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The problem of occupational guidance is a key issue during the final stage of schooling. A vast corridor into the adult world with a lot of doors in various spheres of activity appears before young people, and it seems to run into the horizon. But do not worry; upon a closer look, all the main professional paths can easily be counted, and are presented in the table below.

This list may seem incomplete or too complicated to some readers, but these disputed can be brought up in the forum. We are open to rational discussion and to any changes and additions. There are a lot of different professions and specializations within each area specified. However, detailing each professional area is not the subject of this article. Instead its purpose is the revelation of the fundamental features of choice. We believe that concentrating on the motivation of choice is more important than on the selection of particular sphere. People are guided by different considerations, usually they have no clear and narrow emphasizing motivation, and rather it is a combination of these principles:

• Prestige (status among friends and acquaintances, or in society);
• Financial well-being (ensuring a stable and peaceful future);
• Intellectual, physical and spiritual development (to create and be unique, constantly improving skills and broadening horizons)

Once it’s time to leave school and step out into the real world, young people often do not have enough life experience or skills. They are guided mainly by the principles taught by parents or society, and rarely by their own deep theoretical considerations. Depending on the level of development and competence of their parents, younger generations enter adulthood with the unconscious stereotypes and perceptions of choice. It sounds trite, but every parent wants to see their children be successful in the future. In the last decade a number of revelations by various authors have become more accessible for the public, starting from books about successful entrepreneurs to scam material from crooks developing get rich quick schemes. To solve the motivation problem, it is worth looking at the trivial and at the same time intelligible schema presented by Robert Kiyosaki.¹

The Cashflow Quadrant

The interpretation of the sectors of this schema given by the author, should leave a reader no other choice but to strive for the sector of “Investors”. For those who are not familiar with the books by Robert Kiyosaki, we briefly explain:

Employees – all those people who work in various professional fields mentioned above, who sell their labor to owners of various businesses for a fee. The work is a combination of time, ingenuity, skill and ability to do something or produce something. And that's not all, because workers are citizens of a country: first of all, they pay state taxes on the income and then can use remaining money trying to fund their living. As a reader comes to understand, the “inhabitants” of this sector have many restrictions on development, starting with limited working hours and finishing with the percent of tax payments. Life in this sector runs, according to the author's opinion, in closed circles as people are drawn into a "Rat Race".

Of course, working people need housing, basic amenities, food and other commodities. Depending on the initial conditions (and for most of people they are virtually zero), young people are forced to start their lives with credit. It's good when parents are rich enough to provide decent starting conditions for their children, but most young families start from scratch, with negative balance or a loan.

The state tightly controls the credit issuance for expensive hard-material assets such as cars, apartments and houses. Bank authorities reasonably cite worries about health, analyzing the entire spectrum of life activity and skills of the citizen who asks for credit, requiring a guarantee of a return of the loan with added interest. In most cases, property (cars and homes) is so expensive that the employee is forced to work almost all of his healthy life until retirement, to repay the loan for the right to "live decently, eat decent food and sleep in decent conditions."

Private professionals – is an advanced category of employees who geminate from the previous sector, thanks to their exceptional characteristics: outstanding talent or highly polished skills in a specific area. Principally, they differ little from the employees – they just do the same work for a bigger reward, often doing it more efficiently and effectively. In financial aspects, there is a difference not only in the size of the fee, but also in the size of the taxes paid by a private professional. It may seem paradoxical for many, but they pay less tax than ordinary employees! In the majority of civilized countries, the tax system is organized so that these professionals pay profit tax rather than income tax. They may include a significant part of their personal expenses to cover the costs of implementing the service, thereby significantly reducing and often zeroing the difference between expenditure and income (profit). As a result, sometimes they do not pay taxes at all. But do not forget that the government also monitors the profit balance of income from professionals through revenue agencies, and easily detects the particularly ingenious masters skilled in understating their incomes (the government has really good experts in fiscal control services).

In addition to the tracking eye of tax auditors, our professionals have other natural limitations – a 24 hour terrestrial day. That is, they cannot bill the client for the work day of more than 24 hours. In addition, a natural problem such as poor health can immediately stop the process of earning money. When our professional is very ill or has a broken leg, he cannot perform his service.

Business owners live very well as long as their businesses thrive. They are happy to spend money earned in business on themselves and their families. They successfully write off these expenses as costs of providing business and only after that do they pay income tax. But they constantly have to watch the process of the reproduction of capital. Since not only their personal life relies on the success of the business, but also does that of employed workers and self-employed experts who participate in their business. Any financial injury can put an end to the sweet life of the businessman and his family. Therefore, businessmen protect themselves by hiring masters in various fields such as finance, economics and law.

Investors is the last sector in Kiyosaki’s scheme. They operate with millions and billions of dollars; manipulate large real estate objects, industrial properties and tons of bonds, like chess pieces on a board where most remain in the shadows. These people pay no tax, except those that wish to soothe the watchful eye of the state. They live very well on the interest from their investments and do what they want: fun, art, charity. They hire highly qualified experts on finance and investment to their side, and the most experienced lawyers. It is undoubtedly hard to become a true investor. This status comes usually after a long and painstaking work of several generations of a family.

