Fear of Regret Can Paralyze...or Propel

There are regrets (Why did I post that drunken selfie on FB?) and then there are regrets (Why did I study sociology when I want to be an architect?). In our twenties we tend to fear both types of regrets, but it's the latter that most affects us. We can become so paralyzed by fear of regret that we fail to act at all; we think any action might be the wrong action.

And our worries aren't unfounded. We all accumulate regrets with age, as your classmate Lisa exemplifies in her post Start From Where You Are and Believe. One-third of American adults have education regrets, one-quarter have career regrets, and 15% have romance regrets.

So, yes, regrets may be in our future, and they're worth fearing. But only if we use that fear to propel us toward a more genuine, fulfilling life doing work that is meaningful to us. And that pays the bills in the process.

Fear Regretting Inauthentic Choices

When I tell my real-world students the following, they look at me like I'm the biggest dork in the world. Get your "wow you're uncool" face ready:  I make all my major life decisions by consciously considering the end of my life. And psychologist Erik Erikson.

Bear with me. Erikson - who we've talked about as the it-man of identity development theory - said that in the final stage of our lives we want to have a sense of integrity instead of feeling despair. We gain integrity from reviewing our lives and seeing that we the life choices we made were authentic to our selves and matched our core identities.

So I let Erikson and my deathbed propel me. I mean, who wouldn't? (Uh, most normal people.)

Join in on my morbidity - when you're on the cusp of a major decision think, what would my elderly (dying) self think of this choice? You'll never go wrong if you pick what's genuine to you. Assuming you've done the work to discover your true self, a process we'll be discussing in upcoming classes.

This approach truly works. Believe me; I'm well acquainted with dying Becca. (She's very, very old. And stunningly gorgeous for her age.)

Inaction is Worse Than Action

SweetlyIndecisive began a recent post with the claim that inaction is more regrettable than action. When you ask college students, though, they consistently refute this, saying they most regret what they've done. That's probably because we're stupid idiots in college. (Uh, hello running a college radio show on which I thought it was a good idea to sing along with the songs.)

It's only when we broaden out to the "average American" that inaction becomes the big regret.  While adults have equal numbers of action and inaction regrets, their regrets about inaction last longer and cause more severe losses than regrettable actions.

In other words, do something. Anything. Except singing on the radio.

You'll Most Regret What You Can Change

That isn't a typo:  we have more intense regrets about situations that we can still change. What can we learn from this? That it's a good idea to either immediately take the corrective action, or instead to create closure such that action is no longer a possibility. Otherwise it's going to haunt you. For a long, long while.

Interpersonal Regrets Are Most Powerful

Although we have many regrets about education and career when we're adults, regrets about interpersonal issues sting the most. As psychologists Morrison, Epstude and Roese say, "Failed marriages, turbulent romances, and lost time with family may elicit regrets that last a lifetime."

In other words, don't focus on your professional development to the detriment of your personal life. Our need to belong obliterates our need to achieve, to have status, and to have financial gain. So keep things in perspective. Or else you'll regret it. And I don't just mean the way celebs regret their atrocious selfies. I mean the real deal.

Have you racked up any big-time regrets? If so, what advice would you give others so they can avoid them?

Sources:

Morrison, M. & Roese, N. J.  (2011). Regrets of the typical American:  Findings from a nationally representative sample. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 576-583.

Morrison, M., Epstude, & Roese, N. J. (2012). Life regrets and the need to belong. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 674-681.

Tell me that the person who posted this never regretted it. (Photo credit: This Year's Love)

Erik Erikson. My hero. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There's nothing quite like family. There'd be no awkward photos without them. (Photo credit: marcia.furman)

There's Nothing I Can Do. Or Is There?

The twenties are a time when everything feels out of control:  you can visualize a lifestyle you'd like to have, but can't see the steps to get there; your job is entry-level and low paying, if you've even managed to get someone to hire you; and your sense of self vaguely resembles waterlogged putty.

It's no wonder we have the urge to throw up our hands and say, "Forget it. There's nothing I can do. This sucks."

Believe me, I've done the hand tossing myself. Many times over. As recently as last week.

But as we discussed in the last class, feeling in control - even when things look like a right ol' mess - is vitally important to forging a fulfilling career and, given the number of hours we spend at our jobs, a satisfying life.

So here are some tips about how to feel like there is something you can do, even when life is persuading you otherwise.

Avoid Absolutes

You know this tip from SAT prep:  words like "never" and "always" are red flags of an incorrect answer choice. So too in life (who knew that the SATs were actually worth something?). If you hear yourself speak - or listen to the incessant chatter in your head - and notice tons of absolutes, you're doing yourself a disservice. Instead make friends with the phrases "sometimes," "in this case," and "once in a while." It pays to be wishy-washy. Sometimes.

Know That You Always Have Options

They may not be great ones, but they're still options. For instance, if there aren't any job nibbles where you're currently living, you could consider moving somewhere (e.g., to a city) where there may be more opportunities. When you're feeling like life's shoving you around, take five minutes to do the dorky thing and write all conceivable possibilities down. Better yet, get a friend involved in your brainstorming dorkfest; two minds are better than one. Even if she then has this tidbit to blackmail you with. (BTW, did you catch the "always" in this header? A-ha, I am testing you!)

Recognize Your Role in Good Events

Typically when we get into the "life's out of my control" mindset, we extend it to the good things that happen to us, too. Instead of realizing that we actually did something to make a happy event happen - like a job offer or a romantic milestone - we tend to chalk it up to "chance" or "luck" or something someone did for us. Since it's easier to convince ourselves of our role in positive outcomes than negative ones, you can start your mindset change right here.

Know That If All Else Fails, You Can Still Work on Improving You

There's a ready-and-waiting option available no matter what:  no one and nothing can stop you from working to improve yourself. Look at people in prison - even they attempt self-improvement, regardless of their obvious barriers to freedom of choice. If you can't secure a job or you're stuck living in your parents' basement or your idea of a roaring good time is following Kim Kardashian's mind-numbing exploits, you can still work toward identifying the career - and life - you'd ideally want. That's a matter of identity development, something we've talked about in the past and have a lot left to cover, which is why we'll be diving into the topic next week.

But first up, regrets. You'll regret it if you miss that class (sorry, I couldn't resist) - see you Friday!

Tell me:  How do you fight the urge to say "There's nothing I can do"? I'm open to suggestions - and could use the pointers myself!

Source:

Gardner, D. C., & Beatty, G. J. (2001). Locus of control change techniques: Important variables in work training. Education, 100, 237-242.

We're naturally good at hopeless. Finding the opposite is the challenge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Life going right for a change? What did you do to make it happen? (Photo credit: Verpletterend)

Sense of Control and Career: Too Much Gloom Spells Doom

It's that time of year when graduating college students shift into career victimization mode. "I'll never get a job. Nothing I do will ever matter. I might as well go curl up in a ball and watch endless reruns of The Walking Dead while gorging on Cap'n Crunch."

During my ten years of teaching, I've heard variations of this statement every single year. Simply alter the TV show du jour.

Do young people feel more out of control during a down economy? Slightly. But you'd be amazed at how consistent the "I'm totally sunk" sentiments are.

That's because the comments are about a way of viewing the world. They're not about reality.

You can't control the job market, you can't control whether interviews result in offers, you can't control how many pounds you gain from the Cap'n Crunch, but you can control your thoughts about career. Even when you receive so few responses to job applications that you check your resume to make sure the contact info is listed right. (I've done that.)

Feeling In Control...or Out of It

The key question to answer is this:  do you generally feel like your efforts matter, or do you feel like a victim of circumstance?

Actually, it may be better to ask your friends this question. They're the ones who hear you talk. Ad nauseum. They know whether you generally act like you're in control (called an internal locus of control) or generally think life is out to get you (an external locus of control). In common parlance, whether you're a whiner.

Perception of control is much more important than actual control. The economy is screwing all young workers over. No arguing there. But some of my seniors believe they're in charge of the job search process all the same. They say things like, "I need to send out more applications. And I'm gonna start using the alumni network. And maybe I'll start volunteering at that clinic I'd love to work in."

This Isn't Optimism

Before we get too far, let's clear up a common misconception:  having a sense of control isn't the same as being optimistic.

Which I think is a good thing.

I don't know about you but I find perpetually optimistic people to be grating. I mean, 53% of recent college graduates are out of work or underemployed. To be like, "oh, this is delightful, you all have so much more free time!" would be absolutely ridiculous. (Although I must admit to toeing that line in my post "Why the Bad Economy May be Good News for Millennials" Sorry about that.)

Sense of control and optimism are related, yes, but they aren't the same. So feel free to increase your sense of control without worrying that you'll lose your cynical street cred. You can be the person who says, "The job market totally sucks. Yet there are things I can do to work toward a satisfying career. After I'm done bashing the pick of Gwyneth Paltrow as world's most beautiful woman."

Why Sense of Control Matters

This isn't some "positive thinking" infomercial. Sense of control has been found by psychologists to be key to career outcomes. College students who have an internal locus of control are more decisive about their careers, have higher career aspirations, and have less career choice anxiety than people with external loci. They're everything we Career Avoiders dream of being.

And in middle age, people who have a strong sense of control are more satisfied with their jobs and have better job performance than those who feel out of control. Not bad for just a difference in outlook.

Are You Stuck With a Certain Sense of Control?

The good news is that your sense of control is not part of your personality. It's completely changeable.

The bad news is that it takes a good deal of intention and effort to make the change.

But we're in it together, aren't we? So next time we''ll talk through some strategies for changing your sense of career control. Because gosh knows the economy ain't changing any time soon. Might as well change ourselves instead.

I want to know:  how in control of your career do you feel? Be honest!

Source:

Duffy, R. D. (2010). Sense of control and career adaptability among college students. Journal of Career Assessment, 18, 420-430.

This dog looks the way some of my graduating seniors feel. (Photo credit: Ruben Bos)

I'm not asking you to become this guy. (Photo credit: hynkle)

Flashback Friday: Work-Life Balance

I've often wondered what advice my 30something self would give my 20something self. Now, through the time travel magic of journaling, we can find out. Journal Entry from September 2, 2003 (25 years old; my first semester teaching at Bates College after leaving a PhD program)

Me Then: Today I went in at 7:15am and returned at 6:45pm. Long day. Of course [my husband] has been doing 7 to 7 for two years. I'm just coming to fully realize his frustration and aggravation. I always tried to make him feel better about the time he's been putting in by talking about the money he made or telling him relief's down the bend, after he's put in his due, but what is that stuff really? In actuality, when your time and life are being sucked from you, none of that matters.

Me Now: This big issue that is *just* dawning on you, it's actually a well-studied and often-discussed problem:  work-life balance. Not that you'd call it that; you think work-life problems are only for people with whining kids hoarding around them. Not so. It can be a big problem for any worker, regardless of what their "life" involves, and can cause reduced life and job satisfaction, lower commitment, increased burnout, higher turnover intentions, and higher absenteeism.

Me Then: What role models do I have who have lived unconventionally, i.e., not been slaves to the clock just to earn a buck? I'm beginning to fear that I'll be left with nothing but the job, all day, everyday. And isn't that, truly, what my parents have done forever? And everyone's parents?

Me Now: You don't need good role models. You heard me right:  studies find it's actually better if you have parents who openly struggled with work-life balance. Seeing this struggle will likely make you more knowledgeable, committed to and involved in planning for your future roles, according to research. So thank your parents for their struggles and for not shielding you from those challenges. Then pick their brains about what worked for them and what didn't. And take notes!

