well before you actually encounter the issue. In doing so, you can have the benefit of pre-planning multiple chess match moves or basketball drives to the hoop, and have the capacity to develop your own proposed solutions to something yet to come. And in the event the situation gets real, you can then finalize a valid solution based on the exact details of the challenge you are facing.

As mentioned, this book includes a combination of actual experiences, lessons I learned as a result of roadblocks I encountered and had to figure ways to overcome the impediment in my way, and I’ve also included some experiences I observed or witnessed from a third-party perspective, like that proverbial fly on the wall, or like a ghost floating above the fray just observing without being noticed.

For me, the third-party observations helped me to realize, and have validation that some experiences were not unique to me, but others were actually going through similar experiences. But often the missed “teaching moment” is that so many choose not to discuss or expose their embarrassing moments, except to their close friends and trusted confidants. Well, in this book, I will share with you some of those experiences, some of which will stir up the emotions of some, because of me exposing some areas that some may want to remain untold. For comfort, I’ve decided not to identify parties that may or may not have been involved. I will neither confirm or nor deny, since in some cases you may think I am talking about you; but how could that be?

I decided to bring to light both the positive and negative scenarios. They will be available for you to think about and possibly use to obtain your own validations by retaining what I’ve pointed out, and then thinking if it is similar to what you are tussling with, or has been on your mind.

Also along the way I will offer a few, no actually a lot of recommendations for you to consider. Keep in mind that I’m sitting across the table from you, not as a sibling or parent, but as a concerned friend who has no value in judging you, but can only offer humble recommendations based on the little bit of information you’ve shared with me over a glass of wine. (Right?) I really don’t know what’s your favorite drink, strong, social, or cordial, so I need to stay mindful of not really knowing you that well, and not having a lifetime of interactions I can refer back to and say, “You know, I’ve seen you do that before.” None of that has been shared so please realize that this is a purely objective discussion where I can only rely on my own experiences, influences, values, principles, and beliefs. All of which I’m comfortable having a respectful conversation and open to acknowledging that we might and probably will disagree on some points, the same as what actually happens with my close friends and family, who have their own perspectives. And believe me; I already know that I will hear from them all. So why should you be any different? Let’s agree to disagree; but where we agree, let’s work together.

I encourage you to challenge what I recommend, to ask yourself if my recommendation makes sense to you, or if there is a better path that fits your unique goals or situation. Either way should make you stronger, which is one of my goals. And if you can derive a better way, then you will be empowered with wisdom, without having to wait for the actual experience to smack you in the head, but be in the driver’s seat. Being able to perceive the situation before it can impact you. And, if one day you find, “Wow, I’ve seen this before,” or “I know this picture, and I know what I’m going to do here,” then once again, the blessing is revealed, this time through you, and just for you. If and when that happens, and I believe it will, then you will have validation of the blessing upon you. If not, oops, sorry; I tried. But I would however suggest you hold on to this book, since the blessing may not be realized until the perfect time for you to use it. Sometimes it goes like that. But strong faith is what gets you there.

So, let’s get started. I’d like to start with a visualization to get your mind stimulated on what at times, I would like for you to be able to see my situation as though it was yours, or as though you were the third-party, watching and thinking. I hope you will refer back to this and recall this first telepathic teleportation. Also, now would be my first recommendation to take a sip of whatever you have on the table in front of you. Here we goooo-oh!

Empathetic “Wake-Up” Scenario:

Imagine you are lying in bed, your head sunk deep into the comfort of your soft pillow when suddenly you begin to hear a ringing in your ear. You are slowly awakened by the sound of the wake-up alarm on your cell phone which you placed next to your bed, as one of the last tasks you completed yesterday, before jumping in bed. But now, once again, it’s time to get up; it’s the start o...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Purpose
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Needs and Character Types
• Chapter 3: What’s in it For Me? What Job Options Do I Have?
• Chapter 4: What’s the Point?
• Chapter 5: World Cultures
• Chapter 6: Know Your Own Core Values and Moral Compass
• Chapter 7: Your Value, Salary, and Income
• Chapter 8: Career Market Indicators
• Chapter 9: Search Approaches for Finding a Job
• Chapter 10: Adversaries in the Shadows
• Chapter 11: Be Good to Yourself, Along the Way to Success
• Chapter 12: The Dead-End Job Blues
• Chapter 13: The Rules of Discrimination
• Chapter 14: A Look into Being a Team Player
• Chapter 15: Social Responsibility
• Chapter 16: Preparing Your Stand Against the Face of Deception and Avoiding the Five Major Risks
• Chapter 17: Conviction, Strong Faith, and Confidence
• Chapter 18: The Blame Game
• Chapter 19: Increasing Your Odds of Having a Successful Career
• Chapter 20: Acknowledge Those Who Help You, Your Business and Your Career
• Chapter 21: Leap of Faith
• Chapter 22: Perspective
• Appendix: Summary of Recommendations; Sample Career Theme