Have a read of the following article. The headline should attract your interest: “Three ways to overcome career anxiety“. Because without fail many of us are feeling anxious about something when it comes to our career. Three things in particular stood out for me. These are things to reflect on. There’s no easy fix to feeling differently about them but if you give yourself a chance to mull these issues over it may give you a couple of useful breakthroughs.

• That comparing your own situation to your peers is unhelpful. Our cursed human nature also tends to mean that we subconsciously seek out those stories of others ‘doing better’ than ourselves. We are blind to the stories of those who are doing worse. And this sense of better or worse is subjective, i.e. it’s open to personal interpretation. So you may firmly believe that a fellow grad who stepped right into a grad job after graduation is in a better place than you at the moment. A few years down the line the tables may have turned. That ideal career path and job may have a big question mark hanging over it because that person didn’t need to do the amount of self reflection and trial and error you have had to do. And it may not have ended up being their dream career direction. Then they’ll very much be back to square one with a real bump.
• In that spirit of self reflection and trial and error do pick up on the points about giving yourself time to reflect on your passions and to start experimenting. In the first case reflect on what your passions look like, sound like and feel like. Don’t try to attach a job title to them yet. Just get the detail of them out into the open that you can see in front of you. In the second case you don’t need at this point in your life to optimise choices or make the ‘right decision’. In all truth there is no ‘right decision’ at this stage in your career. We close in on the essence of what we want in a career over the years (not weeks) of our working lives. Give yourself that breathing time. Try stuff out.