Me Then: It's all so wrong. I don't want to accept this as my fate. I fight it actively. I want to be fulfilled and make an impact but not feel like life = work and work = life.

Me Now: What you long for is work–family enrichment, in which "experiences in one role improve the quality of life in the other role” (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006). You will find it, trust me, but only by pursuing interests that naturally match who you are and what you value, like we discussed in Is Your Career In Your Genes?. When you do that, work won't feel so much like work. Your life will begin to feed the career and vice versa. To make that happen, though, you'll have to be intentional, reflective, and proactive. You'll also have to be willing to make sacrifices.

Me Then: Everyone seems so complacent about the issue of work overtaking life. Like after a while of working you "get used to it" or become resigned and just accept that your whole life will be this. Doesn't everyone go through the rage I'm feeling? Or not? 

Me Now: Most young people feel it. 73% of millennials say they're concerned about their future work-life balance. Members of Gen Y actively seek out companies and careers that support that balance. And you will, too. This demand will force more companies to address work-life issues if they want to attract and retain good workers.

Me Then: If people are at one point so enraged, how do they transform into 8 to 6 (or longer) workers, trudging to and from their prison each day, and encouraging their kin to one day do the same? Let me know how this happens because I want to avoid it. I want to find meaningful, useful work for myself, yet not suffer or sacrifice my freedom and enjoyment on the earth for it.

Me Now: "Prison"? A bit dramatic, don't you think? In any event, here's how you avoid it:  you do what you're doing right now. You become aware that you want work-life balance, and then you actively plan for it. People who have high work-family balance self-efficacy, the "belief that a person can effectively balance work and family roles simultaneously" (Basuil & Casper), do a better job creating a career that strikes a balance. It doesn't just happen.

Three tips when planning for work-life balance:

1. If you know that both family and work roles are going to be important to you, "avoid careers that require long hours or business travel to have more time for family" (Basuil & Casper).
2. Practice having multiple roles early in your twenties, long before you build your own "family." For instance, you may be a student, a part-time worker, a volunteer, a son or daughter, a "plus one," and a best friend simultaneously. Pay attention to what works while doing this juggling - and what doesn't. Then intentionally apply those lessons in the future.
3. Pick a partner who will balance you. Having two hard-driving careerists in one family can make work-life balance rough, if you want to have kids. Think of work-life balance as a unit, not as an individual. At times one of you may end up doing too much work and one too much "life," but between the two of you, you can make it work. If you choose to. And if you stay flexible about gender roles in the process.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, rest assured that you will simply get better at work-life balance with age. Because you have to. If I told you you'd one day draft a blog post about a topic you love while managing the toddler who decided to wake up at 5:15am, making breakfast for the family, and setting up voluntary career advising meetings with Bates students, you'd never believe me. Yet that's what you just did. So there.

So what do you think:  Do you hear yourself in any of my former self's concerns? Or was I just crazy?

Sources:

Basuil, D. A., & Casper, W. J. (2012). Work-family planning attitudes among emerging adults. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80, 629-637.

Greenhaus, J. H., & Powell, G. N. (2006). When work and family are allies: A theory of work–family enrichment. Academy of Management Review, 31, 72–92.

Be zen like a frog? (Photo credit: Tanja FÖHR)

Letter to Graduates: Do No Harm

Dear Graduates, As you ponder what to do next in your lives, lofty maxims encircle you:  "Follow your passion." "Shoot for the stars." "Live the life you imagine." Ethicist William MacAskill recently added another to the list: "Do something valuable."

"Do something that genuinely helps others and makes the world a better place in a major way," he writes. "That’s the way to have a happy, fulfilled life."

While I believe altruism is a fine goal, and one toward which I encourage my own students, I also think it overlooks the basic element required for a worthy life. It assumes too much and asks too little. Allow me to explain.

This morning I learned that my daughter was once in harm's way. Her infant childcare provider, whom we abruptly after a child's suspicious accident, is being investigated for physical abuse. Damning evidence heaps about her. I can't help wondering how my daughter escaped attack. Or whether she didn't. The latter is a thought too overwhelming to bear.

As I ponder this, and the many recent events in our country, I come to this plea:  graduates, do no harm. This is the greatest aim toward which you can aspire.

Regardless of your occupation, you will probably not be asked to take "do no harm" on professionally. It's not even written in the Hippocratic Oath, which is rarely used besides. It is then incumbent upon you to choose to look the words deep into their darkened curves and consider what they truly mean. To score them onto your chest, your heart, your very soul. To live by them when no one is holding you accountable for doing so. Choosing to carry this vow with you as you inch beyond the gauzy veil of college is a momentous decision.

It may also prove your greatest challenge.

For I don't just mean harming in large ways. Thankfully the scarred creatures who undertake bombings of innocent citizens, who batter defenseless children, who send poisons through the mail, they are few and far between. We can rest reasonably assured that you will not turn into one of them.

But in your lifetime you will have many opportunities to harm others. More opportunities than you can count. Most will provoke no censure. Many will remain hidden. Some will even lead to praise.

You can vow to forgo such opportunities. Regardless of their outcome. Regardless of whether the intended victim is someone you love or someone you've never met. Regardless of whether there is a victim at all.

You can also vow to be alert to the harm that comes as a byproduct of your actions, the most insidious opportunities of all. You will not be able to deter every one. You will only be able to prevent what is within your scope of awareness and resources. To expect more would be to live a life of anxiety and paranoia. To expect less is to be negligent.

So take it upon yourself to raise your awareness bit by bit, day by day; to continue learning about the world when no one is grading you on your efforts. Simultaneously work to improve your resources - mental, social, financial - for reasons that go far beyond your personal benefit. This is what people mean when they implore you to "do good" after college. In actuality they mean, improve yourself in order that you can avoid doing harm.

One arena for improving yourself that is surely on the front of your mind is your post-graduate job. A job doesn't have to be altruistic, it doesn't have to speak to your truest desires, it doesn't even have to fully pay the bills in order to be valuable.

A valuable job is one that doesn't cause damage. Including to yourself.

The jobs that require you to work gruelingly long hours that deplete your resolve, that ask you to harass or exploit or manipulate others in the name of financial gain, that make you feel like someone you don't recognize, that cause you to be so burnt out that you snap at your loved ones and withdraw from the people who need you most, those are the jobs not to take. Or at least the ones not to keep. Even if your job is not "worthy" of posting on Facebook, is labeled "beneath your potential" by parents and professors, or generates no income at all (e.g., parenting), if the job fits you well enough such that you do no harm to self or others, it is an excellent job, and one that all would be wise to envy.

After graduation I do wish you greatness and the fulfillment of potential and the stroking of the stars far above. But I wish even more that your wake be free of hurt and pain and ruin, small and large, suffered by you and those around you. If you manage as much, you will be among the fortunate few. And you will have lived a life of which you can be quite proud.

It sounds easy to do no harm after graduation. In fact, it may be the hardest thing you aim to do. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although the Hippocratic Oath doesn't contain the phrase "do no harm," you can choose to embrace the sentiment. (Photo credit: Lionel Fernández Roca)

Why the Bad Economy May Be Good News for Millennials

You're screwed. That's the message millennials keep being sent. Such as in the New York Times' much-discussed article "Do Millennials Stand a Chance in the Real World?" which predicts that new graduates may feel economic pain for 15 to 20 years, even if fiscal prospects suddenly brighten. What's my take? This is good news. You heard me right:  good news.

The economy stinks. And you'll be better for it.

It's Not the Economy, Stupid

Let's get this out of the way:  the stretching of adolescence has not occurred because of the economy. The trend was noted during the economically expansive 90s and the term "emerging adulthood" was coined in 2000. Furthermore, features of emerging adulthood - identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and having a sense of possibilities - are observed in people from all economic backgrounds.

Since prolonged youth is a psychological phenomenon, not an economic one, we need to stop hiding behind the bad economy as the reason we're living with our parents and putting off figuring out our lives. We were doing that when the economy was plum and we'll be doing it when the economy rosies back up. So economic forecasts? They simply don't mean much to me. Tell me what's going to happen psychologically instead.

You'll Never Have to Downsize

You might look all green-eyed at me and my 90s peers who graduated with jobs in hand. Not so fast.

One of the more painful things a person can be asked to do is to downsize. Following the concept of the hedonic treadmill that we discussed in our "Chase Happiness" class, we quickly adapt to whatever pleasures surround us and then come to expect those pleasures as a baseline for our contentment. (And, indeed, to desire even more.)

Furthermore, we overvalue things we own; we might have thought a mug was worth $2 before it was ours, but once we own it, it's worth $10 in our eyes. This is called the endowment effect and it helps explain why we're loathe to give things up.

Many people who graduated in the past two decades accepted lucrative post-college gigs while saying, "I don't plan to do this forever. In truth, I don't like finance/insurance/dot-coms, I love _______, but I'll go back to that in a couple of years. I'll just earn a little money, and then I'll go to grad school/join AmeriCorps/become a teacher/take a severe and debilitating pay cut."

HA! As if.

Instead they got stuck in that job they never liked for years on end. Miserable, they wandered around saying they still wanted to go after what they love. But they didn't know how. The money, the lifestyle, the plushness, it was all too good to give up. Until they were forced out by layoffs. Now they're too busy desperately clawing to get back what they lost to think about what they used to want.

You Millennials will never have such problems.

You Can Make Use of Underemployment

Millennials tend to be unemployed or underemployed. This is nothing to sneeze at. As Meg Jay says in her book The Defining Decade, "Those who are underemployed for as little as nine months tend to be more depressed and less motivated than their peers-than even their unemployed peers." And unemployment in the twenties is associated with "heavy drinking and depression in middle age even after becoming regularly employed."

So, yes, we're dealing with serious stuff here.

That said, unemployment and underemployment can be prime opportunities to forge your identity - if you embrace them as such. Think of it like a snow day*. Remember when that happened as a child? You woke up and your mom announced you didn't have to go to school and you could stay home and do whatever you wanted all day long? How did you react? Did you let yourself get paralyzed by the crush of options that then lay before you, or get depressed over the lack of options that were within the confines of your home? Or you did you instead seize it as an amazing opportunity to do everything you always dreamed of doing when you were sitting in school, bored to death?

So too with unemployment or underemployment. You can lament what's not happening in your life, or you can use the cognitive  and/or temporal space to plot out what you want to be happening in your life. You can choose to sit in the uncomfortable space of an identity crisis (which isn't a bad thing), make active decisions about what you can do to work toward the identity you decide you want, and start to make incremental steps in that direction. You don't always need a job to help you gain identity capital - volunteerism, attending adult education classes, networking, or honing skill sets on your own time can do that just as well.

You Don't Need Money to Find Fulfillment

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we know from our class "Money and Happiness" that beyond about $50,000, money doesn't equate with fulfillment. Granted, even that salary is hard for millennials to find. This is a real issue, which plenty of others have taken up. While we're perseverating on the ugly economical outlook for millennials, though, we're completely ignoring the psychological outlook. I'd love to see data about the psychological outcomes for various generations; are people from the 1990s cohort actually better off psychologically compared to those who joined the work force during the recession of the 1980s?

Given what we know about the paths to happiness, I can't imagine the 90s graduates are. Happiness comes from finding work that you find meaningful and that puts you in a state of focused challenge called "flow" on a regular basis. It does not come from material pleasures.

Furthermore, materialism has been linked to problems with intimacy, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem, as Tim Kasser discusses in his book The High Price of Materialism.

