#BigParentingIdea — When Your Child Wants To Pivot

Many people erroneously assume that they should do this one thing their whole life because they’ve spent many years getting this education / diploma or whatever.

They were instructed by their parents, teachers and other adults that they should choose their profession in their late teens and there was never even a hint that they could switch their careers.

This belief contradicts everything we know about how most businesses are created.

The majority of businesses don’t follow a clear and straight path. Rather there are multiple pivots before they take the final shape. And even the final shape isn’t final in most cases.

The most successful businesses never stop reinventing themselves and because of that they never stop evolving. It’s because those who start businesses start them with many assumptions, some of which may very well be wrong assumptions and they never really know the future.

That’s exactly the position of a young adult who starts his or her career.

We all start with many assumptions, many of which can turn out to be wrong assumptions later on and we never really know the future.

Those wrong assumptions should be acknowledged and we should be allowed to change our careers at any time based on the information that we gather later on as we try out different things in our lives. We should allow ourselves for a similar process which is mostly in place when new businesses are being shaped.

However, it is very uncommon for people to think of their careers in this way and thus an opposite approach is dominant all over the world.

People who are in this group are not building their careers. Rather they think of their careers as something that should click on the first attempt and let them pursue a certain lifestyle.

They make this monumental decision in their late teens and, come what might, they won’t budge. They assume that pivoting is reserved only for businesses, but they’re wrong.

If your child wants to pivot you should encourage her to do so. Probably despite everything you thought was true about building one’s career.