Identifying and addressing any barriers to your decision-making about careers or courses is an important part of the entire decision-making process.

Internal barriers

These can be internal and psychological - it is difficult to think clearly when negative thoughts, acting as barriers, interfere with your decision making. To identify and overcome your personal barriers it is important to pay attention to your self-talk, become self-aware, and then remain aware of, and control, your self talk. To do this you may use a process involving identifying, challenging and altering your negative thinking then taking the action needed to implement your career choice. To get more help, come to the Careers Service |and speak to a careers adviser.

Getting more help

If you're finding career decision making particularly difficult, is it also possible that there are other, more immediate, personal issues you may need to sort out first? Could you use some help with this? As well as the careers service there are counsellors and advisers in the Student Centre | who may be able to offer help.

External problems

Barriers can also be partly due to external pressures and circumstances. If you're desperately short of money, for example, the worry and stress caused by this may make it difficult to concentrate on longer term issues. If you're a mature student, you may need to take the needs of other family members into account, as well as your own. Some groups of people may be unconfident or hesitant about career decision making because their social or cultural background, their gender, race, religion, sexuality, or some physical disability appears to limit their choices in some way.

Getting more help

It can be helpful to talk all this over with a careers adviser |or personal tutor who may have practical solutions to offer.