Three Significant Milestones that will Define Your Future

“You may or may not know it, but there are three significant milestones in a person’s life that will define his/her future”

Aloha!

I know it’s been a while since my last post due to hectic corporate life (where is work-life balance? Haha) but today, I wanna share an important lesson, a learning that was shared during my most recent overseas training for work.

Our instructor, who happened to have a very relevant contribution in the company where I work at, shares about the three significant milestones in a person’s life that will define his/ her future.  There may be a lot of factors that will define your future, but these three really make sense and are noteworthy enough and here are they:

1. Graduating from College, and the University Where You Will Graduate Matters.

The very first milestone that will define a person’s future is the day he/she graduated from college. But of course, as most of us really undergo this process, the significant factor that sets you apart from others and helps define your own future is “where” or in what University-slash-school you will finish your tertiary studies.

In a country where there is a subtle discrimination and biases with a person graduating from university A or university B, this “significant milestone” holds true. The society may deny it. Companies may say that there is always equal and fair selection for employees that they do select, but fact is, at the back of their minds, they would prefer a person coming from a University that they want. If you try to observe, in most cases, there are companies whose employees mostly came from a certain one or two university/school only. Even as ordinary individuals, we have our own favorites and sometimes, we ourselves can’t help but pre-judge a person basing on the university he/she graduated. 

As our instructor have told us, “isn’t it that sometimes, one of the first things that you ask a person you met for the first time is the University where he/she came from – this is so you could have an idea what kind of person he / she is?”. We may or may not want it, but it is but a reality that where you graduated matters and outlines your future.

2. Taking a Job and Choosing your Career Path

What’s next after graduating? Of course that’s logically taking a job, choosing your own career path.

The type of job, even the company we select evidently has a significant contribution in our future. There are circumstances when the job we selected may not necessarily be aligned with the course we took during college days. We may have our own reasons for doing so, but we should be very careful as this milestone already puts a significant mark in our future. Like for instance, a nursing graduate who entered the corporate world because she can earn more than practicing the nursing profession; an accounting graduate who pursued photography and eventually became a top-notch photographer as that was his passion and hobby; or an engineering graduate who entered BPOs or call centers because he was enticed with the kind of life and perks that you will get from the job.

Unlike in choosing the course we take in college where you have the option to shift and eventually take a different path after graduating, choosing a job or should I say choosing a career is a life-long commitment that already leaves a significant mark in defining who you will truly be in the future.

3. Selecting the Person Whom You Will Settle With

Last, but evidently not the least milestone in a person’s life that will carve his/her future is choosing the person whom he/she will spend the future with.

Yes, the person we choose to fall in love with, the person we choose to journey life together and grow old with, or simply the person whom we plan settle with will have an impact in our future.  You may not see it now, at this very moment when you are so in love, but you have to remember that the kind of person you’re future better half is will make way for a path to an either good, not-so-good or great future.

It is very important that you and the person you plan to settle the future with plans to walk or run in the same path or route you would want to, because as cliché as it may sound, although there’s a long and winding road towards future, the journey becomes worth-it if it’s with the person that matters to you most.