“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did —You’ve got to find what you love— And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work—And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important . . . Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

~Steve Jobs

Choosing the right career fit has little to do with how smart you are and more to do with “what” you are. And, what you are has little to do with with making good grades in school, or what school you go to, and a lot do with how your brain is wired.

We are all born with natural talents, abilities and personality traits that remain fairly steady throughout our lifetime. Cognitive psychologists have been saying this for decades, but few of us have been taught to apply this advice in making career choices.

Now, neuroscientists are backing up these assertions with hard biological science. Brain researchers are finding that our personalities and abilities are directly correlated with the shape and size of our physical brain structures.

When it comes to your strengths, size matters. People who are better at 3-D spatial thinking have been gifted with bigger parietal brain lobes. If you have naturally strong empathy, introversion or talents for both traits, it’s because those parts of your brain are more robust.

Many of us are really good at certain things with minimal effort, but we typically ignore these good clues. Instead, we mistakenly pay more attention to the stuff we’re awkward or lousy at and spend our lives pushing that boulder up the hill. Lots of people pick a career to overcome a weakness; they suck at math so they go into finance or engineering for a living. Strong introverts go into teaching or sales with the hopes of becoming more extroverted. Concrete, practical people get PhDs to develop their creative ability. It doesn’t work. Although we can make small improvements to “balance out” our personality, we can’t wholesale rewire a weakness into a strength.

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Is college worth the money over the long run?  It depends on how good of a job you do at choosing a major and career path that fits what you do best, before you go to college. What does the “before and after” picture look like for most people who go to college?  Let’s take a time machine ride into the future and ask people who have already gone down that road.

Before . . .

and, After . . .

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Not sure that you’re in the right college major?  Here’s the scoop. About 75 percent of recent college graduates (classes of 2006 - 2010) say they didn’t put near enough consideration into choosing their major, and half of these said they should have chosen a different major altogether.

Hoping the future will work itself out after college? Don’t bet on it.  At least 70 percent of college-educated mid-career professionals say they still don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.  Seriously, just ask your parents. Career choice by trial and error is too expensive and rarely pans out.

The good news is you can do something about it.

What to do?  Discover what your best at.  Why?  There’s too much to choose from out there.  You can confidently narrow down your career choices by learning what career fields come most naturally to you.

What’s a practical step you can take?  Talk to your parents about getting professional career aptitude testing to assess your innate strengths and weaknesses. Innovative career direction guidance is available to help you match your natural talents to career fields and subject areas that best fit your natural abilities and personality traits.

Click below to download a short article from CareerFocus magazine, Assess Your Assets, which offers a free quiz to help you take the first step toward making smart choices for your college education and career path.

Download article [PDF]:   >> CareerFocus_Summer 2011

What are my talents?  >> Careerfinder Program

Find my career path:  >> What should I do with my life?