What-you-should-be-when-you-grow-up need not and should not be planned in advance.
Instead career counselors should teach their clients the importance of engaging in a variety of
interesting and beneficial activities, ascertaining their reactions, remaining alert to alternative
opportunities, and learning skills for succeeding in each new activity. Four propositions: (1)
The goal of career counseling is to help clients learn to take actions to achieve more satisfying
career and personal lives—not to make a single career decision. (2) Assessments are used to
stimulate learning, not to match personal characteristics with occupational characteristics. (3)
Clients learn to engage in exploratory actions as a way of generating beneficial unplanned
events. (4) The success of counseling is assessed by what the client accomplishes in the real
world outside the counseling session.