One of the biggest questions new job seekers, new college graduates, and new immigrants have is, What job or career type should I choose? It’s a difficult question to answer, but it’s not a question worth stalling one’s life for very long to answer. Our counsel (specifically to one job seeker this week): After studying it out in your mind and asking for help by prayer, pick a path that you think you might like, even if that path doesn’t look or feel better than another. Start down that path with a humble confidence. As you take steps along the path, either the path becomes more clear and you can see a little more light along the way, or it darkens and you then know that it’s time to shift course onto a new path. The old path is not wasted. It provides experience and self-knowledge that helps you select the new path from a higher level than you would have originally.
Elder Matthew Holland told the story of how he and his father didn’t know which fork in the road to take when they were returning from a trip to the Grand Canyon. They prayed and both felt good about the left fork, so drove down it. It ended within 10 minutes after they took it, so they turned around, went back to the fork, and drove right.
In Elder Holland’s father’s words (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland), “Because we were prompted to take the road to the left, we quickly discovered which one was the right one. When we turned around and got on the right road, I was able to travel along its many unfamiliar twists and turnoffs perfectly confident I was headed in the right direction.
“If we had started on the right road, we might have driven for 30 minutes or so, become uneasy with the unfamiliar surroundings, and been tempted to turn back. If we had done that, we would have discovered the dead-end so late that it would have been too dark to find our way back in totally unfamiliar territory.”
Elder Matthew Holland concluded, “I understood and have never forgotten the lesson my Heavenly Father and earthly father taught me that afternoon. Sometimes in response to prayers, the Lord may guide us down what seems to be the wrong road—or at least a road we don’t understand—so, in due time, He can get us firmly and without question on the right road. Of course, He would never lead us down a path of sin, but He might lead us down a road of valuable experience. Sometimes in our journey through life we can get from point A to point C only by taking a short side road to point B. We had prayed that we could make it safely home that day, and we did.”
Jobs and careers can follow similar paths. Life gives everyone many forks in the road. Some of them don’t matter much, but others make all the difference in giving us “valuable experience” and helping us get to point C by detouring through point B. We hope to guide people through their path(s).