You can meet investors in the casino, where they (you might think) throw money around, but in fact each of them clearly knows that he can spend a certain amount every day without harming the positive income trend of their wealth. For most “residents” of the other sectors of the quadrant those expenditure sums might seem astronomical.

Robert Kiyosaki said that there are only a few ways to be really rich and leave the "Rat Race":

• Earn by selling real estate
• Make money on stock and bond investments
• Make money on the patents and ideas i.e. what is considered your intellectual property

We are not considering the case when you are rich by inheritance, even though in this case it is required to have knowledge and skills needed to preserve and increase your wealth. The goal of everything mentioned above is not to discourage and kill the optimism of those who have to choose, but purely to disclose in detail a set of options and opportunities available to all. It is good when the illusions are dispersed at an early age, when young people did not yet learn something the hard way. As the saying goes, “Forewarned means armed”.

Thus, young people defining their future, must determine their life by bringing their level of experience (or lack of it), knowledge and skills in accordance with their needs and desires.

Many people might say: "But I do not know what I want". Each human has to live somewhere, eat and sleep. These are simple requirements that must be satisfied before all else. Do not pretend that you are God's dandelion - a la a highly spiritual personality type who is “not interested in money" and thinks that, "money is evil" or "I'm above this" and so on. Hunger is essential to human beings. Who must nourish you while you do your spiritual exercises? Take a pencil, paper and eraser, because in the course of working out the list, you must replace a lot and make plenty of corrections. Start brainstorming. Divide the list into two equal parts and start with a pleasant part: write your housing needs, clothing, food, fun (in any order). For example, "I want to live in a three-room apartment”. Do not hesitate and do not limit yourself in anything, write and write. Take a new sheet and continue to fill your "desires" and while emphasizing keywords.

Now on the left side of the paper start writing in the form of abstracts all things in which you are proficient, and skills that you are passionate to learn. While writing, you will determine and underline new keywords in a similar manner.

As a result, you should get some good material for further analysis. But now starts the not so pleasant procedure. The fact is that next to each keyword, you should write an approximate figure of money value. Now it is time to conduct active research for the prices of your possible enjoyment. As you can see, nothing is impossible. Once you fill all points – sum the total at the bottom of the list. To find out what income you can get from one or other activity according to your skills or future knowledge, you can search web sites where you can find statistics on average wages for different professions. It would be better if you compile this table in MS Excel. Make a table with six fields: number, name, amount of income and the same three fields for pleasure and needs. Prioritizing pleasures is not critical at this moment, you can do it later. Determine a bottom cell with the formula for the total amounts of expenditure and related income. After entering the formula you'll see how much your dream costs. You must conduct this research yourself, otherwise you will never be able to concentrate on achieving your goals.

Table example

Now let’s go back to the left part of the table, where you specified types of income activities, mostly monthly earnings. Knowing the amount of months in a year, you can easily calculate how much you can earn in a year. This will be your rough estimate of possible income from particularly chosen professional activity. As you already know, most expensive material wealth in the world is purchased on credit, repayment of which extends in length, so the borrower must pay back much more than he took from the bank. Sometimes, the amount increased by three times, but people are forced to come to this because they "want to live here and eat now", and they throw themselves into a circle races until retirement.

Why were you doing these calculations and the summation? Only to assess how much you will be able to rise by your actions to satisfy your pleasure. The final figure on the right (your expenditure cost), will show the approximate size of credit, which you need to borrow to cover costs, and the amount of the bottom left cell (your grand total income) is about tell you for how many years you have to pay your credit.

Most often illusory dreams and needs are so great that it will need 50 to 80 years by crude and optimistic estimates for their compensation, relying on potentially produced income from your skills. Here you need eraser, and you start to exclude too expensive needs from the list and replace them with adequate demand. Do not rush to throw out your first page, it is very important, because we intentionally do not limit you in your dreams. It is better to create a new sheet and copy adequate records to it.

That is how you begin to become more mature and sober. You start looking at your parents from different angle, correctly assessing the adequacy of their educational methods. You conduct more sober assessment of your real abilities and more carefully choose professional sphere. Hot shots quickly conclude that the guiding principle of choice becomes a material sphere:

• to make more money;
• to ensure a stable and secure future.

But is it so in reality!? No doubt that it is right principle - no one wants to eke out a miserable existence long, but only material satisfaction is not enough, you also must take into account the prestige and intellectual and spiritual needs. If you know and are confident that differ substantially from your peers having special intelligence and talent, no one can limit you if you aspire to so-called "financial independence". Of course, the most obvious and desirable niche for  occupation - is to become an investor. But in order to become a true investor and not an ordinary player or stock speculator, it takes years of hard study and work.

