Self-awareness in one's career

Your beliefs today

"Personalities, values and underlying beliefs...will influence what career people choose," writes Mary Hope in "Are You Just a Job Title? Work and Identity Explored." This is "the key to both professional success and contentment." More specifically, a person's underlying beliefs about how the world works helps determine the psychological profile of their job.

Psychological profile of a job

In "How Your Job Shapes Your Identity," The Book of Life raises questions about what kinds of thought and action your job requires you to do. Those questions could be paraphrased as follows. To look at the present or future? To promote positive outcomes or to warn of risks? To see things concretely or to interpret their meaning? To be suspicious of others' motives or to trust them? To see the better or worse sides of human nature? To seek consensus or go your own way? To withstand criticism or to be guaranteed respect? To have a clear path to advancement or accept chance? To deal with industry decline or industry growth? To set financial goals or to have other motivations? The article calls these "the psychological requirements and consequences of jobs — what mindsets a job breeds, what doing the job requires of your inner life, how it expands us and (crucially) limits us." The answers to the questions identify "what traits of human nature [the jobs] weaken or reinforce."

Has your work changed you?

Once a job is landed, it can influence or even replace one's original identity. "Role engulfment" describes what happens when people "lose all sense of themselves except as they exist through work," Hope writes. "For those people the loss of work or being forced to change career through redundancy or retirement can provoke a severe identity crisis, with people asking: ‘Who am I? What am I if I don’t work?’."

Role engulfment does not happen as a merely private process. It is often socially prompted. "In a rootless culture with no obvious class markers," that is, the United States, at least, writes Joe Robinson in "American Identity Crisis: Are You Your Job?,"

"the job defines the person and the pecking order. You are what you do. It’s a case of mistaken identity that is hazardous to your health, life, and even the work you do. In a 24/7 world where we’re always in work mode, there’s little escape from the identity that’s not you."

This "performance identity" leaves you vulnerable to

"false beliefs that rub out the real you — that all value lies in performance, that you can’t step back from production and tasks for a second, or you’re a slacker; that busyness is next to godliness; that self-worth comes from the productivity yardstick, net worth; or that taking time for your life is an interruption of production."

One goal of becoming more aware of one's underlying beliefs and the psychological profile of one's current job is to avoid having one's identity engulfed by the job. Another goal is to be better able to perform in one's current job or to choose a new job.

Quotes: Feeling a change in one's life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

”If you are in a state of painful thirst, then a bottle of water increase your well-being significantly. More water means more pleasure. But what if I gave you a cistern of water? Clearly your well-being becomes rapidly insensitive to further quantities. As a matter of fact, if I gave you the choice between a bottle or a cistern you would prefer the bottle – so your enjoyment declines with additional quantities.

These nonlinear relationships are ubiquitous in life. Linear relationships are truly the exception; we only focus on them in classrooms and textbooks because they are easier to understand.”

J. B. MacKinnon:

"I have a rule of thumb for when a lifestyle change will be meaningful: When it feels like an adventure."

Robert A. Burton:

”Though not necessarily aware of when we feel purpose and meaning, we are nearly always aware of the sickening feeling when we don't possess them.”

Norman Boucher:

“‘If you lack empathy,’ President [Ruth] Simmons told the members of the [Brown University] class of 2011 assembled inside the First Baptist Church in America on Sunday morning, ‘you will find yourself lacking a fundamental necessity for leading a life of usefulness and reputation.’ Work every day, she urged the graduates, to strengthen the ability to empathize with others.”

Anthony Robbins:

"Often individuals do things that afterward they are unhappy with themselves about simply because they are not clear about what they unconsciously believe is right for them and others.”

Barbara J. King:

“...our ancient primate legacy is to be transformed moment by moment through the process of being social and emotional with others.”

Virginia Woolf:

"...one never knows how far other people feel the things they might be supposed to feel."

Glennon Doyle Melton:

"I’ll just say that my heart did that thing that happened to the Grinch – remember when his heart swelled so many sizes that it almost burst? That’s why I go to church – for the heart swelling. The heart swelling is the only buzz I have left. Luckily it’s the best one I’ve found: the kind of buzz that leaves me better and bigger instead of worse and smaller."

Sources

Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007. p. 89.

"In an Age of Eco-Uncertainty." J. B. MacKinnon. Reprinted from Explore (May 2010). UTNE Reader, Sept-Oct 2010, p. 73.

Robert A. Burton. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not. New York: St. Martin's Grffin, 2008. p, 178.

“The Send-Off.” Norman Boucher. Brown Alumni Magazine, [date unrecorded] p. 10.

Anthony Robbins. Unlimited Power. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1986.pp. 17-18.

Barbara J. King. Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2007. p. 168.

Virginia Woolf. The Voyage Out (1915).

“The most honest, beautiful, important question I have ever heard anyone ask.” Glennon Doyle Melton. Momastery. April 1, 2015.