Finally, when we have little, we tend to be more grateful for that which we do have. In many studies, such gratitude has been linked to psychological well-being. Thus when the New York Times notes that millennials are developing their "own Depression-era fixation with money" I think, is that such a bad thing? Even the Wall Street Journal admits that economic downturns result in psychological boosts, including less complaining. "In many quarters, we're seeing a return to Depression-era stoicism and an appreciation of simpler things," writes WSJ's Jeffrey Zaslow.

Final Thoughts

So remind me again why millennials don't "stand a chance"? Because their economic portfolios will take a hit for the foreseeable future? On the contrary, when it comes to psychological well being, identity formation, and the building of a genuine life, I think millennials stand a better chance than young people have in decades.

*Thanks to agent Sorche Fairbank for the snow day metaphor. She used this at a writers' conference I attended, as a way for writers to embrace the economic downturn.

The bad economy is not to blame for our desire to avoid adulthood. (Photo credit: Mathew Knott)

A tiny apartment is fine. When you've never had anything better. (Photo credit: nekosoft)

With a job like this, there's plenty of cognitive space to do some serious thinking. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We all know this to be true. So why do we focus solely on the economic details? (Photo credit: agitprop)

Finding Yourself is The Creative Challenge of Your Twenties

My two-year-old daughter's need for creativity overrides her basic needs. She's been known to wake up at one in the morning shouting "I want to do work!" (cute except when you're the one who has to get up with her...) and to refuse dinner in deference to an intense coloring project. The urgent drive to create doesn't go away as we get older, it simply finds different outlets than crayons and scrap paper. And I'm here to argue that its outlet in the twenties is finding yourself.

"Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives," says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in an article for Psychology Today. He's famous for his research on "flow," which we discussed in our class "Chase Happiness" as one of the bedrocks of lasting contentment.

"Of all human activities, creativity comes closest to providing the fulfillment we all hope to get in our lives," Csikszentmihalyi says. "Call it full-blast living."

As a result of its importance, the creative drive never leaves us. In late childhood it's found in a need to forge and maintain friendships, in early adulthood in the need to find love and create a family (of whatever composition), in middle adulthood in the need to nurture the next generation, and in later adulthood in the need to create one's cohesive life story. These are the psychosocial stages described by psychologist Erik Erikson, and although I've studied and taught them ad nauseum, it wasn't until watching my daughter intently apply stickers to a window pane that I realized that they're truly stages of how we direct our creative energy.

What, according to Erikson, is the direction of creative energy in our late teens and twenties? Identity. Finding ourselves. Figuring out our paths.

In other words, the creative challenge of our twenties is to invent ourselves out of the confusing rubble of our pasts, the shifting dynamics of our present, and the lofty aspirations of our future. Like we said in our last class, we must balance all of these elements and find a way to see ourselves emerge from within the overwhelming, often contradictory blur of information.

It's a lot like reading a Twitter feed and trying to separate the noise from the gems. We each approach this task in varying ways, and we each take a different overriding message from the same feed. So too would we each combine the exact same "life ingredients" to find a different sense of self than would our friends or family. This is why finding yourself is a creative act:  there is no one way to do it right and you must experiment in order to find the best solution for you.

Which is, indeed, hard to do. So, in fear of the process, many of us run from the challenge. We try to shove identity development aside, to tell ourselves that it doesn't matter, to convince ourselves it'll work itself out. But I'll tell you this:  if you shrink from the creative task of finding yourself, one of three things happen. Or sometimes all three. Which really stinks.

1. You'll begin feeling vague, diffuse panic and unrest. Life just never feels settled any more and you simply can't figure out why.
2. Other people will begin to define you. Into the vacuum of your identity, the nearest and/or strongest forces will come rushing and you'll be unable to stop them.
3. Eventually, the question who am I will overtake your thoughts. This will happen as surely and as urgently as your need for food if you stopped eating for days on end. It will feel insistent and desperate and you'll give anything to have an answer. You may even disrupt your family life and your career and your entire existence in the press to figure it out. Problem is, this might not happen until you're in your late thirties or your forties or even your fifties if you shove off the urge during your twenties, and at those later ages there's a lot of "entire existence" to gamble in the process. Best do the figuring out now, when unsettled is the norm and you have much less to risk.

Convinced? Then we need to figure out how to stop running from ourselves and get constructive. We'll have to save that humongous task for future classes.

A good start, though, is simply embracing your innate need to be creative, and fully accepting that your creative energy is, at least for now, channeled into the task of finding yourself. Once you acknowledge those facts, you can begin to encourage the creative side of you:

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk. We need both. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement, the second can wilt if it is not cultivated. If too few opportunities for curiosity are available, if too many obstacles are placed in the way of risk and exploration, the motivation to engage in creative behavior is easily extinguished. Sustaining high levels of curiosity is the starting point of creativity. - Vedpuriswar, reviewing Csikszentmihalyi's book Creativity:  Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

In other words, grab your identity crayons and a stack of blank mind space and start scribbling. You need to do this as strongly as does my toddler daughter with her literal crayons. Just, please, not at one in the morning.

Class Assignment:

• Watch Csikszentmihalyi's Ted talk on "flow"

Where are your identity crayons? (Photo credit: dyetochange)

Too much information!

Living in the Present, Planning for the Future

Now and Later candies were serious currency on my middle school playground. You could trade the tiny sweets for just about anything:  an "in" with the guy you liked, court time playing basketball, even the cessation of rumors by the resident mean girl. Maybe we had it all figured out back then, knowing what we'd need most in life is both now and later. Alright, fine, we just wanted a sugar high. But if the balance between living in the present while planning for the future could come in a sweet, colorful package, it sure would be a hot trade on the twentysomething circuit.

Little sticks in the craw of a millennial like the desire to be in the here-and-now when everyone is interrogating you about the down-the-line. Jenni of Twenty's Inc. recently summed this up well: "Thinking long-term is such a foreign concept for most 20-somethings. It’s a dreaded thought and simply uncool. It’s all about NOW. Being in the moment. Why care about tomorrow when you’ve got today?"

I remember that feeling intensely. My journal read like a glitchy status update button, perpetually spitting out "Why doesn't everyone just let me live?!" Yet here I am in my 30s, regularly imploring you poor 20somethings to plan ahead and think of your career. How out of touch am I?

So here's my contrition, and my contribution:  what I wish I'd known about the now and later balance, based on psych research no less.

Perspective 1:  Living in the Present

Many of us like to live in the present (hedonistic) time perspective. This approach centers around a "if it feels good, do it" mindset. Obviously it can lead to risky behaviors and can cause us to avoid actions that will be important for our future, like saving money or <clearing my throat> planning for a career. But it also feels pretty darn good. Which isn't for nothing.

This is the time perspective that has been stereotypically linked to millennials. The "I don't think I just do" approach has pundits and parents shaking their heads and lamenting the stretch of adolescence. What are you crazy GenYers doing with your lives? they demand to know. The thing is, as we'll see shortly, while "all now all the time" isn't a good plan, there is a definite place for "in the now" thinking. And it's something the aging critics could use a bit more of themselves.

Perspective 2:  Planning for the Future

What parents and elders want you twentysomethings to do is get down to business and plan your lives already. They'd love it if you sucked onto a future time perspective, emphasizing future goals and rewards and delay of gratification. And they're not entirely wrong; of course a future orientation is need in our lives. But only in moderation.

"We are concerned for those excessively future-oriented people who cannot 'waste' time relating to family or friends, in community activities, or enjoying any personal indulgence," say researchers Zimbardo and Boyd. "Such a 'time-press' fuels high stress levels." They go on to suggest "time therapy" for people like that. Perhaps parents should be careful of what they wish.

Besides, you millennials are not actually ignoring the future. Much of the present (hedonistic) behaviors you demonstrate may actually be future-oriented. You read that right. In a study of 248 undergraduates, 77% reported that they engage in behaviors now because they fear they will lose those opportunities later.

Respondents generally characterized adulthood as a period of lost freedom, when they would become someone confined to a particular place and social group, and when they would go to bed early. In response, a number of participants stressed the spontaneous nature of their current actions. - Ravert (2009)

The feared "when they would go to bed early." That part cracks me up. And makes me cry from the reality; just look at what time my tweets end each day. So let me pause to say:  tweet 'til 3am millennials! Do it while you can! The 30s are coming for you! And back to the story...

Perspective 3:  Staying Grounded in the Past

There's one final element we've been leaving out of this now and later discussion:  the past. Identity researchers agree that we develop our sense of self in the context of significant others, many of whom are from our families and our childhoods. For better and for worse. If we can focus on the "for better" part while discarding the social comparisons and other pressures that compel us to give up on our inner yearnings, then the past has a meaningful role to play in our search for identity. And, hence, our search for a fulfilling career.

Striking a Balance

So how do we find a balance between our three time perspectives? Or develop what the researchers call a "balanced TP"? (how out of it can they possibly be?) Simple:  we find balance by maximizing them all.

We can - and ideally should - be high in all THREE time dimensions simultaneously. We don't have to give up now to focus on later, or the past to be in the now, or later to consider our past. Time perspectives are orthogonal components, completely independent of one another. It's a myth that you have to be an old stick in the mud in order to start thinking about life beyond your next Pinterest pin. In fact, as we saw earlier, we may look highly spontaneous in our twenties precisely because our minds are shifting into more intense consideration of the future. Which is a good thing indeed:

The future focus gives people wings to soar to new heights of achievement, the past (positive) focus establishes their roots with tradition and grounds their sense of personal identity, and the present (hedonistic) focus nourishes their daily lives with the playfulness of youth and the joys of sensuality. People need all of them harmoniously operating to realize fully their human potential. - Zimbardo & Boyd (1999)

If I could just wrap those sentiments in a sweet candy shell, I'd be the most popular kid on the twentysomething playground. Which would make my past, present and future selves pretty darn happy. Now that's what I call maximizing.

Sources:

Ravert, R. D. (2009). “You’re only young once”: Things college students report doing now before it is too late. Journal of Adolescent Research, 24(3), 376-296.

Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271-1288.

Gooey sweetness with a dense center, Now and Laters offer enjoyment for both the present and the (near) future. Which is all we want out of life, isn't it? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What's time got to do with it? Everything. (Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn)

When to Go to Graduate School (& When Not To)

Want to avoid the career search? Then I bet going to grad school is high on your list of considerations. Especially in this bad economy, it's tempting to "hide out" in a secure academic institution that will can take care of your meals and housing. What could be more appealing to a choice overloaded twentysomething than that?

I would know. The grad school temptation proved too great for me. I'd been planning to get a job after graduating from college. Then I hit Thanksgiving of my senior year. My relatives' probing questions, skeptical looks, and not-so-subtle whispers were too much for me. What was I going to do after graduating? They were right. I had no plan. I had no sense of the real world. Yikes:  I had no future at all!

In a panic, I applied to nine graduate schools in the span of three weeks. When acceptances amazingly rolled in, I had my future in my hands  - and the self-righteous answer to the dreaded question So what are you going to do after graduation?

Problem was, it was not my time to go to graduate school. A reality I hit on the very first day of class:

"So what are you planning to research while you're here, Rebecca?" a professor asked.

"Um, cognitive development?" I said.

"That's the title of this course," the professor replied. "Can't you be more specific?"

Uh, no.

I ended up leaving my PhD program after receiving my master's degree. I don't regret the decision to leave, but I do regret the decision to to go to graduate school too early. If I'd waited - the way I'd planned to before everyone freaked me out - my grad school experience probably would have been richer, more rewarding, and filled with a lot fewer panic attacks.

