Career Wisdom for Christian Youths
Synopsis
“A guide for youngsters who would dominate the future…” – BOOKAUSE REVIEW
This book guides the young Christian reader through a pathway of excelling in any chosen career by rightfully applying Christian endowed virtues that set one apart. It teaches how to take advantage of a friendship with the Holy Spirit to stand out where others falter. It teaches how to identify and grow natural talents as well as the principles of building a profitable career that lasts.
This is a book to gift any young person you love and want to see prosper in career and life.
INTRODUCTION
If you are young and believe in Christ, then this is your book.
Welcome. It doesn’t matter how you got this book, whether it was a gift, or you bought it yourself or you picked it up from your friend. If this book is in your hands right now and you’re reading it, sit tight and read to the end, you have been divinely set up for a life changing enlightenment.
The things you are about to learn in this book have the ability to set you up for the rest of your life. Ten years from now, you will realize the things you read in this book has put you on a high ground in your career in ways you never thought was possible.
This book is about showing you the core wisdom around building a successful career out of any kind of talent you may have. It sets off by explaining what talents are and how you can identify and develop your talents. We also look into how to make the most of your life as a believer to stand out in your field.
You will learn how to build a career and how to stay on top of your industry. Ultimately, the point of this book is to show the young Christian what astounding advantage you have and why you shouldn’t suffer in same way people who don’t have the Holy Spirit do. The aim is to make a champion of you such that God will be glorified in your life.
Just in case you are not born again, I will like to get you through the door so that you can enjoy this book and be equally blessed.
It is quite simple to be born again. All you need to do is believe that Christ was sent by God to die for your sins. He died and was resurrected on the third day by God. He ascended to the heavens and sits on God’s right hand, interceding for you and me. Because of this, all your sins are forgiven, and you are now a child of God. If you believe this in your heart and confess it with your mouth, then you are saved. You are now born again.
Please say this short prayer of salvation.
Dear God of heaven. The Jehovah Elohim. I come to you as a sinner, seeking your forgiveness. I believe you sent Christ to pay the price for my sins. I ask that you accept me into your kingdom as a son. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and personal saviour and pray for your Holy Spirit to come inside me forever. Thank you for the salvation of my soul. Amen.
That is it.
Now let’s get this party started.
UNDERSTANDING GIFTS/TALENTS
What are Talents?
Talents or Gifts are abilities that might come naturally to you but isn’t common to everyone. These abilities by nature are useful in meeting important human needs. What this means is that your talent is anything you are able to do that has any usefulness to humanity.
It could be a physical, mental or intellectual enablement. It could be something you can do by using your body or something that applies your mind. To bring this home, it could be an ability to run fast, talk funny or analyze information quickly. Whichever it is, your talent first and foremost comes more natural to you than is regular. I think this is what defines an ability as a talent.
Nature or Nurture?
There’s a question about whether talents are by nature endowed on us or they have to be nurtured or acquired. I think it’s both. First, we would normally notice a certain ability in its raw form such that it propels us to believe we could do some tasks easily in ways others can’t. However, talents at that form are no good value until you acquire some training to enhance, refine and sharpen the talents into skills. This is to say, training or education is what transforms a set of talents into a utilizable skill.
Let’s say for instance you notice you have a flair for numbers. You would then need to be thought the basic principles of accounting to be able to translate that into accounting skills or financial analytical skills. Your numbers talent could be coupled with a great sense of space and dimensions. With training, you can make out civil engineering skills from these. Your talent could be a keen sense of tunes and sounds; with the right training on sound engineering, you can then acquire a music production skill. I can go on and on about what training can convert what talent into what skill. From acting to astronomy and a thousand other kind of skills.
What is important here is that you understand that your talent needs training for it to become useful. This training doesn’t come easy. This is where the hard work begins. And it doesn’t end here. Talents are no good without training and even after that, the acquired skill is still less than half baked until you practice and practice to sharpen it and bring it to a level it can really stand out.
Practice is perhaps more vital than training when it comes to building skills from talents. I say this because some talents need minimal training to develop into a skill, but all talents need tones of practice. Take writing for instance. Your writing skills most probably comes from a talent for describing, narrating or explaining things with words in such a way that paints a perfect and exciting picture. This is developed by basic literacy training in the chosen language. This is something a foundational education can get you. The real hard work of becoming a writer seasoned enough to stand out will be practice. You need to get on writing like mad. Write anything and everything that you’re inspired to write and half of those you’re not inspired to write. What I’m saying is, just keep writing. With each material you write, you get better than you were before. You get more experience and consequently, more confidence.
The secret of success in any skill lies in the hard work of practice. Every sports person knows this. It doesn’t matter how much a talented footballer you are, if you are lazy with practice and training, an untalented footballer who puts loads of efforts in practice will outperform you. Then you ask, what then is the use of talent if one without the talent can excel more than the talented?
