What is Career Success? Part 2

Having A Career

So, what is career success? We learn as teens and twenty-somethings that it’s cool to have an important career title associated with our name. Mostly, we view “career” as a noun. Usually, without much thought for the long-term, we set out to have a successful reputation—doctor, lawyer, and stock broker. Getting there seems as simple as going to school to get credentials.

With just a title, we think of ourselves as professionals. One stop at the career convenience store, there we are, a certified noun. As we venture out into the world, we practice and try out the noun that we’ve attached to ourselves. Moving and shaking, we’re looking for that magical experience—the perfect job. At some level we’re hoping that our noun fits who we really are. I’m a doctor, but am I a healer? I am a programmer, but am I a problem solver? I am an engineer, but do I love to build? We hope our choice of noun will pan out.

Recognizing that we easily spend 75 percent of our waking hours involved in work, it’s a major compromise to go through the motions waiting for the five o’clock whistle to blow. Our career noun by itself doesn’t bring happiness to the office cubicle.

For most people, the symptoms of having a poor fitting noun quickly begin to erode their well being. People experience boredom, resentment, anxiety and feel like they are leading two separate lives. Work becomes a total drag.

To alleviate the suffering it’s easy to take the path of least resistance, jumping from one frying pan into another. Job hoping and collecting master’s degrees become a magic pill to give a sense of self-control and a feeling of moving forward. Once labeled as a specific noun, it seems like you are trapped in a sentence. Dilbert becomes a reality.

The quest for faux success is a phenomenon that largely stems from our culture’s consumerized philosophy of career. We have expectations to have a ready-made road map to a great life. We’re expected to leap from high school into a profession—without ever designing, choosing and building it. We aspire to “having” success, hoping it’s something that we can find out there on monster.com.  

Just like a frozen pizza, we literally buy prepackaged career titles at the college retail store. We skip the process of figuring out what we are, short-cutting the journey it takes to create our own career path.

Go on to part 3, Being Successful in Your Career.