Navigating Family Expectations and Career Decisions
"How do I make this decision? I'm so confused. Do I follow my heart? My gut? What my family is telling me to do?"
Last month, I led a workshop for undergraduate and graduate students at Brown University on Owning Your Career Path: Navigating Family Expectations and Career Decisions.
As each student shared their questions and uncertainties about their futures, the others in the room nodded along.
It is daunting to be standing at the beginning of your career, looking toward a hazy and shifting career landscape, wondering where to begin.
It is my job as a career coach to tell those students: that feeling doesn't really go away. Even after you begin forging your path, the future—even the next immediate step—will likely be unclear.
Our goal is not to achieve certainty.
Our goal is to hone our toolkit for forging our own career paths in an uncertain world—so we can move forward with purpose and resilience.
The Four Voices of Career Decisions
Career decisions usually involve balancing multiple “voices” influencing us:
Family Voice: Expectations, hopes, or advice from family members.
Family might say things like:
Choose something practical and stable.
Be closer to us.
We want you to be the best you can be.
Society Voice
Messages about salary, status, and what counts as “success.”
That's not a real career.
You have to take a step up, not a lateral move.
This job will look more successful in the eyes of others.
Your Voice
Your interests, values, curiosity, and sense of meaning.
This is a thing I could get lost doing for hours.
I don't have this skill yet, but I'm curious about building it.
I want to feel like I'm contributing to a greater good.
Practical Voice
Financial considerations, the job market and opportunities available, life circumstances.
There are fewer opportunities in this role as the industry shifts.
I need a minimum of $X to cover my basic living expenses.
I need flexibility to make space for my caregiving responsibilities.
Own your path
Sometimes these voices all get muddled together, making it hard to tell what we actually want.
Untangling those voices can help us gain more clarity.
Take a moment to jot down one message you're hearing from each of the four voices right now:
• Which voice feels particularly loud right now?
• Which would you like to listen to more?
Owning your path doesn’t mean choosing one voice over the others.
It doesn't mean listening to your own voice and ignoring all others.
It doesn't mean abandoning yourself to make your family or society happy.
Owning your path means having the skill to untangle and hear these different voices. It means making sure your voice is part of the conversation.
Career decisions don't just happen once, when you're at the beginning and deciding which path to take. They happen again and again and again. Honing our process for making those decisions helps us navigate each decision point with intention—even amidst uncertainty.
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Want to get clearer on what your voice is saying? Check out the free tools I created for you in my Resource Library.