With talent, the workload demand for training and practice is less than when talent is absent. It takes more effort to acquire a skill you’re not talented on. Say for instance, if you have a voice talent, your path to becoming a skilled singer is easier. With a little training on music, or simply by listening to other musicians sing, you might be ready to sing like a star. However, if I have no voice talent, if I sound like a creaking door in winter and yet really have the desire to be a professional singer, I could enroll for voice training classes. I could start some music lessons. I would then commit to months or even years of training and practice. Eventually, if I don’t break or give up, I will eventually be able to sing like the very best singers ever and no one could tell I use to sound like a china shop in an earthquake.
Here, what took you a few weeks of training or some passive subconscious learning has taken me years but when I’m done you wouldn’t sing any better than me. If you with your loads of raw talent do not work any harder to practice as often as you should, I might even end up a better singer.
I believe it is this way so that everyone can truly be anything they want to be irrespective of their natural talent. God is keen about everyone having a free will to choose in life. It is important to him that every human is able to decide for themselves what they want in life. A liberty to choose a path in life such that no one is forced to be what they are not happy to be. For this reason, everyone has the ability to learn new skills irrespective of whether they are naturally talented about it or not.
Why did God give talents?
First, we establish that talents come from God and only from him. At the point a person is being formed, God endows them with talents. Here we will look at why he does this.
FOR EQUALITY: All man is created equal, right? Yes. We are all made equal. The reason this it is so is because we are all equally talented. No one on Earth is with no talent. No one on Earth is more talented than the other person. We are talented differently but not unequally. The size of your singing talent is same with the size of my writing talent. Where we differ is at the level of development we have invested into our talents. But from the start, we have equal talents.
FOR US ALL TO BE USEFUL: Mankind has a massive responsibility on Earth and God knows we need certain talents to make it work. He wants us all to be useful in the work of replenishing the earth as well as advancing the kingdom of God. For this reason, he gave talents to help.
FOR GUIDANCE: while God wants us to become whatever we wish to become in life, it would be a lot confusing for us if we are left to figure it all out by ourselves. God gives us talents to help guide us towards what we should choose to be. Our talents point us to what we should do with our lives. It’s still up to us to decide if we want to go that direction but it helps a great deal that we have something to suggest a path that is already made easier to travel by divine design.
BECAUSE WE’RE IN HIS IMAGE AND LIKENESS: when God said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” he meant it in every way. God is the headquarters of all talents imaginable, and man wouldn’t really be said to be in His image and likeness of he isn’t endowed with talents. Being in God’s image means to look like him. This means having an endowment of His physical talents. And to be in His likeness means to behave like him. This means having his mental and intellectual talents. Ultimately, being in God’s image and likeness means having an inherent usefulness to our environment on earth as God is to His heavenly environment. Usefulness requires talents to be made into skills. Hence, God gives us talents so as to be really like him.
What Is Your Talent?
This is a pressing question every young person eventually gets to ask at some point. It might seem like it should be obvious what a person’s talents are but for some of us young people, it isn’t that simple. Sometimes, you know you have a talent to draw right from your childhood. You just know it. When you pick up a pencil, it just flows. You don’t even know how you do it. You just seem to know how to replicate an image in your head on paper with ease. So, if you’re woken from sleep in the middle of the night and asked what your talent is, you won’t think it twice. You just know.
For some of us, it’s not that easy to tell. This is because some talents are not obvious. Some are yet hidden. Some talents are not straightforward to understand. Say for instance someone who has a talent for mimicking actions or voices which can then be groomed into acting skills. You could be going on with life without spotting this talent. You could think it’s just how it is with everyone. You could go way into your late adulthood before you notice it as a special talent.
Besides, there are talents that one would possess but might never find the opportunity to discover them. This brings us to the question of, how can you identify your talents?
WHAT COMES EASY THAN USUAL: this is the easiest way to tell you’re talented in a thing. You would need to closely have a personal assessment and observation. You need to be self-aware to discover this. What are those things you can do with your body that not everyone can? Our bodies are made in special ways such that by virtue of generics, some of us possess attributes that are rare. For instance, some can twist their tongues while a vast majority of us can’t. In this same way, there is uniqueness noticeable in other parts of your boy that might make it easier for you to be an athlete for instance. Or make you become an astronaut easier than the average person. Perhaps your body can adjust to lower atmospheric pressure than is common or something else. You have to be attentive to your body to notice things like this.
Then there are internal observations too. Try to understand how you think and process information. There might be something unique about it. It could even be that you find you are able to interpret people’s emotions just by reading their facial expressions in finer ways than is usual. This is a rare talent that can be developed into investigative skills. The point is to be closely intuitive about yourself such that you notice things that are special about you.
You could discover you find it easy to find directions when in a new city. That is a keen talent in space consciousness. It means your brain maintains an acute sense of positioning. You could develop this into piloting skills.
