In this post I’m going to share the beginning of my own personal journey to success. I will start by saying that I believe I am still on my journey, and as you will learn, I believe that success is not a destination in the future, but rather our attitude along the way.  We all start somewhere though, and today I want to share with you what started me on my current path.

Rewind to Fall of 2015.  I had a fascination with electrical work and knew that I wanted to do something along those lines. I had also grown up with an electrical engineer as a father and knew that I didn’t want to do his job. I am a very hands-on person, and the thought of sitting at a desk job all day programming sounded awful to me.  I also did not want to be a blue-collar laborer my entire life.  I had no idea what the name of the career was that I was searching for, but I knew the field I wanted to be in was out there. The beginning of my current path- I like to think- had a couple of false starts. 

First, I thought the career that I wanted was to be an electrician, then I thought I wanted to work in maintenance.  But both of these career paths lacked certain aspects that I was searching for. After a lot research and asking questions I finally became aware of the field of controls engineering.  A lot of people aren’t aware of this type of engineering.  I myself didn’t even know it existed until I was talking with a professor one day about how I couldn’t seem to put a name to the job I wanted, and he suggested I look into this field.  Once I started looking into it I soon realized that this is what I had been searching for over the past few years.  This realization is really where I began my current career path. 

I started with taking a two-year technical degree to get my foot in the door as a technician and am just about to finish my bachelor’s degree (which is the final educational requirement to become a controls engineer).  Along the way I have had a couple of set backs and detours, but once I could put a name to my overall goal, I found I have had a lot more success in tailoring my decisions to help me reach it. Ever since I have created this goal in my mind, my ability to advance towards better financial security, personal fulfillment, and overall happiness has increased greatly. I have learned from this experience that it is really important to know what you want to do. A lot of people study different fields of education because they are interested in them but find that they can’t seem to find specifically what they can/want to do within them.

My experience with taking a few years to even identify what it was that I wanted to do has taught me just how important having a clear path in mind is.  If I had known about the controls engineering field a couple years earlier, I would be that much farther along in my career goals. Now, that being said, if it takes a couple years to figure things out, that is okay. The lessons I learned along the way to my beginning truly prepared me to jump right into my training.  Whether it takes 5 months or 5 years to figure out what your career goal is I cannot stress enough how important it is to take the time and put in the effort to ask yourself what you value in a career and then to have the patience to find out what it is.  For some, their dream job may be easy to identify, for others (like myself) it make take a couple of false starts, and asking a bunch of questions, but I promise that your dream career is out there and the beginning of your journey to success starts with you being willing to put in the effort to find what that looks like for you.

A while ago I started thinking about getting a residential journeyman’s license. Which is a similar qualification in a related field to mine but wouldn’t necessarily help me in my current career path. I have gone back and forth on whether I should do it or not. I concluded that even if it didn’t help me in my current career, it would further my qualifications, diversify my experience, and be a good fall back should anything happen at my current job. Also, I just wanted to do it.  It wouldn’t give me a pay raise or promotion in my job but seeing as the investment required isn’t that much (6 months to a year of additional training), I decided that it would personally be worth it, even if it wouldn’t make much of a difference professionally.  I am currently in the process of achieving this goal, and I know I have made a good decision.

There have been other training’s/further education that I have considered that would not have been worth the sacrifice or that would’ve taken my overall focus away from my current career goals.  Luckily, I feel that I have largely avoided wasting a lot of time or resources on these, but this experience has led me to ask myself the question of what makes further training/education worth it? When is it appropriate seek additional learning/experience? And does it always need to be related to your job field to be justified? I will go over a few rules that I have found helpful in deciding whether or not to pursue further education.

Rule #1 – How will this affect your current job/career?

As much as they care about our personal goals, employers are jealous entities.  Companies will often be supportive of someone wanting to go back to school or getting additional certifications, but there is definitely a balance that needs to be struck.  While adding another demand to your life may require you moving around hours or responsibilities at work you should always have the company’s point of view in mind.  Obviously, you should never make your final decision based on the company’s needs, but you should be willing to consider that if your new commitment would interfere with your ability to be a good employee maybe you shouldn’t do it, or if it is still worth it, you should consider quitting and making the new commitment your full time commitment. My point is, if it negatively impacts your good standing at your current job, you need to re-evaluate whether or not it is worth trading for.

Rule #2 – Consider the R.O.I.

There are certain training’s that can have a very quick return on investment (such as a company paid for week long certification workshop that allows you to further your responsibilities at work).  Others (such as my residential journeyman’s license) have a much slower return on investment. Financially, it would be useful in doing side jobs, or as a fall back.  But as far as my current job/career path goes, it really doesn’t impact it that much. So how can I justify this additional training? When considering R.O.I I believe you should not only look at things from financial viewpoint, but a personal one as well.  Of course, this additional training can be justified as me trying to diversify my skillets, but if I’m being honest, a big part of my decision to do it was that after I found out it was possible to do without interfering with my current work, I found that I simply wanted to do it.  Sometimes personal fulfillment is a good enough return for an investment.