From the course: Planning Your Career and Your Life

If you can't get the job you want

From the course: Planning Your Career and Your Life

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If you can't get the job you want

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- What if you know what your ideal job is and you can't get in? So, for example, I know somebody who really wants to work for NASA, but unfortunately, he doesn't have a Grade A astrophysics degree, or whatever it is, and he can't get in. So, what does that mean? Does it mean that he can't fulfill his life purpose? Or has he actually not worked out what his real life purpose is? And I'm thinking, if you can't get in to do it, maybe it's not right for you, or you're not right for it. So, maybe it's a sign, maybe it's okay if you can't get into it, maybe you wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway. But it does raise the question, how long should you keep trying? And I think, it depends on how sure you are that it's the right job for you. So, a friend of mine really wanted to be in the Navy, and they rejected him, and he was determined. He applied again, and again, and after several attempts, he finally got in. He was really determined to get in, and he did. So, sometimes, if you persevere, you can get in. But interestingly, once he joined the Navy, there was a war, and he went off to war, and he found it really, really traumatic, as you would do, and as soon as that war was over, he quit the Navy. And he actually decided, once he'd experienced it, that it wasn't the career that he wanted to be in after all. So it was interesting that they rejected him several times, and maybe they were kind of right to have rejected him. And maybe he should've taken that as a sign that it wasn't right for him, I don't know. But what I would say is, get as much information as you can before you massively commit to something. Committing to repeatedly trying to get into the Navy, and then joining it, you know, that is a big commitment, and I think you want to be really sure it's the right job for you before you do that. So, a good plan is to ask other people, and you could have a mastermind group. So, if you really want to do something and you're not managing to it, ask your mastermind group what to do. A mastermind group, by the way, is just a group of positive-minded people, people who you respect, who you meet up with every now and then, and you talk about big subjects. You don't talk about football, or cars, or something like that, and you don't drink loads, you sit down and you seriously talk, perhaps over a meal, you seriously talk about your plans, and you help each other with your plans. And I think that's the type of group of people who you could say, "I want to do this, "but I can't get in. "Do you think I'm suitable for it? "Should I persist? "Or shall I look for something else, or what?" So, I think, setting up a career-based mastermind group could be a really good idea. A final thought is, instead of banging your head against something that you just can't manage to get into, what about finding alternatives, are there other ways to do it? So, suppose that you've always wanted to work with horses, and suppose it's too hard to qualify to be a vet, maybe there's other ways you can do it. Maybe you can work for a horse charity, or maybe you can do some other horse-related job, or spend time with horses in your spare time, and that might be enough for you, and you can do something completely different as a job. Another example, someone I know really, really wanted to join the Air Force, but it turned out he was colorblind, and therefore couldn't join the Air Force. But what he's doing now is he's working on military strategy and research, and he loves that. And maybe that is actually what he was always born to do. So, if you've got a particular dream, what you could do is you could think, "Well, what's the nearest I can get to my dream?" And then you can do that for a bit, and you may find that actually that's fine, or you might find that you can build from there. You could even return to your dream with a bit more experience and knowledge. Maybe my friend who wants to work for NASA could go and do scientific research somewhere else, do that for a while, and then when he's built up some experience and some knowledge, if he still loves it and he's doing well, he could then reapply to NASA. So, if you can't get into your dream, ask yourself whether it's destiny in some way, ask yourself whether it is actually your ideal job, and if it still is, then persevere, work on something similar, and then go back and reapply again later.

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