Scott Schimmel (00:03.15)
How do you help a young person not make mistakes with their future? So kids are always asked, what do you want to do when you grow up? Who do you want to be? That kind of like open-ended question about their career plans typically. And I've asked kids that for 20 years. And I was a kid before that. I was asked that countless times. And rarely do I ever hear a real thoughtful answer. Rarely ever. If I could go back in time.
with the answer that I was told by a kid who was 18 or 19 or 15, if I were to project that now where they are today, what are the odds that the 15-year-old nailed it? I think the rare exception is probably teacher. I want to be a teacher. I'm going to be a teacher. Maybe doctor. Maybe attorney. But honestly, the only one that really stands out to me is the people, the young people that want to become teachers and end up going to do it. Everyone else is either making it up
or figuring it out. And if the folks at Gallup are right, most people get it wrong. Most people end up, when it comes to their career, which affects the entire part of their lives, would say that they're disengaged, discouraged, not motivated, unfulfilled in the work that they do. In other words, they chose poorly. That question that goes back to when they're young, what do you wanna do? Who do you wanna be?
They were not given the opportunity to answer that question in a real big way. So we're going to go through a series to talk about the nine, actually more than that, the mistakes that young people make when they are trying to figure out that question, they're trying to go about the process to answer it. And this might be something, these short episodes, the articles going along with it might be perfect for you to share with the kids or students in your life. The first one is this. One of the biggest mistakes young people make is listening to external voices.
external voices, other people's opinions about who they are and what they should do. And typically that sounds like a parent who gives input, pretty deliberate input about, let's say, where the jobs are or what you need to do is. And here's the warning, here's the warning up front. Research has proven that people who are pursuing goals that are not concordant, not aligned to the inside of who they are,
Scott Schimmel (02:29.09)
their values, their desires, their ambitions, their personality traits. If somebody feels, perceives as though the goals that they're pursuing, the life that they're pursuing belongs to someone else, they will not only be less fulfilled, but also less successful. They will not achieve as much. So even if your parents are listening and they have pretty clear expectations or ideas about what you should do, you should share this with them and say, really?
Because the research shows if you tell me what to do and I follow you, follow your direction, follow your advice, then the odds of me having a happy successful life goes down. That's fact. So listening to external voices is the number one mistake that people make when it comes to making decisions about what they do, where they go, and how they choose to live their lives. There's this whole theory called the perceived locus of control and it's an introspective process.
to try to get a sense, maybe on a scale, let's say one to seven, one to 10, of the goals that you're pursuing as it relates to your academics or your career, that you would say, you would sense that there's some external pressure there. There's people's expectations of you. There are other people watching. It's responsibility, it's duty, it's obligation. You're trying to be loyal. You're trying to be considerate. You're trying to be grateful.
anything that comes from the outside externally from you. You need to be careful of, cautious of. Now, it doesn't mean that you doing the internal exploration of who you are and what's that's what we're going to get into in future episodes. How do you do that? It doesn't mean that you're going to go on a different path per se. You actually might end up on the same path, but you'll be doing it driven from something that's on the inside. So here are some ways to kind of process.
and figure out for yourself, am I listening? Am I tempted to listen to external voices? Here's the question, whose voice is loudest to you in your head? When either one of two things happens, either you experience some success, like you got a great grade on a midterm paper project, you scored the touchdown, you got the job. When you have success, whose voice is loudest to you? Whose approval means the most to you?
Scott Schimmel (04:58.818)
Take careful note. And on the contrary, when you experience failure, you didn't get the grade you wanted. You didn't make the shot. You didn't get the job or the promotion. You didn't get what you thought you were gonna get. Whose voice are you worried to hear? Those two sides is helpful in distilling if you have external voices that are raining loud in your ears.
It doesn't mean they're bad voices, doesn't mean that their voices need to shun. In fact, what we'll get into in future episodes is how to invite people to give their feedback about you, but done in such a way that's productive, not distracting. So, number one mistake young people make about their future is listening to external voices, it will not go well for you. It just won't, or as well as it could have, if you have learned to listen to your inner voice. Scott Schimel here.
another episode of the U School Podcast. See you soon.