There are many sources on the web that offer the amazingly fast way to financial independence. For example, short courses "How to be a Forex expert", numerous fraudulent schemes and MLM network marketing groups, fashion systems of education in the are of “financial independence”. Do you believe that they offer something incredibly original and their knowledge is unknown to other participants life!? Do you really think that if you turn on this system, you immediately start to be a millionaire and relax at the luxury resorts!? You certainly have opened such hook-web pages (besides, it is a paradox, but on our banners you can meet Google's advertising references to such pages, please, do not misapprehend us - this is not intentional, Google is bringing those web links, because we also mention here the term "financial success"), where the author, whose photo has been combined with the background of luxury resort “revealed” the secrets of his success and has invited you to participate! These authors emphasize intentionally almost everywhere that you do not have to buy anything, and then perform pushy sales of corporate products to your friends and acquaintances. “Everything is very easy,” explaining new chisellers.  “You will learn secrets of success that were not detected by the traditional education system” (which is partially true, by the way). For this type of education you have to pay as much as you usually pay for any education in the universities. So far nothing looks incredible and suspicious. If you register in this system and issue periodic payments from your credit card, they share a secrete that you can get the education for FREE. What you have to do is to invite some people to the teaching program, so that their payments will cover part of your monthly contributions. Does this picture look familiar to you!? And if you invite MORE people and they initiate their monthly payments, you will learn not only for free in this virtual university, but will get the profit from the invited students. Well, now, I hope everything is clear!

From one side it seams that nothing is wrong here, that "the money do not smell," so to speak, everyone has to pay for the service - in this case, you learn wisdom of business, just in a comfort of sitting on the couch and chewing chips. But should not you doubt how serious is these "education”? Why thousands of applicants are rushing to the university gates and are trying to get into many years of studying process? Are they all stupid and do not understand, that there is a greatest and smartest way to become a successful millionaire in the course of a year?

Of course, our world is still full of fools and goofy players, who purchase online games, thimbles, involve in pyramid schemes, try to attack the stock exchange, armed with fresh knowledge from quick Forex courses. Most of these people serve as cannon fodder, suppliers of the generous flow of easy money that ends up only in the pockets of the for business-sharks, an  organizers of the pyramids and other well forgotten old gambling schemes brilliantly masked as a novelty.

If you focus on business, you need to know that nothing new is invented in the business world, and there are only two interacting species - production and sale. On our site they have identified under Business category kinds. Therefore, you should evaluate your choice from these two points of refraction. Clearly understand in which of the two species will your future activity be localized. And a small remark at the end: if ever you will be faced with a businessman, you immediately try to learn which part it works, it is important to understand - they have very different mentalities.

We do not know in what professional field you are going to do something, but keep in mind that people tend to often fall into the "rat race", that is, to make ends meet (revenue costs). So if you feel your extraordinary nature in one area, you must first evaluate the prospects for your essential needs as well as if you are already in that reality with all its virtues, skills, and abilities. Will this path lead you out of “Rat Race”, and if so, when? It happens only in the naive young age, that the direction chosen "by heart" will overcome all hardships and difficulties that financial problems have to be on the back burner, that "love is sweet even in a shelter of straw and leaves". Real life makes its adjustments, once you get separated from parents.

We encourage you to pass a test to determine the preferred profession Career compas test on our site, which will help to place some priority for your area. Do not overlook the potential of combinations of positive peaks from different spheres considering the results.

I repeat, nobody forbids to dream and reach your highest spiritual goal, but if the daily routine at work systematically pushes achieving your noble spiritual purpose into the background, means that you have selected wrong initial path. We often procrastinate the creative fulfillment of our plans for "then", for the weekend, for the next month, for the holidays. And when the time comes, it turns out that there is already no slightest trace of the dream: the lyrics are not printed, and the music is not written, and the brush is not putting strokes on the canvas. As a result we have vanity and hopelessness. To solve the problems of hopelessness and disorientation in life, we invite you to test yourself in the determinant of the meaning of life, which should appear soon on the site at Polls.

Let's go back to a constructive path. I think the best way to know which path to choose - is to ask yourself what you want to do in this life As if you already have a truck load of cash.  Try to make a similar brainstorming, write down all the wishes in a row, then set priorities, which is primarily what is in second, etc. This exercise is not for one day. You need to assess how deep is your passion in every wish. Take the time to dive into the Internet one day for each priority theme of your desires and evaluate your emotions, and residual effects in the brain. This way you describe your significant areas of interest. The rest is just technical – steps and instructions.

You are armed with practical knowledge of cash flow (we recommend you carefully read all the books by Robert Kiyosaki). Create a staging area for uninterrupted cash flow, using your practical skills and acquired knowledge in educational institutions in a comfortable area for you. It is likely that cash flow will come from is not highly spiritual activity, but if it gives you an easy life and a truck load of  time, to spent on your creative development - good luck!

I liked reading the book, "Principle of the sperm cell"² from the Russian writer Mikhail Litvak. He has noticed that you came from a single microscopic sperm which pushed aside the millions of other neighbors, successfully infiltrated into the egg and gave rise to a new life. Evaluate effect of this creature, sitting inside you, find its traces in yourself and learn from its wisdom and success.

References:

1. Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter The Cashflow Quadrant (Rich Dad's Guide To Financial Freedom)
2. M.E.Litvak "The principle of sprem cell"