So in the interest of avoiding becoming me (always a good goal), here are my pointers about when to go to graduate school:

Go to Graduate School After You've Had a Few Years Away From College

You know what going to grad school directly after graduating college is? It's a rebound romance. And we all know how well those work out. Seriously, you've just been in a highly committed relationship for four (or five) years of your life. You're afraid that you can't live without that relationship in your life. So you reach out and cling to the best approximation of the thing you're afraid to lose. The thing is, the next-best-thing isn't like the actual thing. Grad school is a completely different beast from undergrad. Completely. You have to be ready for that experience, not longing for the old experience, in order to get the most out of it. So give yourself a little time to be by yourself, to get to know who you are outside of that long-term relationship, to have some good cries over cartons of Ben and Jerry's. Then you'll have the clear head you need to commit to a new relationship. With a university, that is.

Go to Graduate School Once You Truly Know Yourself

I've seen more than a few twentysomethings - myself included - go to graduate school in order to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Uh, no. Wrong idea. Grad school is not the place to explore and try things out and spend lazy afternoons lying on the grass staring into the clouds and introspecting about your future. You might have been able to do that in college - in fact, hopefully you were able to do that in college - but grad school is a place to be focused, driven and to work toward a specific goal. It's a lot like taking a direct flight from LA to NY. If you'd rather take a super-scenic, slow-mo train tour across the country, grad school isn't for you. Instead, take some years to think, experiment, and try out career paths, like twentysomething researcher Dr. Meg Jay did before she went to grad school. When you're truly convinced you want to head to NY, then and only then hop on a plane. Grad school will be the most efficient way to get there.

Go to Graduate School Only After You've Tested Out the Profession

So you want to head to grad school to become a lawyer or a clinical psychologist or a dentist? Good for you. But before you go, how much can you tell me about your chosen profession? What's a typical day like? What are the frustrating parts of the career? What are the rewards? What is the rate of burnout, and why does it occur? And on and on. You should know your chosen profession cold before you enter grad school. Of course some of that knowledge can only be gained by doing a job day in and day out for years on end. But much of you can gain virtually by:

• Engaging in internships and jobs in positions as close to your desired profession as possible (simply observing a bunch of people doing who what you want to do can tell you a lot - e.g., how much coffee do they need to get through the day, and how haggard do they look at the end of the week?)
• Conducting many informational interviews (and I do mean many, to give you a wide-ranging sample of experiences)
• Job shadowing

You're about to invest a good chunk of change and many years of your life into your graduate work. You'd better be darn sure you want the profession that waits on the other side. If you aren't inspired enough to do the legwork to research the career up front, then maybe that isn't the career for you.

So there's my short - alright, semi-short - treatise on when to go to graduate school, a.k.a., the lecture I wish someone had given me when I was 22. Would I have listened? Probably not. The desire to escape social scrutiny and fear ran pretty darn strong in me. But maybe it would've at least planted a seed of doubt discomforting enough that I'd have paused and listened to myself.

Is grad school next for you? Maybe not quite yet. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What awaits after you've crossed that stage wearing your grad school garb? You'd better know before you even enroll. (Photo credit: pennstatenews)

Career Choice Overload

A number of years ago, a junior student I'll call Caroline came into my office for an advising meeting. She'd already declared a psych major - otherwise she wouldn't be stuck with me - but it soon became clear that she had a million interests besides her major. Which isn't bad. It's just...overwhelming.

"I like psych, but I don't know if I'm gonna do psych. You know, in my life. Because there are so many other things," Caroline said. "Like I love rhetoric. And anthropology is amazing. And even economics fascinates me. And then there are those shows, those ones about crime scene people, they really get me. Maybe I'd like to do something like that. Or maybe be a marine biologist. That's always seemed fun, too."

Oh. My. God. Caroline may have been a poster child for a liberal arts education, but she was also a billboard for not having much hope of finding a path once her collegiate bubble burst. Not that I'm judging. I, my dear students, was just like Caroline. Perhaps still am.

How can we be reasonably expected to choose one career after a lifetime of being told "you can do anything you want"? It's tyrannical. It's ridiculous. It's...well, rude.

It's also necessary.

So let's get over kvetching about it and get on to a solution, shall we?

Adopt a New Mantra

"I'll have eleven jobs in my lifetime. I'll have eleven jobs in my lifetime."  Every time choice overload threatens to paralyze you, this is what to tell yourself. You are not choosing one job or career forever. You are simply choosing your NEXT move. You can go ahead and pursue a different interest in the future. Think of it as serial monogamy. Career style.

Get the Options Down in Black and White

Often I'll ask students experiencing career choice overload, "So have you done any work trying to figure out what you really want?" The common answer:  "Oh sure. I think about it all the time." Terrific. I think about going to Italy all the time and guess what, it hasn't gotten me there.

It's highly clarifying to get information out on a blank page. This is why experts say that to budget effectively you have to write out a budget. Um, yes, not rocket science here. Options feel like an overwhelming jumble in our heads. When we lay them all out in front of us, they look more manageable. Even if there's 50 of them.

Compile your list over the course of weeks. Every time a new idea pops into your head, add it to your list (best make the thing portable, then!). Write down specific careers, umbrella topical areas, anything that you think is related to what you might want to do. When you start recycling ideas that are already on the list, you're done.

Categorize Your Choices

Now take your handy-dandy list of interests and potential careers and put them into categories. Studies show that categories decrease choice overload. In psych-speak "categories make it easier to navigate the choice set and decrease the cognitive burden of making a choice," wrote researchers Scheibehenne and colleagues.

Many items on your list will relate to one another. For instance, say you wrote down the over-arching field of entymology. You also wrote down later on your list that you particularly like stink bugs. Ta da! This is really one choice, not two. (Lest you mock this option, specializing in stink bugs may very well get you on NPR).

Save The List. Permanently.

This is a tip I picked up from my fiction writing days:  it's much easier to cut material if you know you'll always have it saved somewhere. So before you go deleting any options, save the original list somewhere you can access it again in the future. Chances are you never will look at it again (the fiction passages that were so bad I cut them from my awful fiction wholes? not needed), but you'll feel reassured knowing it's not gone forever.

Pick a Heuristic, Any Heuristic

When's the last time someone implored you to do that? I tell you, we offer first time experiences at CA101. Good stuff here. Good stuff.

A heuristic is simply a rule of thumb we use to make decisions and solve problems. They simplify information so that we don't become paralyzed. It makes sense then that in their detailed analysis of 50 studies on choice overload, psychologists Scheibehenne and colleagues found that using heuristics helped people avoid choice overload.

Here are four heuristics they point to as useful options. Take your pick! Or mix and match!

• Elimination-by-Aspects Strategy:  Quickly screen out any options or categories that don't seem attractive. The more you allow yourself to rely on your "gut" instead of logic here, the better.
• Satisficing Heuristic:  "Choose the first option that exceeds [your] aspiration level." In other words, pick what's "good enough" - don't try to find "perfect." Some of us have personalities that do this better than others (we others are called maximizers), but even us perfection seekers can train ourselves to use the satisficing heuristic.
• Consideration-Set Model:  Consider how much work you'd have to put into each option (e.g., do you have to go back to school?) and how much benefit (emotional, financial, liturgical) you'd receive from each. Which will give you the most bang for your buck?
• Go With the Default:  Probably the simplest heuristic there is. Simply pick the option from the list that feels most obvious. For instance, you already have a degree in english. Pursuing a job as an editor probably makes more sense than retraining to becoming a physician's assistant.

Give Yourself Plenty of Time

This whole process takes time. So don't try to do it, say, two weeks before applications are due to a graduate program you're considering. Studies show that the more time pressured we feel, the more choice overload and subsequent regret we experience.

Summing Up

So there you have it:  the steps to overcoming choice overload. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? <sigh> Alright, not so much. But you have to do it. Otherwise we'll end up like poor Caroline, who bounced from one unsatisfying superficial job to the next, never willing to "settle" or to "rule out options" and hence never able to dig into anything. When she checked in with me five years after graduating, asking for another round of letters of reference to graduate schools in a wholly different field than she'd applied in the previous two years, she said, "I'm just so afraid I'll miss out on something. Like, if I do go with teaching, then what about my passion for finance. Do I just give that up?"

Well, yes, Caroline, you do. For now. Just for now. And then you go and find some great hobbies to indulge your many interests in the meantime.

Related Posts:

Awash in Choices

How to Create Your "Life Goal"

Time, Time Everywhere, and Not a Second to Use

Source:

Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P M. (2010). Can There Ever be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload.. Journal of Consumer Research, 37, 409-425.

Pulled in too many conflicting directions? (Photo credit: shirokazan)

Why I Hate "Under 30" Lists

You know what drives me insane? "Under 30" lists. "Young movers and shakers" awards. "Rub It In Your Face That These People Got Their Acts Together Faster Than You" roll calls. Under 30 lists are everywhere. Forbes has one, Inc. has one, GQ has one. Even hot seller Realtor magazine has one. And how many people are on each list? You guessed it:  30. The lack of originality astounds.

These lists make it seem like doing things younger means doing them better. Like there's no point in trying when you pass the ripe ol' 30 mark. Like we might as well throw our diplomas in the shredder and join Dancing With the Losers if we're not markedly successful one-third of the way into our lifetimes.

Every time I convince a student that they don't have to conquer the world by 25 (or 30, or even - gasp - 35) - hell, every time I convince myself that I don't have to - one of these damn lists comes out and messes with our heads.

Why else would 86% of twentysomethings say they feel the need to be successful before age 30? It's the ridiculous lists. And, I suppose, the youth-obsessed culture that eagerly produces and consumes them. But that's not as much fun to blame.

For my sanity and yours, let's get some things straight:

The People on "Young and Successful" Lists are Freaks

The 20somethings lionized on "wow, look at 'em doing so much so young!" lists are on there precisely because they're non-normative. If they were like average people - or even like typical above-average people - the lists would be bloated and pointless.

These people are the 0.001% of the population who have managed to do something remarkable early in life. Trying to be like them is like trying to look like Gisele Bundchen or Tom Brady (or, most likely, their offspring...can we say genetics?).

We've accepted that we can't all be gorgeous, or pro athletes, or live a life of luxury. Yet we somehow feel that we all should be making our mark by 25 or 30. How unrealistic is that?

"Earlier" Doesn't Mean "Better"

Malcolm Gladwell did a pretty convincing job of striking down the "earlier = better" notion in his article Late Bloomers and book Outliers.

"Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth." - Malcolm Gladwell

He goes on to assert that someone can be a prodigy - an individual who demonstrates remarkable abilities at a young age - and yet do little with those abilities in the long run. Prodigies simply develop earlier than their peers, that's what makes them stand out. Once their peers catch up, many prodigies blend into the background.

So those people on the "I'm Young and Awesome" Lists? They better watch out because we're coming for 'em.

Age of Success Varies by Field

Another reason Under 30 lists are ridiculous is because what's remarkable in one field is ho-hum in another.

Physicists, poets and chess masters tend to create their best work early in life. I think I'm safe in saying that most of us are not those things. That means that the fields we're in have mid-life or later peaks. In fact, the more "ambiguous and unclear" the field's concepts are, Max Fisher writes in The Atlantic Wire, the later important work is produced.

So figure out what's the norm for your field, not what's the remarkable exception for some other field (which is what's usually portrayed on the youth-centric lists). To focus on the latter is to pile meaninglessness on top of meaninglessness.

Time Pressure Paralyzes

Here's the true bottomline to the entire "young is amazing!" issue:  the more time pressure a person perceives, the worse their performance is. In other words, our obsession with succeeding young may be the very thing standing in the way of our success.

