About doing things - my way

A conversation with a colleague left me contemplating a little bit more than usual about how I have been making conscious decisions about my career.



After spending 5 years in this job, my heartfelt opinion is that I have got one of the best jobs in the world. Nothing is surely more exciting than being able to interact with youths and mentoring them into leaders of tomorrow, through education, sports and outdoor adventure.

I could never imagine myself in a desk-bound job, or a job that required me to meet sales quotas. I don't think God made me that way.

So I am always thankful that I have found my purpose. Doing what I do has been satisfying. The students who have come into my life (from my very first class in Fajar - 3T1 2002) till the ones today - they have been very good and I have been blessed by them.



But the dilemma is: is job satisfaction more important than career advancement?



I think I have been very choosy in accepting offers or job titles that take me away from students. Sometimes, friends have told me that I'm a fool for doing so.


I disagree.


I know what I want in my life.


I'm very particular about what I want to achieve. Even if it means stepping on somebody's toes or crossing my superiors, I will still decline and say 'No' to that task or that job if I feel that it doesn't suit me or if it is something that I know I cannot cope with.

I will not always say 'yes'.



Maybe it's the way I've been brought up. Maybe it's how God has been gently guiding me through my career. But I get very sensitive when my personal time is affected. I get very sensitive when my family time is affected.


My family, my time, my community projects, my students, my church activities - all these I hold high in my list of priorities. Notice that my work is not in the 'list'.


How can it be? Does it mean that I do not give my all in my work?



Nay.



I very strongly believe that if I have a blessed private life, with a close relationship with my wife and our parents, then I will wield even greater power to do well in my career.

And I can testify solidly that in the past 5 years, praise God, I have succeeded in achieving both. I do not wish to be a public success, yet fail in my private life.




So, even though there have been some murmurs of me being choosy and what not, I do not care about what others think.


I am answerable only to my God and my family. They are important to me, and I make sure I save my energies for them. I will not fall into that trap of depleting my youth into the bottomless pit called work.