Follow Your Dreams Is The Craziest Career Advice Anyone Can Receive!

Follow Your Dreams Is the Craziest Career Advice Anyone Can Receive!
Before I start, I want to define the difference between "Follow your dreams” and "Pursuing an Interest." There's a world of difference between the two. A dream, by definition, is called a dream because it is generally assumed that it is not easily attained. The reason it cannot be attained is demonstrated by the fact that very few people attain it. On the the other hand, pursuing an interest is something that everybody can do. So you're not following a dream when you go to college to learn to become a nurse. Most people have the capacity to become a nurse. Yes, you have to do some work to become a nurse and some people drop out. However, it is hardly an unattainable dream. On the other hand, wanting to become world famous opera singer with the type of voice that is rarely heard, if one has been born tone death and is dumb, is hardly feasible. Yes, this is an extreme example, but you get the gist of what I'm saying. "Following your Dreams" is the craziest career advice anyone can receive.

Standard Cliched Advice
"Follow Your Passions" and "Follow Your Dreams" are both standard career advice cliches. The people who give it to you are intellectually lazy and, to quite a large extent, ignorant. One of the evolutionary long standards in life is wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to have foresight and to deduce the outcomes of an action before one takes an action. So I want to run some scenarios by you.

Wisdom - the Foresight to Determine Outcomes from Possible Actions
Bearing in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, just because one person did something absolutely remarkable does not mean that everybody can. If Little Joe wants to be an astronaut, the fact that he is one armed, is immediately going to make that an improbable dream. Note that I say improbable not impossible. Douglas Bader, the WWII ace pilot lost his leg and still continued to fly. However, he was already a pilot before he flew. Every situation has a unique set of circumstances, and as Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, says, it is the specific set of circumstances in the environment that determines success. A young boy growing up HIV positive in central Africa without any sort of education or resources has absolutely no chance of becoming a pilot for Boeing. The resources and circumstances mitigate against it.

Reality is in Conflict With Dreams and Grand Passions
While following your dreams may sound wonderful career advice, the real question is, will your dream or your passion earn you a steady income from day one? For most people, that's not going to happen. Right now, we have a good three years of graduates who have a bucket full of student debt and no jobs. What is even more interesting is a rant I read by one of them. He had a point. He said something to the extent that all his life his parents had said to him, "Go to college. You don't want to be serving pizza." So he went to college, got a four year degree, $80,000 in debt, can't find a job, and now everybody is telling him he is a lazy and entitled because he doesn't want to serve pizza.

The Economy and Ratio of Jobs
Ever heard the saying, "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians?" I'm not sure if the idiom has gone out of favor because it's politically unacceptable but what it means is that a community cannot function if everybody wants to be the leader. There have to be followers as well. In the job market, nobody 'dreams' of become a trash collector anymore than people dream of becoming a scullery maid. If you tell people to follow their dreams, most people will be inclined to follow the thing that is unreachable and unlikely. I'm not saying that a few won't reach it, but just because a few reach it, doesn't mean that everybody can.

Why Some DO Attain their Dreams - Despite Opposition
The latest National Geographic (December) has a ground breaking article on twins. Once more, the evidence is overwhelming. Talent, intelligence, and ability are inherited traits. They are not environmental and they are not the result of education. In addition, there is now evidence that most of the psychological profile is hereditary as well. In other words, when people reach their dreams, they are often uniquely suited to reach those dreams, and that means that someone who does not have that biology, regardless of how hard they try, cannot. Of course, that is a political incorrect statement. When people have been reared for two generations believing that they can have and do anything they want because everybody has the capacity to do anything, it's bound to ruffle feathers. It's also going to make people who have made those dreams their priority crash hard. That's reality for you.

Talent is Rare
Real talent is recognized long before you turn ten years old. If you didn't grow up hearing strangers say to you, "you've got a fabulous voice," "you're an amazing dancer," "Wow, you're incredibly talented as an artist," please believe me, you do not have the talent. I'm not talking about teachers who are trying to encourage you because they believe that if you have high self esteem, it will magically translate into talent. It doesn't. (The National Geographic study about twins, thankfully, finally dispels that politically correct myth.) What I'm talking about is a litany of strangers telling you from very young that you have incredible talent. They see you on stage at school and they seek you out and fall over you. You're either born with the kind of talent that makes one a world class contender or you aren't. And most people aren't.

That said, once someone has the necessary talent to achieve a rare goal, the resources to achieve those goals need to be in place. A musical genius who isn't given the opportunity to develop his potential because he lives in a country where it's not possible is not going to get there. On the other hand, a musical genius growing up in an upper middle class family with extraneous resources to invest in the education of their prodigy is definitely going to get there.

So to tell someone that everybody should follow their dreams (that which is unattainable for most) is the worst possible career advice one can give to someone. In fact, I would say that it can ruin lives. No doubt there are a lot of graduates out there right now waiting tables and wondering why they have an $100,000 student debt when it's suddenly become apparent to them that while they dreamed of becoming a news anchor on CNN, CNN has absolutely no interest in them and never would have.

Of course, die hard dreamers will say something like "You can't say that. Lots of people have been told that they can't do something and achieved phenomenal success." Let me correct that. A few people have been told they can't do something and have achieved phenomenal success. For the most part, however, a lot of people have been told that they can do something and then find that they can't. The nation wide number of unemployed graduates testifies to that.

The evidence shows that very few people reach unattainable dreams. Therefore, to actively encourage everybody to follow their dreams in not only misleading but downright stupid.

