If my strengths are getting to know others and being respectful and my hobbies are playing trumpet and helping others, what career best fit me?

Hi Azucena! It's great that you're starting to think about possible future career pathways and that you're trying to align them with your interests. It's also great that you've started to think about things that come naturally to you, as well as activities that you like to do. The great thing about getting to know & helping others is that those are two skills that are translatable to just about any occupation, regardless of whether or not they're explicitly listed in a job description. Depending on the way you choose to frame your work perspective, those are also two skillsets that may more easily lend themselves to help you find fulfillment and purpose in your work, whichever direction you choose to go, and that can be especially helpful and make you more apt to excel when pursuing your life's work. At first glance, you might find that you gravitate towards the teaching, service-oriented professions or other work in the nonprofit sector, but there are other opportunities, as well. One thing to keep in mind is that many people today change jobs, and sometimes fields and sectors, so it might be helpful to keep that in mind. Another thing that I have found personally helpful is that depending on what you're looking for, it may not be realistic to have just one profession fit all of your needs, and that's ok. That's the space where a second job/volunteer work that may be separate from your day job, or having progression in your career over time, can give you the chance to help satisfy those other interests (example: working a day job at a nonprofit or teaching in a school during the day and playing trumpet in a band at night or on the weekends).

There are a few books/assessments that I would recommend taking a look at that might be of help. The first is to check what your MBTI personality type is, and the second is to check where you fall personality-wise with respect to the OCEAN assessment. Neither are definitive authorities (and there is some controversy over how accurate and consistent over time those descriptions are, in particular, the MBTI) but I think they might be helpful here, because once you further clarify certain core personality attributes, you can research certain careers that those personality types tend to gravitate towards, and think about whether those professions might align with your interests.

I would also recommend going to your library and taking a look at the following books: What Color is Your Parachute, Please Understand Me and Strengths Finder. Those books are sort of further iterations on personality type, but are specifically focused on mainstream careers and aligning those two.

Once you've come across a few different options, I'd recommend trying to identify people in your life or within your local community who are working in those professions. This is a great place where word-of-mouth, talking with a parent or guardian, a teacher, &/or linkedin may help. Try to identify a couple different people who work in those professions and see if you can help volunteer where they work &/or shadow them for a day to see what a day in their work life is like. As you go through that, try to imagine yourself in that position and think about whether or not that's something you could see yourself doing in the future. If you find one or more of those roles are something you're interested in learning more about, those individuals would likely be in a better position where they might be able to introduce you to relevant colleagues who are doing similar work. The great thing about this is that you'll be gaining valuable, first-hand experience, and if any of those are career pathways you end up interested in, certain opportunities like afterschool work or possibly a summer internship might materialize, and those can help when you're responding to writing prompts for college admissions essays. It also might lend itself to a place where you find yourself in a more competitive position when writing essays for possible grants or scholarships, because the passion that you have for the work will come out clearer in your writing and make your arguments more compelling and nuanced for awards decisions. Additionally, if you find that after job shadowing a few different professions that some of the key aspects of certain jobs don't align with your values, ethics, or what you're looking to do on a regular basis, that's incredibly insightful information as well, because that then frees you up to pursue other opportunities, possibilities, and can save you money in the long run since you can then divert the money you would've spent pursuing a specific career towards something else.

If you don't have a mentor, I'd check to see if you can possibly find one. Sometimes, this is the type of thing that you might find in a structured program like a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program or through programs at your local community center or religious organization, sometimes you might find it through partnerships at a local university (as was the case at my alma mater with their Community Service Center's Siblings program), and sometimes, you find it locally within your own community with trusted neighbors, retail establishments that you or your family frequents, or perhaps the parents of some of your friends. Mentorship isn't something that need to be only limited by career pathway; it's something that you can sometimes relationship build and develop over time with others who may perhaps have similar life perspectives (example: those with flexible work schedules if family life later on is a possible consideration).

Author Tim Ferris has this really great exercise where he asks people to identify someone in the world, usually somewhat famous (but not necessarily), whose work you admire, and to try reaching out to them. The key here, is to have a very specific, concise, but compelling question to ask, and to make the response easy for them to deliver, and an expectation of nothing more, if that. As I recall, I think he wrote that most people before that exercise automatically stop themselves and don't even try because they feel like it's outside of the realm of possibility because they don't know the person, or because they're waiting for someone else to make the introduction on their behalf or to tell them that it's ok to even try. However, most of the people who actually partook in the exercise found it to be valuable, and in some cases, actually received thoughtful responses back. I think an important caveat here is to not wait for a response back (or give yourself a realistic and short deadline), or condition what you do, or make your timeline dependent on getting a response back, and instead, focus on also pursuing some of these other avenues for exploration which may be more helpful in the short-term, whereas the response back is more of a nice-to-have.

It's sort of like a variation of the "if you could have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be, and why?" question, only there, it's no longer a hypothetical question, it's you actually empowering yourself with agency and taking action and seeking out an answer to a question. Sometimes, if you don't get a response, that's ok, too. If the individual is high-profile enough, they likely will have already written a memoir, or a book, have been interviewed on a tv show, or even a blog, and in those cases, they've probably created content that's probably filled with good advice and life perspective that's probably been well-edited, well-thought out, and concisely written, and that if theirs is work that you admire, it is probably worth reading/listening to/viewing. There, even though it's not a personal form of one-on-one mentorship, it is still a learning experience and you can decide for yourself whether or not to extrapolate those hard-earned, lessons learned to your personal life as you move forward.

TED talks, in particular, are really great for finding and learning about some of these types of industry leaders. More often than not, I would venture to guess that many of these folks will likely, at one time or another, discuss other key influencers and movements that had an impact on the development of their decisions, and if you find that their content resonates with you, you can check out the work of some of their contemporaries, as well.

Best of luck!

Hellos,

The strength of any individual is their tolerance and patience level.

How much you become tolerant and add patience into you it will change the graph of your life.

I am also very much fond of music and whenever i get a chance i sang. And see I am not only a singer.

Struggle for whatever you want to become but never compromise self respect and you will achieve the best career industry.

Thank you

The first thing I thought of when I read your skills and interest was "Music Therapist". You'd be able to help people of all ages and all sorts of conditions. This therapy is particularly helpful with people on the Autism Spectrum, so it's not a career that isn't going to be made obsolete.

Here's a link to the American Music Therapy Association's website. https://www.musictherapy.org/about/musictherapy/

It would be a great resource for you to contact a therapist in your area and ask them if you can buy them a coffee and do a "professional" interview with them. That's just sitting down and asking all kinds of questions about the job, it's qualifications, how to get started, and the day to day experience of doing the work. And, since you'll be speaking to a fellow musician, you can ask them if they think there are other careers they thought about to utilize the same skills as yours before deciding on music therapy.