Where Lies Your Interests?
Regardless of your age or education or work status, I want to help you develop a good mindset for money.
For the record, you can find a way to make money doing just about anything. However, pay for services rendered can vary widely.
For your mental well-being, it is a good thing to reflect on where your interests lie. I chose my career path from a report I did in the 8th grade, where I looked at a book of careers and picked out one of the first ones, Accounting. How lazy was that? I chose a college where they taught accounting. However, I could not get a degree in accounting there. I did not look for where I could get a degree in accounting. How lazy was that? I did not enjoy my classes in accounting. I got a degree in business, with a minor in accounting. I found you can make a living doing accounting for business, but I was never going to get rich doing it. However, it is an important skill to learn. So, do learn about it. It will help you become a better manager of money.
As you can see, I have found that your interests may not always follow your career pursuits. There are tests that you can take that can help you define some of your areas of interests, if contemplating your navel did not do the trick!
How Would I Know?
Keep in mind, this process of learning and knowing more about your personality and what you might want to know more about will take some time.
It is best to start with what you do know and feel about things, as of today. Make some notes.
I am not an expert about testing for interests. So, maybe that should be your first step, to research who is. Search online or at the library for personality and skill tests. Contact career counselors. The Myers and Briggs test was the one I took. It was insightful. However, I was too far along in my career to make the kind of changes that would put me in the field that I would enjoy most. Or so I thought.
Until you do that, I suggest you consider how you feel about some of the boxes people put us in based on our actions or the comments we make in conversations.
Here is a sample list I contrived that you are welcome to change or add to:
- Sports fan of …
- Indoor activities – city places
- Outdoor activities – woods, lakes, farm, etc.
- Live performances
- Talk shows
- Shopping in stores
- Shopping online
- Gaming – Systems or online
- Reading
- Writing
- Driving
- Using tools
- Experiences with animals
- Experiences with people
- Home designs
- Landscapes
- Rivers
- Oceans
- Travel
- Money – do you have any available?
I only offered these to trigger some thoughts. Set some time aside just for thinking. Perhaps, a back table at the library with a window to look out or a bench in a park would work. A quiet place usually works best.
It will take a few sittings, but your subconscious mind will generate some things worth considering.
What If I Did Know?
So, once you have a little better idea of where your interests lie, you will have the basis for some exploratory reading.
In my mind, there is random reading, which is reading out of curiosity, to understand what something is or how it works, or just for entertainment.
Then, there is purposeful reading, much akin to research. And research is the study of a subject you want to know more about to make use of it.
Even as an older person, I wanted to learn something new. So, I researched how to set up a blog and how to manage the process of adding content and photos and publishing online. There is a lot to know. So, now I know a lot more and here we are having a discussion online, if you email a comment to amindsetformoney@gmail.com.
Do It on Purpose
If you find an interest in something, you would do well to take the time, rather, make the time to do some research.
You never know where it may lead. Read about Colonel Sanders (KFC) or Ray Kroc (McDonald’s). They followed an interest, an idea, that lead them to substantial wealth for themselves. Perhaps wealth is not your goal. My real purpose for writing this blog is to give you some direction to find a source of inspiration that will help motivate you to make the effort to learn something that could make a positive change in your life.
If you could find an interest that you can be passionate about, getting up every day would be more enjoyable knowing that you were pursuing an interest and finding a way to make a living doing it. That is motivation!
What if you seek out others who are doing what you want to do? What if they are writing blogs about it or have written a book that you could get for free at the library? Then, of course, if you ask the right questions, you will know more about the process, the training, to becoming proficient in your interest. Being proficient is the first step to becoming an expert, which really means you know more than most about a subject. Just reading about a subject will make you more knowledgeable than most. How easy is that?
I can make no promises, other than, you will be surprised at how much your life can improve by seeking out and researching your interests!