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Licia Dewing

Career Strategist

I build compelling & triumphant career strategies for my clients and believe we can all create a career we #LOVE - #WORK is not meant to be a struggle.

My Career Strategy process will teach you how to think #MINDSET differently and take #ACTIONSTEPS to move you forward. Apply these simple strategies to #CREATE the desired results in your #CAREER.

Book a complimentary Career Strategy Connect.

If you enjoyed this blog, take a look at "How to Advance Your Career With Personal
Growth” for more mindset and action steps to power your career forward.

How Early Career Influences Shape Your Professional Path

Why Your Childhood Might Be Steering Your Career (and What to Do About It)

When we think about career development, we usually focus on skills, networking, or job market trends.

But there’s another, quieter influence that plays a huge role in the choices we make: the messages we absorbed about work early in life.

These early career influences—the people, experiences, and environments from our childhood—can shape our mindset around success, money, ambition, and risk. Most of us carry them unconsciously, even decades later.

How Early Career Influences Shape Your Professional Path

Your career choices may not be as spontaneous or self-directed as they seem. These unconscious beliefs, emotional associations, and expectations we absorb in childhood about work, money, and success.

Whether you realize it or not, your career mindset today may be rooted in the experiences and messages you were exposed to long before you typed your first résumé.

What Are Early Career Influences?

They’re the beliefs and attitudes we pick up from adults and experiences during our formative years.

Think about:

The way your parents talked about their jobs (or didn’t).
Whether work was a source of pride or stress in your home.
What careers were presented to you as “successful,” “secure,” or “impractical.”
The kinds of work you saw modeled around you—whether through family, teachers, or community members.

These form the career conditioning that shapes how we think about work, often without us being conscious of it.

These early messages often become mental scripts.

Some of them help.

Others can hold us back.

How They Shape Us.

These influences can shape:

What kind of work feels “safe”
What you consider “real success”
Whether you aim high or play it safe
Your attitude toward authority, structure, or risk
The kinds of workplaces where you thrive (or don’t)

Career development is about self-awareness.

When you hit roadblocks like burnout, imposter syndrome, or chronic dissatisfaction, early career influences could be at play.

Understanding them helps with:

Identifying misaligned goals
Releasing inherited fears or pressures
Making intentional, values-based career moves

Real-Life Examples of Early Career Conditioning

Example 1:

Someone who grew up with entrepreneur parents might avoid business ownership as an adult—not because they lack the skill or desire, but because they associate entrepreneurship with instability and stress.

Example 2:

Another person who saw a parent thrive in a community-facing role may struggle to find meaning in a corporate job, even if the salary is better.

In both cases, early career experiences silently shape adult decisions.

Why This Matters Now

We can’t change the past, but we can become more aware of how it’s affecting our present. If you're feeling stuck, misaligned, or confused about your career direction, looking back might offer answers that assessments and career quizzes never could.

How to Reflect and Reframe Your Career Mindset

Here’s a simple exercise:

To reconnect with your true career direction, try this reflection exercise:

List the adults who influenced your view of work – parents, relatives, teachers, neighbors.
Write down what you learned from them – directly or indirectly. What did their work life look like? How did it make you feel?
Notice any patterns or emotional reactions – pride, fear, pressure, rebellion.
Ask yourself: Are these beliefs helping me now? Or are they limiting me?

This isn’t about blaming anyone.

It’s about understanding the script you were handed—and deciding if it still serves you.

This kind of career reflection brings clarity. It helps you separate what you want from what you were taught to want.

Final Thoughts:

We don’t start our careers with a clean slate. We inherit ideas, fears, and motivations from the world we grew up in. The good news?

Early career influences are powerful, but they’re not destiny.

Once we recognize those early influences, we can start making career choices based on who we are now—not just who we were expected to be- we can stop operating on autopilot and start building a career that actually fits you—not just the version of you shaped by childhood expectations.