The bones of the trade in Professional Guidance

Hello friends!

A great businessman, a friend of mine, told me about an unusual situation. In his company, dozens of young people (between 18 and 25 years old) are working for fixed periods of time, with the sole intention of working a little, collecting unemployment benefits, working a little more and receiving insurance again, and so on. This successful businessman, and not by chance, told me this story in astonishment and evaluated the situation as an entire generation that has no responsibility to work and neither has the willpower to study.

In this text, I want to discuss this situation with you, but analyzing it from another angle. If there really is an entire generation of hedonists, who only think about having fun, who only think entertainment is valid, between boredom and pleasure (and facebook), what is the meaning of this search only for pleasure in Professional Guidance?

I don’t know if everyone knows the expression “the bones of the trade” which means that every job, every job, every profession has its inherent difficulties. This is data that may seem obvious and easy to observe, but it is not so simple in the opinion of many people who just want the bonus, without any type of charge, that is, the idea behind their search is to find a placement that just be pleasurable, without any kind of displeasure or discomfort.

Now, even the best job, even the ideal job has and will have its difficulties. Failing to choose a profession – which would be totally suitable for the profile – just because of one or another difficulty is something totally meaningless.

A generation of hedonists

In the opinion of my businessman friend, what society has created is a whole generation of hedonists, people who just want pleasure and no responsibility. Of course, we cannot generalize and say that all young people between 18 and 25 years old (a little less, a little more) have this type of mentality. In big cities, like São Paulo, it is very common to see the opposite: young people who get up early to go to work, study on the subway, and go to college at night.

However, this friend of mine has a certain reason: how many and how many young people are out there just wanting fun and more technology (expensive cell phones, tablets and other accessories), travel, branded products to mark their status, not always true, and little or no study?

Here on the site, every day I end up getting very worried about the future of our country when I see people who are about to enter college writing as well as a newly literate child. These are not typos, but gross errors of agreement, of spelling. In many cases, it is even impossible to understand what the person wants to say, given the lack of cohesion and coherence.

With so little study, with so little interest in knowledge (even with the internet available, which can be considered the greatest library created by man), these people want management positions, without knowing what this means in practice, maharaja salaries and work a few hours a week.

Of course the market will be a shock for these people…

Position: professional vagabond

In the end, what reality will show is a totally different situation. Without study and without professional experience, what will be available are positions with the lowest wages, longer working hours and more manual work.

The point is that here in Brazil the panorama of Europe, in crisis, in which young people – without work, without study – find themselves in this situation due to economic difficulties, does not happen. In this sense, our country is still the country of opportunities, for those who know and are interested in taking advantage.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to say that, despite the major changes in the job market in recent decades, Vocational Guidance – an area of ​​psychology that helps in choosing the best college and career or changing professional paths – often ends up dealing with a type of profile who excludes all possibilities because they require effort, time, or dedication… as if success were achieved by osmosis, by a network of favors, by magic.

In this sense, those who carry out Professional Guidance in psychology must make it clear that this type of thinking is completely wrong. Success can be achieved quickly, that’s right, which doesn’t mean it’s effortless, without willpower, without commitment.

As Marie Louise Von Franz once said, it is childish to imagine that there will be a job without any difficulty. Now, every job can have its “rainy day”, its bones of the trade.

If someone is paralyzed by this, and does not choose anything, because everything seems difficult, he should reflect more on his own desire. In many cases, it is much more difficult to stand still and suffer the consequences of your paralysis, than to make a little effort (at least) and try to find a way to produce for the common good.

And here, we ended up falling into another subject – perhaps for a future text – about people’s difficulty in donating. After all, each and every job is a donation we make to other people. By personality traits, we find ourselves in what we do best, in order to help society. Everyone, of course, has their participation and their importance in the job market, in each of the hundreds of existing jobs.

What I mean is, it doesn’t cost anything to change your focus a little and, before trying to receive, donate a little of your time and energy to others.

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