Career consultations, especially for young people who are new to the workforce, are always a challenge for the consultant. It is the combination of the Gen Y disconnect and anxious parents who seem adverse to their child potentially making mistakes in life. 

In a recent case, the client in question was extremely concerned about the role that their offspring (a fresh graduate) was going to focus on and was insistent on a specific answer about the exact role the young graduate should aim for. The young person herself did not have any specific interests or a profession that she was interested in pursuing although she did have some very specific ideas of what she wanted out of a job – the typically Gen Y expectations: good money but not too much responsibility, power but not too much so that it becomes a burden, a job that affords opportunities for travel, diversity to avoid boredom.

Yada. Yada. Yada. 

<Eye-roll. Young people these days>

In any case, my answer to the parent was simply that the young person in question had

a) outrageous expectations for a person their age, not to mention a rather overinflated sense of entitlement

b) in the absence of any real desire/passion to pursue a specific career, it would be unwise to pigeon the young person into a specific role at an early age.

Which brings me to my less than scientific, mostly metaphysical method of evaluating career-related issues. In arriving at this theory, I have tried to put together data from Mian Xiang and BaZi together. The theory is this – the magic number is 28. This means two things:

– If you don’t know what you want to do, you don’t need to decide until you reach the age of 28.

– If you know what you want to do from an early age and have clear career focus, then by the age of 28, you need to have made some traction or headway with that role or career aspiration.

If at 28, you don’t know what you want to do OR you have been plugging away at something but geting nowhere with it…then…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTSVOnhLtCs

So, some of you are probably wondering – where does this 28 number come from and is it completely random? Or something to do with the fact that 2 and 8 sound auspicious?

Actually it comes from this:

In Mian Xiang, point 28, which co-relates to a person being 27 years old (since the Chinese age begins at 1 years old) represents what is known as the Fortune and Virtue Palace. It’s essentially the space between your eyebrows. In Mian Xiang, point 28 should be spacious and fleshy and devoid of scars or marks. A good Fortune and Virtue palace denotes a good level of ambition, high aspirations and a desire to get somewhere in life. 

Broadly speaking, it is rare for people to have an all around great face. Meaning, all the three palaces (Heaven, Earth, Man) are ideal. Most people have some features that are better than others.

Point 28 represents the transition from the Forehead (which represents the ages of 15-27) to the Eyes, which governs the late twenties to about the late 30s. If one has a good forehead (please read Joey Yap’s Mian Xiang texts for the qualifier on this as it’s too long to explain) and good Fortune and Virtue Palace, then most of the time, these are the people who have a good idea of what they want to do in life from early on and usually are fast out of the gate. If they then do not have good eyes, then it is important that by 28 (before moving into Eye Luck), they have already reached a reasonably high standpoint in their career, thus allowing for 10 years of consolidation in the eye phase of life. By contrast, if the forehead is not good (short, slanted back), these are usually people who enter the workforce somewhat uncertain of what they want to do and need to have time trying out different roles to really work out what’s right for them (within obviously, the broad sphere dictated by their BaZi). The point of time till the age of 28 is about experimentation and tactile exploration of the workplace, and finding out what they are comfortable at doing or enjoy excelling at. With luck, they will have reasonably good Eye Luck, thus, post 28 becomes a period of growth and advancement for them.

Using this background information, the number 28 was derived.

So, for a young person who has NO IDEA what they want to do, it is best from a BaZi consultant’s standpoint, to provide some industry guidance based on the best elements for the chart, but to avoid being too specific with the role they should undertake beyond very broad guidelines. The idea is to give them space to explore a variety of roles and possibilities, without prejudicing them about what is right for them. And usually, people who have no idea what they want to do go around with blinkers about what the job is all about anyway. So it’s good for them to be cast out into the working world and to flounder and make all their mistakes. As I pointed out to this client, no 23 year old has managed to destroy a company yet – you usually need to be in your early 30s to do that at least. So their early and mid twenties are a good time to experiment and feel around for what they enjoy and have a passion or interest in doing, without it being necessarily detrimental to their career. You want to make mistakes early on, rather than attempt a U turn later in life, when it starts to matter or when you have fewer choices or when obligations and responsibilities of a financial nature start to come into the equation.

By contrast, young people who have clear ideas of what they want are likely to have already made an effort early on to experience the job they are interested in or are almost likely to be able to handle the obstacles or challenges of the job they are focused on attaining by virtue of drive and passion. So with them, the idea is to ensure advancement early on, with a view to using the Eye Luck Period for consolidation or readjustments by way of fine-tuning their job scope or career interests. Usually at that stage, it is about specialisation or narrowing the expertise or it is about broadening the scope of their experiences and knowledge by doing ‘different jobs’, knowing that they already have a strong 6-7 years of experience in a specific area that they can fall back on.

So, when it comes to career matters, the magic number is