Granted, time pressure findings are usually found in laboratory psychology studies in which there's short-term pressure on a concrete task. But I'd argue that these findings are applicable to long-term time pressure, too. As one researcher on the topic, Michael DeDonno, said, "If you feel you don't have enough time to do something, it's going to affect you."

Notably, it's our perception of not having enough time - not the actual amount of time we have - that makes us perform poorly. To combat this, DeDonno told Science Daily, "Keep your emotions in check. Have confidence in the amount of time you do have to do things. Try to focus on the task and not the time. We don't control time, but we can control our perception. It's amazing what you can do with a limited amount of time."

Stop aiming to be a success by 30 and you just might become one. Or, at the very least, you'll be freed from a life spent obsessively tracking birthdays, leaving you mental space to instead focus on your life's work itself. But, hey, what do I know? I already went over the youth hill. Which is a relief. Life’s much better over here on the “I’ll Never Make a 30 Under 30 List” List.

A little bitter, perhaps. But better.

Sources:

Simonton, D.K. (1988). Age and outstanding achievement: What do we know after a century of research? Psychological Bulletin, 104, 251–267.

Why are we obsessed with a number? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Who Are You Trying to Impress?

How affronted are you by that question? If you're feeling pretty peeved at me for asking, then you'd better read on. I was asked that question once, bluntly and without warning, by a total stranger. And it changed the direction of my life.

I was a rising college sophomore when, feeling dramatically overwhelmed by roommate tensions (oh poor meeeee!), I walked into the campus counseling center.

The counselor first asked my major.

"Physics," I said proudly. Too proudly.

He looked at me long and hard. Then he asked, "Who are you trying to impress with that major?"

I wanted to jump across the desk and throttle the guy. Who did he think he was to ask something like that? Where did he get off presuming to know me? Maybe I liked physics because I liked physics. Did that thought ever cross his rude, dense, little brain?

So I told him as much. In nicer terms, of course. He let the subject drop and we came up with a plan for dealing with the roommate. I never saw the counselor again.

End of story, right? But my mind, it simply couldn't drop the counselor's "impress" question. For days and days. And then weeks. And then months. At first I was angry, "Do you believe the nerve of that guy?" was my common refrain to friends. But gradually I started to actually ask the question to myself:  Who was I trying to impress?

The thing was, this guy - this complete stranger - had nailed my pig with his angry bird, if you will. I did like physics, to an extent, but I liked even better the reaction I received when I told people that I liked physics:  wide eyes, a puzzled expression, and then - this was the real payoff - "Wow, you must be smart."

Once I accepted the honest answer to the counselor's simple question, I promptly switched to a psychology major.

In other words, the one-off counselor saved me from a lifetime of an unsatisfying career, all with one question.

And for that reason, I'm asking you:

Who are you trying to impress?

The more offended that question makes you feel, the more likely that it's tapping into something important. (Freud got few things right, but his concept of resistance isn't half bad...)

Whether it be your career choice, your major, your address, your style of dress, your word choice, your status updates, what's your shorthand for making people think, "Wow, you must be ________"?

And that blank is almost always filled with the aspect of yourself about which you're most self-conscious. For me, that's my intelligence. For you it might be your money, or your class, or your dependence, or your fear of getting close to people. Take your pick.

This urge to impress - especially about our self-questioned characteristics - makes a lot of sense. It's ingrained in our genes, in fact.

"A hundred thousand years ago on the savannahs of Africa, if you were a solitary individual, you were dead very quickly," William B. Irvine, author of the new book A Slap in the Face:  Why Insults Hurt - And Why They Shouldn't recently told NPR. "So you joined a group. And then, once you joined a group, the question of how well you succeeded within that group was determined by your social rank within that group."

"Striving for rank within a group has become ingrained in the human psyche — praise and deference feel good," explains NPR.

In other words, we're literally built to seek approval. So is striving for "wow" such a bad thing?

Maybe not all the time. Maybe not even most of the time. It may be fine when the reaction we receive - "wow, you're witty!" or "man, you're generous" -  is as mere byproduct of living a life we genuinely love.

But when we're changing our life for the "wow" - living somewhere we can't afford, for instance, or putting on a show of extreme independence when we're dying for companionship  - then it may be a problem. In that case, the need to impress is interfering with our pursuit of what's personally meaningful and important. And when we can't seek out meaning, we fail to find lasting happiness. We might also fail to do the "unique and distinctive work" we're each meant to do.

"If you want to have a good life, you have to overcome that evolutionary wiring," Irvine said in the NPR interview. He gave the example of our penchant for fatty, sweet food; while this desire was helpful for our ancestors' survival, it's harmful in contemporary society where fats and sugars are omnipresent.

There was no doubt that, for me, gradually shedding my shorthands for "intelligence" has been vitally important to living a more authentic, richer life, and to doing work that is in line with my values and deep-seated goals. I still have more smartness shorthands to cast off. But the counselor started me on the road.

You may be wondering whether I ever thanked him, the man who changed the course of my life with one simple question. About nine months after our meeting, I was taking a study break when I received a campus-wide email. The counselor had passed away, the President announced. The email didn't say how, it didn't say if it was expected, it just said he was gone. I'd only met the man once, but I felt a profound sense of emptiness and loss.

I gave the emotion some time to rattle around within me, said some silent words in his memory, and then forced myself to go back to studying for my big exam. In psychology.

To me, physics = uber-brainy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For what characteristic - if any- are you trying to earn a gold star? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Money and Happiness: What's the Right Balance?

When I talk to my Bates students about careers, their most common concern is that they won't make enough money. I'm always saying, Oh, the money will work itself out. If you love what you're doing, you don't need that much money to be happy. Chill out, financial stuff isn't as complicated as it seems. Apparently I'm not much of a pragmatist.

Or, more accurately, I take my relationship with money - and my understanding of the money-happiness link - for granted. Which is ridiculous. We need to get the money issue out in the open. Enough of the idealistic musings. It's time to stop being polite. And to start getting real. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

First a caveat:  if your innate desires honestly lead you toward a lucrative career path, if you're independently wealthy, or if you have some dirty-dealings way of making money on the sly, then you don't need this lecture. If you're instead like the rest of us - poor folk obsessed with doing "good" or "creative" work in fields that pay peanuts - then read on.

Step One: Understand How Much Money Actually Buys Happiness

What I always tell my students - that money isn't that important, in terms of life satisfaction - is the truth. We know that happiness doesn't increase when incomes rise above about $50,000 to $75,000 a year (dependent on geographic region). It's also true that if we don't compare ourselves with people around us, we may be able to be happy with even less.

Furthermore, as we've discussed, happiness comes from having a sense of meaning and regular access to activities to that put us in the blissful state of "flow." Given that we spend about 90,000 hours at work over our lifetime, many of us choose to discover both "flow" and meaning through our work. Unfortunately, though, many careers that provide meaning and personal "flow" pay pennies. How, then, do we strike a balance between happiness and money?

Step Two: Determine How Much Money You Need

We must each find our own personal money-and-happiness balance. What's "enough" money for your friend may not be "enough" for you. I, for one, was determined to minimize the "enough" in my life because I recognized early in my working life that being a slave for money wasn't going to cut it. In fact, the first day I taught at Bates I came home and wrote in my journal, "No amount of money is worth my time." (I was a rebellious, self-righteous little snot, wasn't I?)

In order to figure out how much money you need, you of course have to do some basic budgeting. That's so not what we do here at CA101, but if you want to know more about budgeting, I'd recommend the excellent personal finance blog from your classmate, Chelsea, No Debt Brunette.

I'm instead interested in the psychology behind personal finance (shocker!). With that in mind, here are some questions to ask yourself as you determine how much money you actually need:

• What does "basic survival" mean to you? Psychologists consistently find that we only need enough money for "basic survival" in order to be happy, including having food, clothes, and shelter. I'd argue that in America, definitions of "basic survival" vary greatly from person to person. For instance, you might not be able to imagine your life without your iPad or iPhone; they may very well feel like "basics" to you. I, on the other hand, don't have an iAnything other than two iPods that are both over five years old. What are the "basics" to you? The fewer things that you put on the "basics" list, the less money you need to achieve your "basic" standard of living.
• Do you have a financial safety net? This comes in many forms, such as an emergency fund that you've somehow managed to save up, parents who you know would bail you out if things really fell apart, assets you could sell if push came to shove. The bigger your safety net, the more risks you can take, including accepting "dream jobs" that don't pay very well.
• Is social comparison a major factor in your life? Be honest with yourself:  can you sit next to someone who is talking about her brand new Mercedes and her newly refinished hardwood floors and feel OK with your 12-year-old Hyundai and carpeted home? I, thankfully, can; that's precisely what you'll find in my garage and in my home. But if  you can't stand this, then you'll need more money to strike your money-and-happiness balance.

Once you know your own personal tolerance for financial risk and financial need, combined with raw figures for what you'll need to meet those psychological requirements, you'll have the first draft of your Big Fat Number:  the amount of income you need per year.

Step Three: Find Your Personal Balance Between Money and Happiness

Not so happy with your Big Fat Number? Is it quite...big? Well now you have a choice:  try to find a career that will match that number (even if said career makes you miserable in the process), or else change your Big Fat Number. (I might suggest the latter...)

You can change your Big Fat Number in two ways:

1. Change your psychological approach. All of the factors listed in Step Two are within our control. We can choose to change our conception of what constitutes "basics," we can work to build an emergency fund (e.g., by taking a more lucrative job for a set period of time and diligently putting away every penny beyond what's needed for our basics in order to buy our own freedom), and/or we can learn to compare ourselves to others to a lesser degree.
2. Control your spending. When I was in my early twenties, I worked on personal finance as diligently as I worked on my career. I read up on personal finance strategies (my faves:  How to Survive Without a Salary, The Average Family's Guide to Financial Freedom, and The Millionaire Next Door), tracked our expenses down to the dollar, and even made ridiculous pie charts comparing our budget to our spending, which I then presented to my husband at annual official budget meetings. (The poor guy is a good sport.)

Step Four: Re-Evaluate Your Money-Happiness Balance As Your Life Circumstances Change

The part that is shocking me - the thing that is throwing me for a total loop at this very moment in my life - is that once you've found your initial Big Fat Number, then worked with psychological and financial strategies to whittle it down as low as it can go, it'll keep shifting around on you. The Big Fat Number is a slippery little devil indeed.

For my husband and me, our combined Big Fat Number was pretty small, enabling us to pursue highly meaningful and self-directed careers for almost fifteen years of our lives. Then we had a child. And now it's all out of whack. (Case in point:  we owe 2.5 months worth of my take-home pay in taxes at this very moment based on an online tax calculator. 2.5 months! In case you thought this money post was coming from out of the blue...)

Now that our Big Fat Number has increased, does that mean I have to look for work that is less personally meaningful? I don't know. I haven't found the answer. For now I'm trying to squeeze a bit more out of the questions I listed in Step Two - e.g., maybe our "basics" became too "non-basic" once we brought home the child over whom we wanted to dote, or maybe I am now too driven by social comparisons since I hang in mom circles, which are notoriously comparison-based.

This is life:  you figure it out, then it goes changing on you. And I think that's why, when my students ask about money during our career talks, I sort of blow them off.  Because you do not have to make life and career choices that get the financial picture "just right forever." You simply have to create a financial outlook that is "good enough for the next year or two or three."

But even that takes a lot of effort. A fact I am finally, finally conceding.

Next class, though, back to pie-in-the-sky idealism. I'm so much more comfortable with my feet firmly off the ground. As long as there's a little change in my pocket for the flight.

