Vitalign Blog

Tag: career pivot

  • How to have a miserable work life (5 Steps)

    If you just stumbled across this headline, you’re probably thinking… what? Why in the world would I want to do that?

    Well… I’ve got news for you. You already clicked on the headline and are reading this post. So you must have some type of curiosity.

    It’s a way of thinking I find very helpful, called inversion thinking. (More on that later)

    But for now, let’s talk about the 5 crucial steps to having a miserable work life.

    5 Steps to a miserable work life

    1. Let social pressure sway your decision

    This is the most important step… as you can’t possibly make the right decision by yourself, right? You need to let what other people tell you or expect from you to have a big say in this.

    After all, it’s not like you’re making this decision for yourself. 

    So, if your parents say they want you to be a doctor or a lawyer, that is exactly what you should do. It is important that you please everybody with this decision. (No unhappy relatives!!)

    The last thing you would want is to disappoint, or go against anybody else’s opinion.

    Which brings me to my next point…

    2. Choose what makes you the most money

    Let’s face it… everybody wants to make as much money as they can. So what you spend most of your day doing in pursuit of money doesn’t even matter, right?

    Want to know why?

    Because money buys happiness! (Duh)

    The last thing you would want is to pick a career that you have genuine skills in… God forbid, having some genuine interest in your work. (yuck!) You definitely don’t want that.

    You just want to make as much money as you can, as fast as you can!

    That’s where the true joy will come from.

    3. Stay on your current path

    It is a fundamental law of nature to follow the path of least resistance. A career is no exception to that.

    If you’re already far along a certain path, you might as well keep at it. Even if you know the end road isn’t where you want to be. Because pivoting to another path requires you to forfeit all of the work you’ve already done.

    That’s why sticking to the path that you’re already on is a great way to get stuck in a career that you completely despise.

    Because it’s so easy to keep going. Too easy.

    4. Take the first opportunity

    Don’t give yourself many options. 

    The company that reaches back out to you first is the one you should go with.

    You want to have as little choices as possible. The more options you have the higher the chance you have of picking something actually good, which you DEFINITELY wouldn’t want.

    5. Shortest commute

    Commutes suck…

    You don’t want to have a long commute to work every day. 

    A longer commute can make the difference between dreading work, and looking forward to it.

    To piggyback on #4, you want as few options as possible. Only considering places close to home is another great way to limit your options, and your potential.

    Congrats!

    If you followed those simple steps properly.

    You probably look something like this guy.

    Okay.. but seriously. You don’t want any of that (obviously). 

    The real reason I wrote this blog is to show you a framework called “inversion thinking”. 

    I love this framework. 

    It is super helpful in times where I struggle to make the right decision on what to do. I realized that I was looking at many problems in my life completely wrong. And you are too.(Probably)

    Sometimes, the easiest way to make these decisions is not to figure out what to do. It’s actually to figure out what to avoid doing. When you do that, you (more often than not) end up doing the right thing.

    I hope I’m making sense.

    To tie this back to your career. Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out what you actually want to do with your life. And a sad reality that I’ve come to realize…

    A lot of people never figure it out.

    Many people actually spend their whole lives without making that life-changing discovery.

    Luckily, I did.

    I spent time thinking about a lot of the biggest problems I see in the world. 

    And soon enough… I realized that this problem made the top of the list. I realized what I want to do is help people with this problem. And guide them (as best as I can) to make this discovery for themselves. In a way that is straight forward, fast, and cost-effective.

    And from there, my idea for Vitalign was born.

    What is Vitalign?

    It is a guided self-discovery platform that helps you figure out what kind of work actually fits you — not just what you’re capable of doing, but what’s going to give you energy and keep you engaged. It’s built on real psychology and personality science, with some AI to connect the dots.

    It’s simple. You take the test, answer about 25 questions — and then you get this personalized breakdown of your natural strengths, weaknesses, what motivates you, and the types of careers that actually make sense for someone wired like you are.

    And here’s the best part.

    It can show you options you probably didn’t even know existed. Career paths you didn’t even know were on the table.

    I built it myself, and am improving it everyday. I think it can really help you.

    The test is free to take. If you want the full results, the cost is $50. 

    You can take it as many times as you like. And if you used it, and you didn’t get any true sense of value from it, you can send me an email, and I will personally refund your money.

