The saddest thing in the world is a man or woman at age fifty-plus who finds that the thread has snapped. They always found it is easy to get reasonably decent jobs. Suddenly, it is not easy. They never gave any thought to career planning, and now the only visible direction of their employment history leads to old age.
A continuous career, incidentally, is not necessarily related to continuous paid employment. Being a homemaker, for instance, can be very much a part of a solid career.
Myth: You learn from your career mistakes.
Fact: All you learn from your mistakes is what not to do. They don‘t tell you what to do. The founder of professional career counseling in the United States, Bernard Haldane, established that the study of individual successes, not failures, is the most valuable tool in career planning.