How are you striking the money-happiness balance in your life?

My salary tends to be counted in change. (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

What's your ideal balance? (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

Is The Search For An Authentic Self Worth The Hassle?

Crises stink. They're full of questioning, futile consideration of options that will be discarded, and feelings of being downright confused, lost, and miserable. Such fun. But as we've discussed in the past, identity crises are vitally important to finding your authentic self. No crisis, no true identity. As we've also talked about, many people sidestep the whole crisis issue by adopting the identity of someone around them or simply jumping on the first "self" they think up. I call this path Rent-An-Identity. And as anyone who has been to Rent-A-Center can attest, rentable equipment just ain't as good as the real thing.

Or is it?

The thing is, I've always presented Rent-An-Identity negatively (which is technically, and ho-hum-ingly, called identity foreclosure). In reality, it's not so clear cut. In fact, the psychologist who came up with the term "emerging adulthood" - the man who, in essence, identified the quarterlife crisis before it was named that - doesn't think renting an identity is such a bad thing. He says:

Most scholars on identity tend to see exploration as a necessary part of forming a healthy identity and therefore to portray foreclosure in negative terms. However...some people have a distinct ability they recognize when still young, and they happily build on it until it becomes satisfying work in emerging adulthood. In a way they are fortunate, because they have definitely found a kind of work they enjoy and wish to do as adults, whereas emerging adults who go through a process of exploration may find such work but may not. - Jeffrey Arnett, Emerging Adulthood (2004)

Fortunate? Fortunate? <Pause for me to have a panic attack.>

To throw an even bigger wrench in my argument that an authentic self is worth fighting for (and miserably groping around for), people who have a Rent-An-Identity look a lot like people who have found their real identity. In fact, they score exactly the same on:

• —Self-esteem
• Belief that they're in control of life's events (called internal locus of control)
• Satisfaction with life
• —Psychological well-being
• Purpose in life

Even worse, people who have found their authentic self have MORE anxiety and depression then people who have adopted someone else's identity. In other words, identity crises bring up a lot of issues, even after the crisis has passed.

Yikes. This isn't looking good for my claim that identity crises are worth having.

But wait, before you click back to YouTube while shaking your head that I've misled you, there's more to the picture. And it's important.

Although people who have found their authentic self look similar to Rent-An-Identity folks in many ways, they don't look the same in ALL ways. And I would argue (actually, I will argue) that the differences are no small thing.

People who have a true identity score higher on:

• —Sense of having fulfilled one's potential (called self-actualization)
• ——Sense of using one's innermost talents well (called eudaimonic well-being)
• Meaning in life

Big deal, you may be thinking. Are these three little things really worth having a crisis over?

In a word:  yes.

In many words:  absolutely, without a doubt, are you crazy to ever question me, YES!

It's abundantly clear where I fall on the issue of whether the search for an authentic self is worth it, but let me try to convince you.

Or rather, let Aristotle try to convince you (he probably has more pull than I do, huh?). Long before there was Career Avoidance 101, Aristotle was presenting his own set of lectures on the good life. (But his class so lacked a sense of humor.) He spent much of his time considering the highest human good. And guess what he believed it was? Eudaimonic well-being. As in, the type of well-being that people with an authentic self experience. The highest human good. How can you argue with that?

Man, you are feisty.

Alright then, how about something a bit more recent? Contemporary psychologists agree that if you want to be truly happy, you need to find meaning in life, self-actualization and/or eudaimonic well-being, as writer Ilona Boniwell discusses in her terrific article The Concept of Eudaimonic Well-Being. We talked about this ourselves in a past class.

To sum up:

1. To find your authentic self, you have to go through an identity crisis (a period of searching and questioning).
2. If you decide to avoid having a crisis (they are messy things, after all), you end up with a Rent-An-Identity (identity foreclosure).
3. People with true identities and rented identities look a lot alike, but they differ in their sense of living up to their potential.
4. Living up to one's potential is related, undeniably, to lasting happiness. Nothing else - pleasures, social admiration, money, things, status - can substitute.
5. So to be happy, you have to find your authentic self, and you have to go through the uncomfortable crisis process to get there.
6. Eminent developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnett (quoted above) is wrong. Oh wait, this last point is just for me; it's fun for us lowly psych people to attack the big guns. You know, just because we can.

So did I convince you? Or are you heading down to the Rent-An-Identity-Center tomorrow? I'm warning you:  it's nearly impossible to get those microscopic bugs and dead skin cells out of rental identities. I mean, yuck.

Sources:

Schwartz, S. J. (2004). Construct validity of two identity status measures: The EIPQ and the EOM-EIS-II.  Journal of Adolescence, 27, 477-483.

Schwartz, S. J., Luyckx, K., Beyers, W., Soenens, B., Zamboanga, B. L., Forthun, L. F., Hardy, S. A., Vazsonyi, A. T., Ham, L. S., Kim, S. Y., Whitbourne, S. K., & Waterman, A. S. (2011). Examining the light and dark sides of emerging adults' identity:  A study of identity status differences in positive and negative psychosocial functioning. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 839-859.

Steger, M. F., Oishi, S., & Kashdan, T. B. (2009). Meaning in life across the life span: Levels and correlates of meaning in life from emerging adulthood to older adulthood. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 43-52.

These hippos may look equally happy, but only one is actually satisfied with life. Or something like that. (Photo credit: Thai Jasmine (Smile..smile...Smile..))

Are you really going to argue with this guy? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why We Hate Networking for Jobs: Confessions of a Networking Convert

Networking for jobs. When I mention the phrase to my Bates students, their noses wrinkle, their lips grow taut, and the tip of a tongue sometimes protrudes ever so slightly from their mouths. Disgust. That's what they're demonstrating. Pure disgust.

I get it. I used to be an active member of United Anti-Networking Individualists. It's a faith that effectively thwarts the creation of a fulfilling career, given that over 80% of jobs are unadvertised. My fellow worshipers and I were left with the plum jobs that everyone knows about.

The thing is, I joined the dark side. I now - gasp - proselytize for job networking.

Yes, it's true. As part of my mission, I offer you the top reasons we hate networking for jobs. And why we're completely wrong. Based on psychological science, no less.

1. I Don't Want to Bug People

Let's pause for a second and consider what happens when you contact someone with a networking request. You're essentially saying to that person, hey, you're in a great position in life and I'd like to emulate you, or at least get closer to emulating you, and I was wondering if I might ask you to talk about yourself for fifteen minutes or so, and share some of the awesome contacts that I'm envious you have made? Ah, yes, I see why this is "bugging people." Not!

Number one:  People love to talk about themselves. That's the cardinal rule of human psychology.

Number two: People love to be praised and to feel like they're doing well on the social hierarchy. The second rule of human psychology.

So, "bugging people"? Uh, not so much.

2. I Want To Be Self-Sufficient

Ah, yes. The Western ideal run amock. I can do it myself! That's what you think, right? Then why do humans fall apart when they're socially excluded, suffering from depression and sometimes resorting to extreme aggression? Psychologists Baumeister and Leary claim that our "need to belong" drives much human behavior. In other words, we need one another to survive, both physically and psychologically. You're going against your basic nature if you assert otherwise. When you're in need (and when you're out of work, you are in need) that's the time to go with your evolutionary instincts, not fight against them. 

3. I Have the Wrong Personality For Networking

OK, you're onto something here. Psychologists Wolff and Kim found that people who are extraverted and high in openness to experience are more likely to network for jobs than people with introverted, closed personalities. That said, personality does not dictate all of our behavior. We may have to go "against type" in order to network, but we're required to go against type everyday for a variety of reasons.

I mean, for a true introvert, holding a spontaneous conversation can be excruciating. But introverts manage to do this all the time (thankfully). You're not being asked to change who you are in order to begin networking for jobs; just to channel a different way of relating to the world. And only for a short while. Besides, if you are an introvert looking for a career, you're probably drawn to career paths that other introverts love. Meaning you get to network with other introverts. That's hella comforting (speaking from my introverted self).

4. I Don't Have a Network

Oh wow, you're a hermetic isolate who lives in a cave? I always wanted to meet someone like you (it's very hard to do, seeing as how people like you never emerge from your dwellings). What, you're not? You actually live in the real world? Then, hate to break it to you, you have a network. A network isn't some fancy-schmancy secret club of Ivy League graduates who sit around drinking scotch while their chauffeurs polish the Mercedes. A network is just people. Plain ol' people. If you ever talk to anybody, then you have a network. Period.

But wait, I feel my psychic skills abuzzing; your rebuttal is ringing in my ears:

5. No One In My Network Knows Anything About My Field

This may be true. Maybe your network is full of people with careers you detest, or with backgrounds you'd rather not admit. But who's in their network? And in those people's networks?

Here's a tale from my anti-networking days:  I attended a career seminar at Cornell, back when I was plotting my great escape from grad school. To prove the power of networking, the career counselor made us each pair up with a random person in the room and see if we couldn't comb their network for someone related to what we wanted to do (and they ours). My partner got an immediate bingo from me; my dad worked in his prospective field. I, on the other hand, came up with peanuts from him. Peanuts.

There, I thought, proof that networking is a joke.

The counselor then went around the room, making everyone announce the connections they'd made. And they all had made connections. Except for me. (LOSER!)

When I professed my failure, the counselor kept hounding my partner and I, refusing to let the subject drop. You really have nothing to offer her? You can't get anything from him? Nope, we said, nothing.

As the seminar concluded, I went over to my partner and offered my email address, so that he could get in touch with my dad. As I handed it to him, I noticed a word on his Izod shirt (this clothing choice alone offers insight into why we had nothing in common). "Falmouth," I said, reading the word on his shirt. "As in Maine?"

"My Grandma lives there. Has her whole life."

"That's where I'm planning to move in a few months. To Falmouth, or nearby. And I don't know a single soul there."

The career counselor leaped over, like a possessed little jackal. "A-ha! I told you! Networking works!"

I glared at her, desperate to cling to my ideology. But as I talked to the grandma on the phone the next day, getting tips on where to live and where not to; the local publications in which to search for jobs; and the contact info of her niece who worked in social services, I couldn't help but question my anti-networking faith. Could networking be this powerful? And this easy? But still:

6. I Hate Using People

Here's the biggie, especially for you Millennials. Although you've come of age in the era of social networking, you're loathe to "use" those networks for personal gain. They're about self-expression and connection, right? Not about the trading of favors.

First, re-read Point #1 above.

Then stop and consider how you feel when you have a service you can offer to someone else. In the case of networking for jobs, it may be information about a certain career path, a connection to someone at your company, or the link to a friend or relative working in a particular industry. We humans are altruistic beings at heart, so when we give, we experience enhanced psychological well-being and decreased feelings of stress. We also earn social support from our actions.

As writer Elizabeth Scott says, "When people make altruistic personal sacrifices, they end up reaping what they sow in the form of favors from others. These individuals earn the reputation as altruistic people and end up receiving favors from others who they may not have even directly helped."

So, in essence, when you're asking others to help you, you're giving them the opportunity to experience more well-being, less stress, and the likelihood of returned favors in their future. Oh yes, this sounds like "using" somebody alright. Whatever you say.

Final Thoughts

Chances are I haven't made you a convert to networking for jobs just yet. It takes time. I know. But when you decide you're ready to fail Career Avoidance 101, a great start is to accept networking into your life.

I'm not only a Nutty for Networking  member. I'm its President.

So what did I miss? What deters you from networking for jobs?

Sources:

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.

Twenge, J. M., Baumeister, R. F., Tice, D. M., & Stucke, T. S. (2001). If you can't join them, beat them: Effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1058-1069.

