What story serves you best?
Why "having" a job is a surefire route to disappointment
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Has this ever happened to you?
You get a job, and over time, the job starts to change. Maybe it happens slowly, or maybe all at once. But one day you start on your work and find yourself thinking, “This isn’t what I signed up for.”
There’s a problem with how we think about jobs – and the clue to what’s wrong is in the phrase “get a job.”
The truth is, a job is not an unchanging, tangible item you can hold. You don’t “have” a job, not really – you perform it.
Why all this nitpicking about nouns and verbs? Am I just embracing my inner English teacher? It’s because the stories we tell ourselves matter – and the idea of an unchanging job, for most of us, is no longer true.
Roll with the changes
I often think about what my friend and former colleague told me about sailing: “You get seasick from not being comfortable with waves coming, or not being comfortable with what is happening with the wind or how the boat is reacting.
“Learning to sail and becoming better at sailing is a matter of calibrating yourself in your environment.”
Once you’ve “landed” a job, it can feel like the hard part is over. Now you just have to do the work. But when the job changes on you, if you’re not expecting those shifts – well, it might make you queasy.
The disconnect between our expectations and reality is at the root of so many career challenges, whether it’s burnout or the fantasy of the dream job. The story that serves you is the one that helps you bridge that disconnect. The traditional career story is that you move from job to job. I’d argue that today, we move from job through job.
I encourage you to embrace your inner Word Detective. Start noticing when people are talking about jobs as something to have, and not something to do. And tell yourself the story that will serve you best.
Happy navigating,
Bridget
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