How We Can Help our Young People to Lower Anxiety of Finding their Purpose

Today’s young people struggle with trying to figure out “what do I want to do with my life?”  Let’s be honest, we all struggled with that.  It can bring so much stress, anxiety and fear.  

So what can we do to help them? Well, I truly believe the answers are inside them, we just need to help draw them out by asking some questions to better understand who they are.  Once they know those answers, they can start to see how they would apply to a job.  At Slingshot, we call this initial phase Introspection.

Start a conversation around trying to identify their core skills. (Tip - start by talking about your own core skills and what you’ve identified in yourself.)  What skills do you/they have that you’re just innately good at?  Maybe it’s time management.  Maybe it’s creativity.  Maybe it’s building things.  Maybe it’s communicating.  Where have you seen these skills on display?  Maybe it was in a school project.  Maybe on the soccer field.  Maybe just hanging out with their friends.  Does everyone listen to them?  Are they a born leader?

Once you’ve identified a few of these core skills, you can start to talk about types of jobs where these skills are used.  Don’t hesitate to Google it.  “Jobs requiring time management skills.” You might be surprised at what comes up.  This will give you some particular job types to talk about.  Interesting?  Not interesting?  Why did these particular jobs come up?  

Next, start talking about all sorts of industries they might want to work in. (We’ll go into more of this in future posts…we call it Industry Mapping).  All sorts of different job types ladder up to all sorts of industries. Think BIG! Don’t let anything constrain you from thinking about dream jobs in seemingly unreachable industries.  Given the right approach, anything is possible.  Now is the time to just get all big ideas on the table.  A good way to start this is “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could…?”  How do you answer that?  What industries are you talking about?

In the end, it’s about better understanding ourselves.  When we do work in a job that utilizes our top core skills, we just feel more fulfilled. “I’m good at that!” And then, when we can do that in an industry that we’re really excited about or would love to be a part of, it’s only that much more fulfilling. And who doesn’t want that?!?!

These actions are the start of developing a future plan that can help decrease the feelings of stress, anxiety and fear because you can start feeling it coming together.  And making some progress here will likely builds motivation to keep it going.

More tips to come on this initial work of Introspection. Here’s to creating more Happier Healthier Humans!!!

- Tyler