Parents chose my career: the first step was theirs.
If your parents chose my career is a sentence you could have written, the first step was never yours. So every later step risks being a reaction rather than a decision. As a result, a default can run for decades without you noticing.
No wrong decision, only no decision.
In June 1998 a surgeon stood at Singapore's immigration building with his hand flat on the door. Instead of going through, he let go, turned away and went back to medicine. In other words, he never weighed Singapore against surgery. Instead, the default simply did the rest for a quarter of a century.
When parents chose my career, practicality came first.
For Tiviya Lakshmanan, coming from an Asian household meant practicality came first. She did not want to take STPM, yet most kids do not get to decide. Later, she left a customer service job after a promotion, out of pride. Looking back, she says she could have built something there.
Reactions that look like choices.
First, the surgeon stayed still for decades. Meanwhile, she moved through six or seven jobs and cried in the car at lunchtime. Still, both lived inside a life nobody chose. In short, moving often and never moving can be the same default.
Trace where parents chose my career for you.
First, write the step you took because someone else expected it.
Then mark which later move was only a reaction to it.
From the book.
Here is what she and the surgeon have in common, and it is not indecision. He never moved and she moved constantly. Both of them spent years inside a life that nobody had chosen, because the first step was somebody else's and every step after that was a reaction to the one before it.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 7: Why you have not decided already
Questions about parents chose my career.
How can my parents chose my career if I changed jobs many times?
Because each change may only escape the previous room. So the first step can still be shaping all the others.
Did the surgeon make a wrong decision?
No. Instead, he made no decision, and the default ran for a quarter of a century.
What did Tiviya regret about leaving?
She left customer service out of pride. Later, she felt she could have built something there.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 7, “Why you have not decided already”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Status quo bias examples: why your job never ends.
- 02 Omission bias: why not acting feels safer.
- 03 Career inaction: when staying is just a default.
- 04 Reversal test: would you take your job again.
- 05 When to kill a side project: the day you knew.
- 06 Parents chose my career: the first step was theirs.
- 07 Should I quit my job test: reading your answer.