Is It Okay to Change Your Career Path?
Questioner: Charan sparsh Acharya Ji. I'm a student of philosophy. I completed my MPhil two years back. Technically, the next step for me should be to go for a PhD. But I have been connected to your videos for the past one year and three months. And what if, after connecting to you, I do not feel equally driven towards the career choice that I made in the past? Currently, my priority is to get financially independent, but without my PhD also, I can sustain myself. I can work as an educator in a school. But right now, I am confused, what should I really do?
Acharya Prashant: Often, experimentation helps. Experimentation helps when you cannot make up your mind. Then you just probe. Maybe just beginning the process of your PhD will tell you how far your heart allows you to go into it. And if you find that your self is resisting the very idea, even the initial steps, then you'll realize that you'll not be able to stay in the next three or five years there. Equally, you should explore the other side, where you said you could work as an educator in some educational institution. Explore that as well. See whether that conforms to your image of life there.
And there is no harm in changing or reversing choices. In fact, much greater harm lies in rigid choices. We do not exist for the sake of defending our choices. The chooser comes first, right? The chooser's interests are paramount, not the chooser's choices. Choices are all dispensable. They are all reversible. You can make one choice today and boldly and unabashedly reverse it tomorrow. You're not accountable to anybody. So, it's okay. Experiment, probe, try this, try that. Maybe you'll take a few steps in a direction and then discover it doesn't help, and then, without hesitation, you can retrace your steps, take a U-turn, take a turn to somewhere else, whatever. It's all okay.
In fact, it is a mark of inner growth that you want to reverse the choices that you made in the past.
Think of it: if, as a person, you are really evolving, how can you steadfastly remain loyal to the choices yourself of the past made? You're somebody else. Two years back, you made a particular choice. Then you're not the same person today, and that's a thing to rejoice, right? That denotes that you have evolved. And that exactly is the purpose of life, to keep evolving. You are a better person now. If you're a better person now, how can this better person live by the choices that a relatively inferior person made a few years back? So it's all right.
Questioner: Yeah, so I was preparing for the entrance, but there is a certain sort of resistance. But at the same time, I've attached a certain sort of a value to a degree or something, and all those, the past education and everything, has helped me evolve. But I don't know, deep down, I've attached a certain kind of a value to this upcoming degree or something that I'm not able to, you know, take my step back. I also understand that there are other better career options that I can go for, but due to a certain sort of a fear or maybe laziness, I am refraining myself from going there.
Acharya Prashant: So see, there would never be absolute clarity. That's not given to the normal consciousness, to be absolutely clear. There would always be confusion. There would always be in-betweenness. And then the only solution is experimentation. I understand there is a thing for having, probably a doctor against your name. All that is okay, and all that cannot just fall down in a day. But that extracts a price, does it not? So, maybe enroll for the PhD program and see whether you are prepared to pay the price, bear the cost.
We do not know much, experimentation is a way of self-knowledge. No? When you try something, then you discover how your mind is responding to it. Without actually trying it, all you have is assumptions. Maybe when you enroll for the program, just the first few days will appear so repugnant to you that the decision will become obvious and automatically clear.
Maybe, if you go for the program, you find, "Oh, this PhD is my life. How was I even thinking of not going for it?"
Questioner: Yes, I think, like, after watching your videos, maybe I was trying to, because in your videos there's always, like, what one should do, but at the same time, I am not at that stage to follow what you're saying. So I think experimentation is the key, right now.
Acharya Prashant: Of course. But whatever I say, I add a rider to it. This has to be discovered by you for yourself.
What I'm saying cannot become your Truth. Truth is a very, very individual, a very intimate thing. So you have to dig it out from within for yourself.
I am, in some way, imploring you just to do that. So try both these things out. Probably, I think I know the way it will go, but let that be your own discovery.
Questioner: But at the same time, you know, there is also, for example, I was at a stage wherein, you know, the question of marriage was considered, and I was equally able to understand that, okay, that is not, that is something not for me. So in this also, this will lead to a lot of time wastage in my, moving towards a... So that is maybe the fear, ki bahut zyada time waste ho jaega ye karte karte. A lot of time will go.
Acharya Prashant: You have to get into these feelings. You have to ask yourself, you know, what really is the meaning of wastage? What is this and what is that, and where do these stand in priority? You'll have to get into these things. Your own inner clarity has to be decider. These questions you must keep asking yourself. My words, my videos can at best help you ask the right questions, but the answer has to emerge from within.
Questioner: Thank you so much.
