know your career
A father once sat in my office and answered every question I asked his son. “He’s good at Math, so Engineering makes sense,” he said, before his son had opened his mouth. I gently asked the boy what he thought. He shrugged. “I don’t know, actually. Nobody’s asked me that before.” That moment stayed with me, because it’s more common than you’d think. Most career decisions in Nepal get made based on marks, family expectation, or whatever’s trending rarely based on the person actually making the decision.
Why “knowing yourself” isn’t just a nice idea
Self-awareness sounds like something you’d find in a self-help book, not a career plan. But in practice, it’s the single biggest predictor of whether someone ends up satisfied in their work ten years down the line. When you understand your natural strengths, the values that matter to you, and the kind of environment where you actually do your best work, every decision after that which stream, which job offer, which promotion to chase gets easier and clearer.
Without that foundation, people end up making choices based on what looks good on paper or what someone else wants for them. It usually works out fine for a few years. Then the dissatisfaction creeps in, and they’re back in my office at 28, asking the same question they should have asked at 18.
What self-awareness actually looks like in practice
It’s not just “what am I good at.” It’s a combination of a few different things:
Your interests : what pulls your attention naturally, without anyone pushing you toward it.
Your strengths : not just academic strengths, but how you think, solve problems, and interact with people.
Your values : what matters to you in how you spend your working hours: stability, creativity, impact, independence, recognition.
Your working style : whether you do your best work in a structured office, a fast-changing startup, alone, or in a team.
Most people can name maybe one of these clearly. Rarely all four.
Why a structured assessment helps more than self-reflection alone
I always tell students: you can absolutely reflect on your own, and you should. But a lot of self-reflection just confirms what you already believe about yourself, which isn’t always accurate. A well-designed, evidence-based career assessment the kind we use in our sessions gives you an outside, structured mirror. It often surfaces things people already sensed but couldn’t quite name, or challenges assumptions they’ve carried since childhood without questioning them.
I’ve had students walk in convinced they were “Science students” simply because that’s what toppers are supposed to choose, only to discover through assessment that their actual strengths pointed somewhere completely different and thrive once they gave themselves permission to follow that instead.
A few honest questions to start with
If you can’t get to a counselor this week, start here, on paper, honestly:
What do I do that makes time disappear?
What kind of praise actually means something to me being called smart, being called hardworking, being called creative?
If money and family expectation weren’t part of the equation, what would I lean toward?
What have I quit or avoided, and why?
These aren’t easy questions, and you won’t fully answer them in one sitting. That’s fine. The goal isn’t a perfect answer it’s starting the habit of checking in with yourself before checking in with everyone else’s opinion.
Where this fits in the bigger picture
Knowing yourself is the first of eight habits I talk about often with the students and professionals I coach — the ones who go on to build careers they’re actually proud of tend to practice a similar set of things. If you haven’t yet, it’s worth reading the full picture in 8 Ways to Take Charge of Your Career.
If you’d like to go through a proper self-assessment rather than guessing, that’s exactly where we can help.