Incidentally...
Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with not having a world class talent. Most people live perfectly happy lives without it. And having that kind of talent often comes with unbearable burdens.

Time To Question
It's high time to question the wisdom of the cliched advice to follow one's dreams and passions. The better advice is to check if one's interests can generate a wage and then to pursue one's interests. One is happier working when one is doing something one is interested in

A Better Solution
So what kind of career advice is good solid career advice. Here are some insights that I've read through the years.

• Pick a trade. Trades are more recession proof than the professions. And there are a lot of rich tradesmen about. Plumbers make a fortune.
• Buy a coffee cart. In busy urban centers, these carts average out to making $10,000 a month.
• Consider doing what is easy for you to do - in other words, it doesn't stress you. See if it's commercially viable and do that for thirty hours per week. Then use your spare time to do the things you really love to do.
• Get together with a group of like minded friends and figure out a way of making money together. Set a time limit. In other words, decide that five of you are going to collect other people's junk for two years and then sell it in flea markets. At the end of two years, you will split the profits and do a rethink of what you want to do next.
• Find all the shopping trolleys in the city. Then phone the stores they belong to and offer to return them for a fee. Or phone them first and ask them what they would pay you to find them. If it's financially worthwhile do it.
• Grow organic vegetables in your garden. Sell them at the local flea market once a week. You'll be amazed how much you can make. No, it's not enough to live in a palace, but remember that living in a palace is an unattainable dream.

The purpose of earning money is not emotional and intellectual bliss. The purpose of earning money is to be able to buy the goods necessary for survival. The problem with having lived in a country grown rich on the reserve currency is that so much was achievable for so long as a direct result of the filtered down wealth, that many people had the opportunity of being able to do jobs that are only available when a country is very wealthy and very successful. When that wealth goes, reality comes back. And cold hard reality is not user friendly. A job is there to earn your bread and butter. It is not there to be a sop to your ego or a tool to bring your life long satisfaction.

I am actively against encouraging people where talent is required and people have no talent. I think one does a severe disservice encouraging someone who obviously has no talent to continue to persevere. I keep hearing the examples of the rare bird who was told by someone that he would never succeed, and then he did. What no one tells you is the immense numbers of people who were actively encouraged to do something they had little ability to do, and then that person awoke from the dream twenty years later having invested the bulk of their life energy into it. I can assure you that they become very angry people. It is extremely misguided to encourage people to do something where talent is required, and they don’t have the talent.

Remember, also, that only some occupations require talent - artists, writers, musicians, dancers, etc. It's one thing to encourage someone who is interested in something that anyone can do because it requires no innate talent; it's quite another to encourage someone where talent is actively required, and there is no talent.

You might respond with, 'But how do you know if someone has talent." Well, if you don't know, then they don't have talent. Talent is something that is so incredibly obvious, that it hits you in the face. My sister was singled out as having talent at dancing when she was six years old.

How I Was Mislead by Educators Telling Me I must Follow my Dream
I am still highly peeved at the idiots at San Diego Community College who encouraged me to do an Interior Science Degree (a dream that I wasn't really interested in) and geology (which was a practical course where I had a high degree of interest. The misunderstanding arose because the word, 'dream' means something that is unattainable. I did the interior design degree because every single counselor kept telling me to follow the dream (i.e. something that was unattainable to me). They never explained to me that it was something that I had to be interested in. If they had focused on something practical (and I have an intense love of anything that is practical), I would have gone with the geology degree. I would also be employed today in something where I was well paid and where I was interested enough to keep working at it. At this point, I absolutely loathe interior design. But it was a dream, i.e. something unattainable.

The Social Consequences of Two or Three Generations Following Their Dreams
There are consequences to everything. A lot of people are very unhappy in their jobs - and this has nothing to do with the current recession. It's more a thing of high expectations balanced again the reality. I want to quote from another study on job satisfaction

"Job satisfaction levels were particularly low for the under 25 demographic - just 36% of respondents said that they were satisfied with their jobs. In 1987, 56% of people in this demographic were satisfied with their jobs."

Consider that this is the generation of people who, more than any other generation, have been encouraged to follow their dreams. In other words, their dreams are in direct conflict with reality

Economies Run on Practical Skills
Economies run on practical skills. A cake has a base of flour and the icing is only on top. Well, dreams are the icing of life. They're a small part of life where on rare occasion, we have a fabulous day or win a fabulous prize. It happens. But it’s not about living the dream. It’s about the occasional chocolate icing on the cake!

Economic systems run on practicality – on the goods that are exchanged through the medium of money for the benefit of all. While most people wouldn’t want to be an auto mechanic in a auto shop, or a peanut butter sandwich maker, those are actually the jobs required to keep the community working.

Find Practical Jobs that the Economy Needs
Nurses are in high demand. Computer programmers are in high demand. Engineers are in high demand. No, these aren't dreams. Most people can do them. If you have an interest in something that is easily attainable, follow that path rather than attempting to follow something that is a dream and virtually unattainable. You'll be a lot happier (and richer) in the medium to long term.

Marty Nemko telling people how to really find make the money.It's nothing to do with following your dreams and everything to do with good money and an easy, unstressful path! I think most of us want a life where income is secure and we have a lot of spare time to follow our interests… um dreams.

So, don’t follow your dreams when it comes to finding a way to pay for your survival for the rest of your life. Follow your common sense. Find the easiest thing you can do. Do it. Earn a bucket full of money from it. Have lots of spare time in which you can attempt those impossible dreams. Look after your health and enjoy your life.