    You can take the test here:

    https://vitalign.ai/

    All you have to do is go on the website, click “Start Assessment”, answer the questions, and get your free results.

    If you like what you see there, you can buy the full results, and have access to it right on the page. You can also have it sent to your email.

  • How many Americans get trapped in soul-draining careers

    “Do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life”

    A saying that we have all heard at some point in our lives. 

    It sounds easy enough, right?

    Well… it’s shown to be one of those things which is easier said than done.

    In reality, many people go through the path well traveled, the path of graduating high school, going off to college, picking the major that sounds best to them at the time, potentially switching their major a few times, finally graduating, then getting a job.

    🎓 The Underemployment Crisis: A Sobering Reality

    Sounds like a straight forward path… however, an interesting study by the New York Fed shows that only 27% of US Graduates actually Utilize their major.

    You can have a look that New York Fed study HERE.

    This speaks to a term called underemployment, which means somebody is employed in a job for which they are overqualified. Sadly enough, this phenomenon, shown by multiple studies taken since 1970, is increasing year over year.

     But that begs the question, why?

    Why is an increasing percentage of our population spending years of precious time in higher education? Putting up with the stress, and accruing debt in the process… all for nothing?

    ❌ Why We Choose Wrong:

    The only sensible answer I’ve been able to come up with in regards to this question, aside from the obvious “for the college experience” excuse that I hear so often, is the lack of proper guidance to make the right choice of degree in the beginning.

    If they truly made the right decision on what they want to dedicate their lives to, these statistics would not look the way they do.

    But the reality is, they don’t…

    Most people actually choose wrong, and those people end up with a whole lot of debt, and a whole lot of time wasted. But our society wants you to think that is “normal”. Normal to waste that much time in some of the most cherished years of life, hop on the hamster wheel of school debt so early, and for no good reason. And they want you to think it’s normal to be 22+ years old and under-skilled in your actual career of interest because you have to change careers later on.

    That’s not normal if you ask me.

    Finding Fulfillment:

    The way many people make their decision on what career path they want to follow, doesn’t take into account important aspects of their personality that will play a vital role in overall career fulfillment and happiness down the line. Without the ability to analyze yourself objectively and take these variables into account, it will be extremely hard to put yourself on a path to success.

    Not only should you have genuine interest in your career, but it should align with your personality in the sense that it leverages your strengths and doesn’t rely on your weaknesses.

    A career plays a significant part of our lives, and can truly make or break your overall happiness. Which is why it is so important to find a career path that doesn’t feel like it quite literally “drains the life out of you”, but instead gives you energy pursuing it, rather than taking it.

    Unfortunately, by the time that many realize they chose the wrong path, they feel like it is “too late” to pivot.

    To me, this is one of the saddest realities of many lives today. It pains me to think of all those who are out there that are struggling to find their life’s passion… those without a true goal to build their dreams around.

    It’s Never Too Late: The Value of Your Time

    Time is one of the most valuable and precious assets we have, and throughout our lives, we spend much of it working… time we will never get back. This is why it is so important to decide what we would like to spend that time doing.

    If you feel that your life, and your work, doesn’t have you on a path leading you towards where you want to go. Just know that you are not alone, and it is never too late.

    This is an issue I’m extremely passionate about helping people solve. This passion is what has led me to building a solution to this problem to help people like you, called Vitalign. I’ve spent many hours creating a product that will get your first step in the right direction.

    It is essentially a self-discovery test that blends psychology, personality science, and a bit of AI’s capabilities to connect the dots.

    Once you take the test, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of your strengths, your motivators, and the fields that fit you best — including ones you might’ve never even known existed.

    If you’ve ever felt stuck, lost, or like you’re just going through the motions, this might be the perspective shift you’ve been needing. It can open your mind to possibilities you may have never had the opportunity to consider and help you put together an action plan to make it happen.

    All you have to do is go to vitalign.com, click on “take assessment”, and answer the 24 questions about your goals, life, and career. It will generate the report automatically for you once you finish the test, and it gives you some results for free. If you want access to the full results of the report, it costs $50.

    I’m working on this product and improving it every day, and I really think it can help you.

    I would love to hear your thoughts.

    You can take the free test right now at vitalign.com — and start moving closer to the work you were actually made for.