Wolff, H., & Kim, S. (2012). The relationship between networking behaviors and the Big Five personality dimensions. Career Development International, 77, 43-66.

Ooo, there's a balloon at the call center! That makes this job much more appealing. (Photo credit: Walt Jabsco)

Think people will react like this when you contact them? (Photo credit: Cayusa)

You live here? (Photo credit: Aesum)

None of your friends knows anything useful? Bummer... (Photo credit: Meer)

Do Childhood Dreams Matter?

If you're in need of a life lesson, an Adam Sandler movie can provide it. Parenting? Excruciating but rewarding. Growing up? You're never too old to make progress. True love? Transcends sex, memory and bad singing.

When it comes to the complex issue of career choice, the Sand Man comes through once again. Mr. Deeds is, in essence, one big career manifesto. Granted, one sprinkled with disconcerting attempts at humor about a man's dead, blackened foot, but what career manifesto isn't?

In the final climactic scene - spoiler alert! (does that term even apply to Adam Sandler movies?) - Sandler's character convinces a room of stockholders to reject a corporate sale by rousing their memories of their childhood dream jobs. Some of which are downright unpleasant. All the same, the message is clear:  follow your childhood dreams; they hold your truth.

The question is, do they really?

After all, there are a million reasons why your childhood dream jobs are impractical and out of date. For instance, I dreamed of being a fashion designer when I was little, and spent countless hours sketching designs and sewing old clothes together to make haute couture. (My greatest masterpiece? An old pink t-shirt with a neon green scarf protruding from its center and half of a ruffly orange skirt sewn to the bottom. I mean, really, Versace, call me.) The thing is, I'm the least fashionable person you'll ever meet. (I just discarded my last top from high school. Despite its hodgepodge of geometric shapes and Teen Spirit caked into the pits, I still insisted on taking it to Goodwill because it was a perfectly good shirt.) Point is, I would've stunk as a fashion designer. So does that mean my childhood dream is totally invalid?

Well, if we're looking to avoid a fulfilling career, then yes, we should convince ourselves that childhood dreams are nothing more than the unrealistic spit-up of an underdeveloped mind.

But if we're in the career search to actually find some greater truth (read: living up to our fullest potentials), then maybe Mr. Deeds can teach us a thing or two.

When we look beyond their manifest content, childhood dream jobs may be ripe with lessons. In fact, they may be the best clues to the genetic career inclinations we discussed in the last lecture. Before parents and society and teachers began to tell us what we should be, or what we needed to be concerned about (money! status! a McMansion!) - in other words, before our genetic propensities were covered up with a ton of confusing voices - we had our dreams of being a firefighter, an astronaut, an ornithologist (I was weird). Childhood dreams are, if you will, the bread crumbs leading us to our genetic home. And thus to the unique and distinctive work we should be doing in this world.

The actual job itself is, for the most part, meaningless. It may give you a clue or two to your interests, but if that were completely true, we'd all love dinosaur bones way down deep inside. And I so don't.

What I find more valuable is to consider what our childhood dreams can tell us about the more nuanced aspects of career, the facets that tend to stay constant throughout our lives, even as we undergo our three to five career changes. Especially when we consider the answers when considering our full range of childhood dream jobs.

• How much cognitive complexity do I prefer to handle (or even need to have)? In other words, is The Walking Dead about my limit of complexity for the day?
• What types of work do I like to engage in? Work involving discovery or creation or logic or radical subversion?
• Do I like to use my motor skills? Am I good at using them? If so, do I prefer gross motor or fine motor activity? (Put another way, would I be better at kicking down doors or picking locks?)
• What level of physical activity do I like to have in my day? Do I prefer to be confused for the chair in which I sit, or do I enjoy offending people from the scent of the sweat I work up throughout any given day?
• What type of people do I prefer to be around?* Those who are artistic or entrepreneurial or conventional or pruddish?
• What sort of work environment do I like?* An office? A lab? A setting with children present? A maximum security facility?
• Do I prefer to work alone or to engage in teamwork? (Read: can I stand others, and can they stand me?)
• Is there a certain geographic setting that I prefer? A big city, a rural setting, a remote site, somewhere abroad, a secret bunker underground?
• Are there certain work conditions I'd prefer?* Do I want certain times of year off? Do I want to work at odd hours, or  conventional 9 to 5 hours? Do I like to have someone who gives structure to my day (read: a boss), or do I like to create structure for myself? Do I like to wear clothes while working?

Of course our childhood selves didn't consider most - if any - of these questions when we were "picking" a dream career. (Although even that is debatable; my two-year-old contemplates the "wearing clothes" question on a daily basis, to which she answers a resounding no. Yup, we're in big trouble.) Regardless of conscious consideration, I'd make the claim that we naturally gravitated to jobs that matched our innate propensities on many of these dimensions. Perhaps not all, but many.

So when people scoff and say that childhood careers are meaningless to the adult job search, they are, in some ways, correct. The what doesn't matter. At all. Nobody would want me designing their clothes.

But the why, that may matter. Perhaps more than we allow ourselves to realize.

What do you think:  Do you believe that childhood dreams have importance for our career search, or are they simply the impractical spewings of an immature brain?

*Items derived from What Color is Your Parachute? by Dick Bolles.

The career guru himself. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is Your Career In Your Genes?

“I have absolutely no idea what I want to be.” If I had an angry employee for every time I heard a student say that, I’d be Marissa Mayer. The thing is, I’m not buying it. OK, sure, you don’t know exactly how to use your talents and interests to create a career that affords more than a steady diet of Taco Bell. I get that. But don’t tell me you have no clue what your abilities and tendencies are. You've known them since you were a little kid. They're right there in your genes.

We often hear dramatic tales of identical twins reared apart who discover one another and realize they've been living parallel lives. Like the pair of New Jersey volunteer firefighters who both used to work for lawn companies before earning their livings selling fire-related equipment. In reality, cases like this are rare; identical twins don't usually share the exact same careers, regardless of whether they were raised apart or together.

That said, career choice does seem to be "in our genes," at least to some extent. Researchers estimate that genetics explain about one-third of our variability in career choice. And while identical twins raised separately don't usually have the same job, they do tend to pick jobs that are similar in:

• —  Complexity levels
• —  Motor skills
• —  Physical demands

In addition, about half of our variation in interests is due to genes. In other words, why do you detest Justin Bieber while your friend loves him? It's about half genetically determined. And half good taste.

Finally, whether a person decides to engage in tasks that are entrepreneurial, artistic or conventional also seems to be largely determined by our biological makeup.

This suggests that if we want to have a fulfilling career, we should follow our inner yearnings. In fact, about 30% of our job satisfaction itself is attributable to genes. Twin researcher and author of the blog Twofold, Nancy Segal, explains these findings by saying, "People in general may better understand their level of job satisfaction in terms of how well their abilities and opportunities coincide.” In other words, if you use your innate abilities in your occupation, you're likely to have greater job satisfaction.

Even more of a head scratcher is the finding that our tendency to switch jobs and careers may also be partly genetic. According to twin research, about 36% of job change tendencies and 26% of career change tendencies are due to what's inside us. In other words, if you're a job hopper, it might not be your jobs that are the issue. It may be you. (There's a tidy fact to keep from the rents...)

I think it makes sense that career choice may be partly genetic, from an evolutionary perspective. Our species is most likely to survive and flourish if we have individuals suited for the many tasks survival requires. If everyone is great at self-promotion but lacks the problem-solving skills to investigate whether a dead battery is in a broken flashlight, we're in big trouble. I mean, what would we do with a society full of The Situations running around? It's no wonder our genes are varied, causing some of us to be inclined to create companies while others of us are content to be worker bees.

So modern society, with its push toward high status, high income careers - "Be a doctor! Be a lawyer! Be an insanely overpaid bank executive!" - is undermining the natural order of things. For our species to thrive, we should each be what we're meant to be. Lo and behold, Civil Rights advocate Benjamin Mays - who I profiled in a previous post - was actually speaking like a geneticist and evolutionary psychologist when he said, "Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done."

Of course "genes are not destiny" and there's a whole lot of room for environmental influences on our career choices. There's also no "career gene," of course; like all complex traits, career-related characteristics are polygenic. That said, during the career search, it can't hurt to pause to consider the interests, skill sets, and inclinations that are as much a part of you as your hair color and height. Who knows, you might just glance at your designer genes and get Lucky.

What do you think:  can you identify some interests, abilities and desires that have been present since you were young? Do you believe these are a part of your genetic makeup?

Good Read:

Born Together—Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study by Nancy L. Segal Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012.

Sources:

Betsworth, D. G., Bouchard, T. J. Jr., Cooper, C. R., Grotevant, H. D., Hansen, J. C, Scarr, S., & Weinberg, R. A. (1994). Genetic and environmental influences on vocational interests assessed using adoptive and biological families and twins reared apart and together. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 44, 263-278.

Moloney, D. P., Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & Segal, N. L. (1991). A genetic and environmental analysis of the vocational interests of monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared apart. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 39, 76-109.

Segal, N. L. (1999). Twin Studies Show...The Career of Dreams May Be the Career of Your Genes. Psychology Today, 54-70.

Mirror image...in career choice too? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What If Everyone Sees Through Me?

Career avoidance strategy #597:  Convince yourself you're an imposter and that your accomplishments to date have all been due to luck.

Here's a case study:  a senior recently asked me to look over her cover letter. It was, in a word, understated. When I pushed her to add more about her accomplishments and about skills that I'd witnessed firsthand, she said, "But I'm not sure I can do all that stuff. I'm afraid they'll give me the job and then, like, realize I'm not so great after all."

Ah, yes. The fraud feeling. We think we're pulling some humongous rug over the world's eyes. As if there'll be some big Hollywood reveal when Bruce Willis will jump out, pull an eerily lifelike mask off our faces, and say, Ah ha! See? You are not who you say you are. You are not good enough to do what you're doing. You are just - gasp - you!

Sometimes we even experience this feeling so severely that counseling is in order. When it's that bad, it's called the Imposter Syndrome or Imposter Phenomenon, and 70% of us experience this at least once in our lifetimes.

Regardless of intensity, the fraud feeling takes a toll on our mental health, our sense of fulfillment, and our willingness to go after the "unique and distinctive" work we're supposed to be doing in this world.

Impostors often experience fear, stress, self-doubt, and feel uncomfortable with their achievements. Impostor fears interfere with a person's ability to accept and enjoy their abilities and achievements, and have a negative impact on their psychological well-being. When facing an achievement-related task, Impostors often experience uncontrollable anxiety due to their fear of failure. - Salkulku & Alexander (2011)

So if you want to throw your future for a loop, study up on imposterism. All you need to do is embrace the characteristics of people who feel like imposters:

• Work too hard on tasks (beyond what is necessary for solid results).
• Strive to be better than your peers.
• Be perfectionistic.
• Hold a fear of failure.
• Discount praise.
• Fear success.

Huh, sounds like a lot of the things we've been talking about in our class. You really are A+ students in the field of career avoidance, aren't you?

And no wonder. Feelings of imposterism come from two major sources, which just happen to run rampant in Millennnials' young lives:

1. Parental overprotection, especially from a father. (Hello helicopter parents!)
2. An upbringing that emphasizes the importance of intelligence. (Hello our entire society!)

So there you go, a foolproof strategy for pushing away a fulfilling career/life, placed right into your lap by your doting parents and an intelligence-obsessed society. Ta da!

But what if you instead want to fail my class?

