Contributed by Cindi Pearce, Catalogs.com Top 10 Guru

Sometimes a career chooses you instead of the other way around, but you can’t count on that.

Put some serious thought into how you want to spend the rest of your life because you are going to spend a lot of time at work.

Here are the top 10 tips for choosing a career:

10. Know your passions

Pick a career that you are passionate about. The best gift you can give to yourself is to pursue a career that is so enthralling that it gets you out of bed in the morning, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager and in anticipation of that day’s work and what it will entail.

9. Please yourself

If your well-meaning parents are insisting that you go to medical school, which you don’t want to do, or become a teacher, because it’s a secure job, but which holds no appeal for you, this is the time to take a stand. You can either succumb to parental pressures and wishes or say, no, that’s not what I want to do. Of course, if the parents are footing the bill you have a dilemma on your hands. However, if you do as you advised to do and not as you want to do you are probably going to regret it until your dying day. Showing up to a job that you dislike or even hate every day for the next 40 years or more is not going to make you a happy camper.

8. Do financial analysis

Ideally, pick a profession that interests and excites you but one that also pays decently. Yeah, we know. You want to be a professional rock n’ roller, and that’s great, but you need to figure out a way to incorporate your musical leanings into a paying job.

7. Rate your values

Write a list of what is most important to you or the things that you value: Is money at the top of the list? Ample leisure time? Do you want the kind of job that requires that you travel? Is job security the most important thing to you or do you prefer flying without a net? Answer these questions and then decide if being a circus performer or an accountant will give you what is most important to you and if doing one of these jobs is really how you want to spend your working life.

6. Be open-minded

Don’t actively choose a career; let it choose you. Now this doesn’t mean that you are to sprawl on the couch waiting for a job to drop into your lap. Get a job, keep your eyes and ears open and see what else is out there career-wise that appeals to you. You might not even know what appeals to you until you are introduced to it and that can happen it some crazy, round-about manner.

5. Job vs. career

Realize that a career is different from a job. A job is something that you do to pay the mortgage. A career is something that infuses you with pleasure and accomplishment because it is work you love to do and purposely set out to do it by getting the education and experience that was necessary.

4. Random-ize

Open the phone book to the yellow pages, close your eyes and take a stab with your finger. Whatever you land on is your career. (Jok-ing.)

3. Test

Take a career test, which shows where your aptitudes lie. You can find these online or at community colleges. These tests are often given to high school students.

2. Research

Get online and research “careers.” You might be pleasantly surprised to find that there are careers that you’d never thought of before. Determine what you need to do to get a job in a particular field (education, etc.) Determine much this career pays, how easy or difficult it is to get a job into this field and where you need to be located. What are the dress requirements? Will you have to wear a uniform and is that okay with you? Now decide.

1. Get creative

Don’t have a career. Spend your life job jumping. This works for some people. For most, though, this is a bit dangerous, and you can end up 75 years old without a pot to …………well, you know.