Discover the five traps that may be preventing you from enjoying your work and learn how to overcome them for a more fulfilling career.
Sometimes you scroll through Instagram* and it seems that you are the only one with such a boring job that you have to go to every day, while others enjoy life. And also the feeling of a “ceiling”, the feeling that you will never achieve success, and attacks from the inner critic. Career consultant Elena Rezanova in the book “It’s Normal!” tells what prevents us from feeling good at work and how to change it.
The Myth of the Ideal Job
We live in a world that suggests: there is a certain calling, a dream job, finding which will instantly make us happy, successful and rich. Because of this, an ordinary job, even a very good one, only frustrates, and we spend years looking for “something more”.
An entire industry has grown up around “finding yourself.” Vocation tests that supposedly will help you understand who you are once and for all. Vocation by date of birth. Vocation by zodiac sign. There are no limits to our desire to decode this sacred code that is hidden in places incomprehensible to the mind.
In reality, there is no such thing as a calling.
Difficulties are a natural part of the process. Fatigue, problems, crises are normal. This does not mean that your work is somehow different.
What to do. Often, harmful attitudes (and the belief that everyone should have a “life’s work” is one of them) lose their effect as soon as we recognize and discover them. If you have realized that you have been unsuccessfully searching for a “true calling” for a long time, start noticing how this affects you. And also think about what is good about your work now. What goals and dreams does it allow you to realize? Perhaps this is enough to consider your work worthy.
Imposter Syndrome
According to research, up to 70% of adult professionals suffer from impostor syndrome from time to time. Deep down, successful people believe that they are not that good, and that the reason for their success is a fortunate combination of circumstances. But the reason for any failure is themselves.
Remarkably, impostor syndrome was discovered by someone with impostor syndrome, Pauline Clance. In the 1960s, when she was a graduate student studying clinical psychology, she always felt like “everyone was smarter than me.”
What to do. When the same story happens to you, try to turn on the “master mode”. That is, shift the focus from yourself to the task. Let’s say you are preparing for a speech and you are attacked by fears: “Will I say something valuable? Will I make a good impression? Will this end in failure?”
But what if you ask yourself other questions: “What do I want to share? What do I want to help? What problem am I solving?”
Your role immediately changes. You start thinking not about yourself, but about the task. And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in yourself or not – you just do what needs to be done.
Perfectionism
A perfectionist sincerely believes that if he does everything right, for example, works hard and achieves his goals, then everything will be fine. When something unplanned happens (a mistake, failure or layoff), the picture of the world collapses. A huge disappointment and a severe personal crisis sets in.
The perfectionist has chosen the most difficult role in the world: to be perfect and correct. What does this lead to? “The main feeling you experience is tension,” write psychologists Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko. “You never get to relax and enjoy life.”
Here are the most common attitudes of perfectionists – check if you have them:
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I have to know everything and understand everything;
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I have to help everyone;
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the result is all or nothing;
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I have no right to make a mistake or to be ignorant.
What to do. Try to allow yourself to make mistakes. Talk to the perfectionist inside you about the fact that without mistakes, development is impossible, and without development, it is impossible to become perfect. If you realize that your beliefs do not work and you feel the tension accumulating, it is best to work through this with a professional psychologist, because perfectionism can lead to severe burnout.
Feeling the ceiling
“I’ve seen it all in my work. There’s no room to grow.” Professionals often fall into this trap. It seems like there are no opportunities, no career prospects, and nothing interesting is happening in your field. A dead end.
Most often, we don’t see opportunities not because they don’t exist. We just can’t see them from where we are now – the tunnel.
Imagine you went on vacation to a new place, landed at the airport, opened the navigator, and it was empty. There was no map loaded. This is the best metaphor for what happens to a professional who is ready to grow, but does not see options and is discouraged by the fact that he has nothing to choose from.
What to do . In reality, everything a professional is looking for exists, but his navigator doesn’t have such data. There’s only one way out: download the map. To do this, you need to look around, talk to new people. Here’s the easiest way to get out of the tunnel:
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Find three books that have been published on your topic in the last year.
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Find three events that took place (or will take place) this year.
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Find three people who are already working in this area and have achieved success.
Read, look around, communicate. Arrange for yourself a “navigator hour” at least once every six months. And you will surely see opportunities that you did not suspect before.
Banal fatigue
At work, we can behave like a person who realizes that his car’s gas tank is almost empty, but decides not to stop at a gas station because he has no time and still has 500 kilometers to go.
It is not customary for us to rest, limit the number of working hours to reasonable limits and openly declare that we are tired. So we work until we are completely exhausted. Many people quit in this state, lie around for a couple of weeks, and then get a new job – and repeat the cycle all over again.
What to do . Describe yourself in two modes: when your battery is charged by 10-20% and when by 80-100%. What state are you in now? If closer to the first one, it’s time to rest urgently.
Revise your work routine to take more short breaks. Improve your nutrition and sleep. Prioritize yourself and your well-being over a mountain of work tasks (that never end). Use all your vacation time per year, not just part of it.
We think we know how it should be: work as if it were a holiday, every day is full of self-realization and successful success. But it doesn’t happen that way. The path of a professional is not a straight road to the horizon, but many hours filled with different events and emotions. And that’s normal.
Cover: still from the film “The Intern”