Well you could overcompensate for feelings of fraudulence by acting like an arrogant prick who can do no wrong, touting your credentials and background to anyone who will listen (and to those who won't.) Heap your resume with skills you've never bothered to perfect (much like Joey on Friends claiming to speak French) and adopt a modus operandi in which you ask others about their lives so you can in turn tell them about yours.

Great for situation comedy. Not for real life.

The other option is to gain self-knowledge (ah, that little thing) by:

1. Reviewing the many things you've accomplished in your life. Be sure to look far beyond what society deems to be "accomplishments" (e.g., degrees, scholarships, promotions) to the accomplishments that are meaningful to you (e.g., finishing a half-marathon, painting your apartment, watching an entire season of 24 in 24 hours).
2. Identifying the skills you had to use to reach each accomplishment, especially the accomplishments you care about. These are the skills you likely enjoy using, and that you'd be smart to target in your career search. (Skills needed for 24 in 24 hours? Follow through. Focus. Capacity to overlook incrementally unrealistic plotlines.)
3. Accepting that luck was not involved in your accomplishments. It might be tempting to chalk your life all up to fate, to some hand-me-down from the gods, but really, not so much. (I mean, a 24 marathon doesn't just happen.)

Whenever I'm feeling like a fraud, I take my self-knowledge and go all 8 Mile on the world. As in, I do what Eminem's character did during the final rap battle:  lay weaknesses on the table before the opposition can. (Little did Eminem know, but psychologists find this to be a powerful persuasive technique.) Instead of putting on a haughty front while worrying that the world will see through me, I tell people up front where my weaknesses lie. I don't undercut myself. I don't undersell. I don't make myself look like a doofus. (I don't think.) But I do keep a healthy sense of humor about my faults and the areas in which I still need work.

So if you don't want to feel like an imposter, get to know yourself. Know what you're good at. And what you're not. Sell the former, because you deserve to. And laugh freely about the latter, because it'll put yourself and others at ease.

Or else spend the rest of your days fearing you'll be "found out," hiding your true talents under a Red Mango bucket (don't you wish they made that?!) or behind a giant dollop of pompousness, and passing Career Avoidance 101 with flying colors. Your choice completely.

Source: Salkulku, J., & Alexander, J. (2011). The Imposter Phenomenon. International Journal of Behavioral Science, 6, 73-92.

Good Reads:

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids (New York Magazine)

How to Land Your Kid in Therapy (The Atlantic)

Talk about a bad imposter. Dude, you so do not look like Michael Jackson. (Photo credit: Feggy Art)

The Twentysomething Identity Crisis

Listen up, class:  you're getting rid of your professor for a day. (My god, you could at least wait on the hoots and hollers until I'm out the room.) Today we have our first substitute teacher, Ms. Ashley Sapp from Chaos and Words. Ms. Sapp recently approached me, saying she wanted to work with you rowdy bunch. Seeing as how I enjoy her lyrical, impassioned blog - and given the fact that she's an actual twentysomething (read: not an old codger like yours truly) - I thought this would be great. Please give Ms. Sapp a warm Career Avoidance 101 welcome by clicking over to her blog, engaging in some thoughtful post-lecture class discussion, and refraining from throwing spitballs! I'll be back on Friday to dole out penalties accordingly (no recess for you!). What is the identity of the twenty-something? Why does this identity constantly shift?

We feel the need to fit ourselves into categories that make sense because we've got one foot in our adolescence and the other in adulthood - this is a confusing time, and we can end up feeling split between two worlds and not quite like "ourselves". Sometimes, we don’t even know what it means to feel like ourselves. We are still figuring things out, and that’s fine. Some adults don’t have things completely figured out, and that’s also okay. There is incredible pressure to be someone. Particularly growing into a twenty-something and moving through such a defining decade, we don’t always know who that person should be.

As a child, we're asked what we want to be when we grow up. This question is a big deal. At younger ages, these answers can range anywhere from an astronaut to a cowboy to an actress to a race-car driver (or whatever the case may be).

I remember taking little quizzes that told us which profession we would most likely excel at depending on our personalities. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer and performer, and because that’s what I wanted, my quiz answers reflected this. Eventually I heard a recording of myself singing (you know, practicing) and realized that I’m totally tone-deaf. Some dreams just aren’t meant to be.

However, there is a difference between having certain talents (or in my case, not having those talents) and feeling as though we have to fit a certain mold. Parents and teachers can often times play a large role in this, wanting us to become "successful people". What exactly does this mean? Many times, it’s based off monetary success, so careers such as lawyers and doctors are considered the best route to take. Yet, wouldn't any career that makes someone happy be considered a success?

I’m a writer through-and-through, but I’ve still been asked, “Okay, but what are you going to be?” as though my answer was a joke. I’m sure I’m not alone in confessing what my dream is only to have it be deemed ludicrous. We go from declaring ourselves astronauts as children to having that same dream smashed as being too far-reaching (there’s some irony for you).  When does this transition happen? Obviously, some people go on to become all those things.

No, we are not all destined to have out-of-this-world careers, but my point here is who is anyone to tell you what is right for you, your dreams? We made it through the awkward years, the bullies, the drama, the stresses of middle and high school only to be told when we finally reach the end that our dreams are not realistic. We have to start being serious, go to college, get a job. However, it does not always work out the same way for everyone – we can go about these stages at our own pace (or skip some altogether). There is a reason we are individuals, and we don’t all go about living in the same manner.

One thing I’ve learned, though, is that people have a lot of opinions on what you should be doing. Apparently to some what I am  is not good enough – it’s not who I should be. So here’s the number one lesson I can perhaps provide to you today:

It does not matter what anyone else says you should do with your life. It is you who must live it day in and day out, and the only way you’ll ever be satisfied waking up each day is if you do what feels right to you. Your number one concern should be to make you happy, not to satisfy someone else’s idea of you. That will never last. The best way for your life to have any sort of impact is for it to be undeniably, completely, messily, and unabashedly yours.

We have been taught and conditioned that whatever we do for a living is what defines us, makes up our identity, and deems us successful. Perhaps that is why our identities shift so often, but I think it's our perceptions that shift rather than our actual identity. For instance, I'm the same person I was when I worked in retail, but I wasn't defined by that – that does not make up who I am as a person, my morals, my thoughts, my inspirations. Lessons were taken from the experience, certainly (like patience), but that's not my entire make-up.

A career should be something that motivates you and inspires you, and retail just did not do that for me. On that note, retail is not an easy job to have, but people tend to rank it rather low and as being "unsuccessful". That's simply not true. I have a friend who actually enjoys working retail, and I say all the more power to him. When a career coincides with how you feel about yourself and what you desire out of life, I think you’ve made your match.

Going after a certain career can be terrifying and amazing at the same time. We fear we’ll fail, we fear we’re not good enough, and we’re unsure we’re making the right choice at times. Try to remember, though, that whatever career you choose is not your entire identity. Your core is not made up of dollar signs and nine-to-fives.

So if whatever path you choose isn’t right the first time, that’s okay, too! My path of singing was quite short-lived, but I have that notch in my belt and found a different route to take that is right for me. The identity you have is always there, but paths tend to bend and twist and go off-roading at times. Don’t let it become a crisis.

Will the real you please stand up? (Photo credit: Bilal Kamoon)

Hmm, hmm, hmm. (Photo credit: alexanderdrachmann)

Can't We All Be Above Average?

That's what a student with red-rimmed eyes asked me last week. She stood before me, distressed about her average (perfectly acceptable) grade on a paper assignment, visibly willing her tears away. I said her paper was just fine, it's simply that I reserve the top 10% of grades for students who do a standout job, going beyond the requirements or looking at the topic in a novel way. "But that's not fair," she said. "Can't we all be above average?"

I felt like I was watching the "WHY?!" Nancy Kerrigan video play out before me (if you were, like, a year old when this event happened, start the video at 1:55 for a refresher; man, you make me feel old). I alternately wanted to shake my student and say, "Snap out of your self-pity!" and then to hug her while cooing, "I know. It sucks. I get it. This hurts."

The thing is, I do get it. I've felt it. I sometimes still feel it. I mean, why can't we all be above average? Well, because, obviously, we can't.

So the real question is, why did we get it in our heads in the first place that we could be?

Partly it's due to the self-esteem movement - you know, the campaign that had you winning "Participant Ribbons" rather than real trophies in grammar school - but even more importantly, it's due to our natural cognitive development.

During adolescence, we all think we're special. No one has to tell us we are, we simply believe it. Nobody has ever had these thoughts before, we tell ourselves. Journal, dear journal, you are witnessing the dawn of a magnificent mind afire. With thoughts like these, I'm destined to take the world by storm.

Don't believe me? Then you haven't been reading many blogs.

The thing is, it's healthy and normal to think this way. For a while. It's called the personal fable and it's part of normative adolescent egocentrism. Psychologists debate its origins, but it may arise as a way of coping with individuation - the process of becoming your self, a being who is separate from those around you.

Sound familiar?

I think it should, because that's what you guys are grappling with every. single. day. I watch it in my office. I read it in your blogs. I see it in our class discussions. Figuring out who you are - and doing so independently of the subtle, all-encompassing, often-overlooked influence of your parents - is what today's twenties are all about.

So here's what I believe:  the personal fable and egocentrism aren't just an adolescent thing. They're here and they're now.

And they're screwing you over. Two times over.

They're paralyzing your quest for a fulfilling life and career, coming and going:

1. When the personal fable is in full effect, you're afraid of making a misstep that would prove you aren't actually special. I remember thinking just this in my early 20s:  what if I leave my Ivy League "I can prove I'm smart by just saying where I go to school" grad school and simply become a person with a job? Who am I then? And what will have happened to the "mind afire?" I'm too special, too unique, too destined for greatness for such an end. I know I'm not satisfied with my current life, but if I make the leap, take the chance, reach out for the life I really want...<pause for a freak out>...I might end up realizing that everything I've believed about myself has been a complete and utter lie.
2. Then, as the personal fable wanes, you give up the will to strive for a better life. Wait, I'm not actually special? you begin to think. Everyone else thinks like this, too? Crap. Then who am I to believe I can do anything wonderful with my life? Who am I to bother to fight for fulfillment and to try to "do what I love"? That's impractical. That's unreasonable. Best to just suck it up and take a cubicle job and sell my soul down a river of memos and meetings and incessant cesspools of insipid, pithy emails.

The thing is, both ways of thinking are flawed. We're not all above average. Statistically, that simply doesn't work.  But we do all have the right to a life that gives us a sense of purpose and passion and meaning. There's no quota on that; no requirement that only 10% of us get to engage in that search.

In other words, when my student was standing before me last week, ineffectually blinking back her tears, the urgency welling within her wasn't about a paper. It wasn't about her performance. It wasn't, even, about being "average." It was about being blocked from a life worth living.

And so I said, "No, we can't all be above average. But we can all live extraordinary lives. If we choose to."

She stared at me for a long moment, the tears ceasing to flow. I could see the epiphany creeping into her. Inch by inch. Cell by cell. Atom by atom. These are the teaching  moments we live for, through many a botched lecture, through many an awkward class discussions, through many a hand-cramped session of grading.

Finally, she spoke.

"Uh. So what about my grade?"

Sources:

Lapsley, D. K (1993). Toward an integrated theory of adolescent ego development: The "new look" at adolescent egocentrism. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 63, 562-571.

Vartanian, L. R. (2000). Revisiting the imaginary audience and personal fable constructs of adolescent egocentrism:  A conceptual review. Adolescence, 35, 639-661.

There simply aren't enough ribbons to go around. (Photo credit: ideath)