WHAT OTHERS SEEK YOUR HELP ON: often times, people around us notice things about us that we might not notice. Often times, people seek your help for something they noticed you’re better at. This is a way to tell that you’re better at something than the average person especially when you have never gotten any proper training on that particular task. You could notice people often come to you for help in finding something they had misplaced even when you didn’t have any prior knowledge of the whereabouts of that missing item. Consider how successful you have been with these tasks in the past. If you have done pretty well, it could mean you have a talent for investigation.
Be sure you don’t take these things for granted. Don’t just think, well, what’s the big deal. Everything is the big deal with talents. It could be the difference between struggling in a career and having an explosive career.
It’s not a bad idea to even go as far as asking people what they think you’re talented in. More than we know it, people close to us observe us and gather many accurate deductions about our personalities.
PRAY: in addition to these, and perhaps most importantly, pray about what your talents are. God can reveal it to you if you pray and pay attention. As a young Christian, life is way easier if you pray about things often. In everything, including this, pray.
Passion and Talent
As a young person, it’s vital to identify what you’re passionate about. It’s important to follow your passions too. Passions have a way of energizing one along their pursuits in life. However, it is important to note that passion isn’t the same as talents. You can be passionate about something you have absolutely no talent in. In this instance, passion, if strong enough would drive the grit and hard work needed to surmount the hurdle presented by a lack of talent.
It is however critical to note something about passion. It is in often cases ephemeral. You might be fiercely passionate about a thing today and completely lose the passion tomorrow. This is common especially among young people. As a youth, you’re in a quickly changing phase of your life where lots of facts about you are changing. As your physical body is undergoing so many changes, so are your interests and desires in life. The things you use to like to the point of thinking you can never live without it will only in a few months or years down the road seem ridiculous to you. The kind of people you think are cool and worth socializing with might seize to interest you by this time next year. This same phenomenon happens with your passions. You might be passionate about being a Lawyer right now and think it’s law or nothing. In the coming months or years after a few experiences and clearer understanding of certain situations, you might realize you don’t really love the law profession anymore.
The reason I’m explaining this to you is so that you would thread with caution when rushing into a path purely on the basis of your current passion. Passion is amazing. It’s awesome. But it can be temporal and the last thing you want is to run out of steam in the middle of the road.
Conversely, you can have a talent but lack the passion to pursue it. This is totally fine. I would advise you stick to what you are passionate about so long you are prepared to see it to the end even when your passion dwindles. Why? In the absence of passion, you might not be able to muster enough drive to even acquire the training needed to develop the talent into a useful skill, let alone put in the work to practice.
The best situation to wish for any way is to be talented in areas we are passionate about. The combination of these two creates an unstoppable force.
Being multi-talented
This is something we all hear many people say about themselves or other people they admire. This makes it sound like a select people on Earth happen to have multiple talents while the rest of us just have one single talent. This is not the case. Every person is multi-talented. God doesn’t only just give a single talent to people. Talents typically come in bundles. One would naturally have a collection of talents which when you look closer at them you can spot a pattern that enables the possessor to accomplish a major life feat.
You will find that among all the different talents you have discovered you possess, one or two will stand out to be stronger or more prominent. These would most likely be the ones you have applied the most either by unwitting chance or by them finding more chances to be expressed by virtue of the uniqueness of your environment or access.
The bottom line is talents will get stronger with use. The question is, which of your many talents are you choosing to use more often than the others.
Your Career Choice and Talents
Now that we have established that we all are multi-talented, we have to confront the question of, how do we not get confused about them all.
To work out a career path at your young age, you would need to be strategic about which set of talents to focus on and get trainings which would make them into a useful skill on which in turn you can build a viable career. This segment is about helping you decide which of your many talents to build a career on.
So, let’s say you have now identified a core talent or set of talents that combine well in that they complement each other. This is what you need to begin to consider a career. Some talents complement others well such that you can clearly see which profession or career they point to.
Take for instance someone who identifies they have a talent for drawing. They also have a good sense of angles and dimensions. Now imagine they also have a talent for numbers. These are three talents that come together pretty perfectly to make an amazing architect.
So, you have to think about the varied set of identified talents in you that complement to give a solid career.
Remember what we said about passion. You now need to consider what your passion level for this career direction is. Do you see yourself going through all the tough periods of training and practice that will mold you into an expert in this field?
To help us get this passion thing a tad clearer, think about where you see yourself in society as a full adult. What kind of person do you wish to be? Think about the world around you and your place in it. What are the problems in your world that bothers you the most? These are most likely the problems you are equipped to solve. Yes. You have to view your career decision from the problem-solving perspective. The world we live in is run on solutions. Your value to the world is just as big as the solutions you’re able to bring into it.
For this reason, think of your career choice as one with the sole purpose of solving a problem in the world. We would discuss this in deeper details when we talk about money in a few chapters ahead.
