What is Wrong With the Parent/Student Status Quo?

As far as I know, there has never been a clearly defined process for figuring out how to choose a career, and what career to choose. We have spoken to many, many parents and young adults about this subject, asking them how they made their own career choice. Parents and students typically give us one of 5 responses:
1. My parent(s) thought I should do X.
2. I heard about it, or read about it and it sounded interesting.
3. I had to make a decision, so I made a choice based on a subject I liked in school.
4. Somebody told me it was a great career, and one where there were jobs.
5. My Dad/Mom/Cousin/Friend/Neighbor is an X, and I thought it seemed like a good field.

Sadly, this is the status quo. This is how most people make one of the most important decisions in their lives. However, we must question the wisdom of this totally random process because: MOST PEOPLE DO NOT LOVE (or even like) WHAT THEY DO! In fact, statistics show that between 66 and 80 percent of people are unhappy with their choice of career. That is the majority of people, the large majority. I created oneTRUEzone to change all this.

When we tell people there is an actual process (oneTRUEzone) for discovering what their calling is, what they are meant to do, and for finding a career that can help them lead happy, satisfying lives, the typical response is: I wish I knew of this process when I was young, before I had devoted so much time/education/energy/money into a career that is wrong for me, and before I had responsibilities to pay my mortgage/health insurance/ educate my children.

Most people are used to thinking (or even told) that you just ‘figure it out’, typically relying on one of the 5 ways mentioned above. If they only knew at an early age that it doesn’t have to be this way, think of how different their lives could be, how different the world might be.

Check out our website www.onetruezone.com.
Give your student the opportunity to change the status quo and find a career (really a life) they will truly love.

Helene Naftali

Great to see you today LifeStep students!

Pleasure meeting with all of you today! Please let us know what was your favorite, or most valuable part of the OneTrueZone workshop.

You Are the Best Candidate We Have Ever Seen!!! Will it be Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or None of the Above?

This year, top colleges throughout the United States will send hundreds of thousands of brochures to students of all backgrounds and interests. Yale alone will mail 80,000 brochures to students extolling the virtues of one of the best schools in the world. Actually, this number is significantly down. In 2005, Yale was sending out 120,000 brochures. Despite this decrease in mailings, assuming that the pool of students receiving information (an unlikely assumption, but we can be generous) comprises all the students who apply, over 98% of those students are not getting into Yale.

A similar pattern holds true for almost every single competitive college in the country. Bloomberg reported on this story (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/ivy-league-solicits-students-to-boost-selectivity.html), and stopped just short of accusing the schools of systematically boosting the number of students that are applying to raise more money from application fees, and make their schools look even more prestigious by having a lower ratio of students accepted than their competition. Whether or not that is true is interesting, but almost completely beside the point when it comes to figuring out how YOU are going to approach the applications process. Your unique needs, goals and dreams cannot be the number one priority of institutions serving thousands of others, but they should be of paramount importance to you!

So one more time we are reminded that we have to figure out what we want to do with our lives, give it real consideration, put in the research, and then figure out how to move forward with our own, personal plan. Regardless of what the brochures promise, your own best path is never as simple as just going to the "most competitive school", if it is even feasible to go there in the first place. There is no substitute for independent thinking and following your heart. Focusing on the few things that almost everyone else is obsessively focusing on, is unlikely to be the best way to discover your own true dreams, and reach your own goals.

In short, ignore the flash and the pizzazz, and get your own work done! Not sure how to do that? Contact us at oneTRUEzone. We know how and are ready to help you.