It was almost two decades ago…
I had recently graduated from university, had two degrees, received honors, had been accepted into two PhD programs along with assistant positions…
When school was in session, in my world of academic libraries and science labs, I felt like the king of the world. On top of my game… Respected by my professors and peers…
In fact, I was working toward becoming an expert on a specific technical subject, and had just finished a big paper, based on a year long study that I was a co-lead on. Things were going well.
Of course, being young and brash, I was also confident and cocky: I would take tests with a pen and brag that I didn’t make mistakes so I didn’t need a pencil or an eraser (yes, that’s right, we still used paper back in those days!)
Ponder my surprise when my girlfriend at the time couldn’t get into the same schools I got into. After a long and serious conversation, we decided on delaying my admissions while she re-aplied. In the meantime, I would get a job to get some “corporate experience”.
Easier said than done!
What Was It Like to Get “Corporate Experience”?
Almost three months had passed since my graduation. A number of interviews, countless resumes and applications had gone by. And I still had nothing to show for it!
Since the school session had ended, I had to move out of campus, destroy my entire savings, and make ends meet by minimizing in spartan fashion. I literally slept on the couch in a friend’s apartment and ate food out of cans, while I spent all my time glued to my computer, which I had rigged atop a cardboard box, applying to jobs.
It was humiliating. It was frustrating. But most of all, it was what I now call: “identity altering”…
You see… If I had known that I would come out victorious from this process, go on to get a string of high value jobs in Fortune 500 firms, become a manager before I turned 25, move onto leading highly complex projects and running departments, becoming an executive and an entrepreneur, and semi-retiring before I turned 40… I would have taken the whole thing a lot more lightly, and enthusiastically. I would have looked at it as an adventure.
But at the time, I had no idea where my life was going. Employer’s were treating me like dirt. They didn’t care about my skills. They disregarded my experience. They ignored my intelligence and education. They distrusted my work ethic despite all evidence contrary. And they didn’t grant me a shred of dignity.
I’m sure those of you who are searching for jobs, especially your first time jobs can resonate. Sure, we all go through it – but that doesn’t mean it is called for, pleasant or even, acceptable. No one deserves to be treated like dirt, just because they haven’t been on the planet as long as their employed counterparts… But I digress…
In retrospect, though, despite my protestations, I still see this process as a natural, a necessary, and perhaps even a “good for me” process… It thickens your skin, and that hide serves you down the road.
What I Learned From My “Corporate Experience”
While I was technically qualified to do all the jobs I applied for, I lacked the appropriate career skills to get me the job. I had to develop skills like capturing attention, bypassing HR gatekeepers, short-cutting the cognitive process of value filtering (more on all of these later…).
None of these crucial skills were taught to me at the university, and the few flimsy attempts at checking the box of developing career skills like “we showed them how to write a resume with this 30 minute workshop” were misleading and even harmful – they taught us outdated and broken techniques that actually kept us out of jobs!
Beyond the career skills dimension, however, there was another important piece at play…
You see… During my ordeal where I slept on the couch, lived on cold food and felt like a loser, I had to find a way to cope with it.
I had to learn how to transform my attitude in order to keep going. And that transformation has been one of the paramount keys for career success as well as sanity.
And what exactly was that transformation?
I had to switch from an accomplishment based identity, which is what we are all conditioned into, to a purpose based identity.
The Great Transformation of Instant Success – For Real
This is perhaps the most important thing I will teach you…
Because human beings are social animals, we have various hard wired mechanisms in our brain that make us interface with society and cultivate a self image.
If this is a self-image we are proud of and happy with, and it is also a self-image we can successfully negotiate with the world – as in – the world agrees with our self-image and respects it, we feel validated.
If, however, our self-image is not accepted by society, we feel that our identity is threatened. We might get frustrated, humiliated or dejected. In fact, our nervous system maps this type of rejection on our body by triggering a type of pain response that is equivalent to what sticking a needle in your eye would feel like. Rejection is literally painful.
This is why my time applying to jobs, just like all your time applying to jobs, universally sucks!
We base our identity around being accomplished in our field and validated by our peers. But… The business world does not reflect it back. Instead, the business world “puts us in our place” and shows us that all we deserve is to be two steps from homeless.
At least, as far as our brains are concerned – that’s what was going on. Our accomplishment based identity gets shattered. It’s bad, painful stuff… But it doesn’t end there.
The problem is, because human society is built on a competitive-cooperative framework, and because this framework is literally stamped into our genes – society often doesn’t go along with our plans or give us what we want. In fact, society rarely goes along with what we want.
And if we make a play at upward social mobility to increase our status like breaking into a high-paying industry, or getting promoted, or moving up into management, society will resist us.
This is why, when you play the career game, if you’re playing it right, you will get rejected.
And if your sense of self is impacted by this rejection like a normal human being, it can have devastating consequences. In fact, if it continues for a long time, it can spiral of into depression, ingrain unhealthy habits, lead to addictions, make people give up on their dreams, and in the extreme cases, even lead to suicide. (Note: If you have the slightest bit of suicidal ideation, stop reading now and call a suicide hotline. Your life matters.)
Fortunately, there IS a way out.
Why You Need “Purpose Based Identity”
The way out is switching our sense of identity and source of validation, from one that is no longer fit for our environment because it evolved for tribal life in the African savanna, to one that is fit for our environment, which is the globalized world of cities, corporations and capital markets.
And if you think you don’t need to do this, think again! We all get a sense of validation from somewhere. And most people in our culture get it from their accomplishments – incidentally this is why when people meet each other they ask “what do you do?”: It is a very deep and profound question that defines your role in the global hierarchy.
The harsh truth is, our default mode of validation comes from our accomplishments. The schools we get into. The jobs we have. The promotions we receive. The amount of money we make. The awards we receive.
The problem is, tying our self-image and source of validation to such external events makes us vulnerable to rejection and messes up our emotional stability. Whereas, if we derive our validation from a higher, mission or purpose based source – we become invulnerable to the whims of society.
And make no mistake: I don’t recommend making this switch so that you can cope with being small and living a low-status life! Neither do I recommend this for some high and lofty spiritual mission. On the contrary, I recommend making this switch as a technique to make you resilient to rejection, as well as the political intrigues of the competitive career world.
I want you to make the switch so that you can achieve upward social mobility and live the life you prefer. Because I believe that when you achieve upward social mobility, you become a better person and the world improves. (That’s the story of free markets, but that story is for another time)
Here’s a simpler way to put it:
It’s Not Spiritual, But Practical
When we tie our self-image and sense of validation to external factors like getting that job or being promoted or getting that corner office, we become naturally beholden to current systems of power and hierarchy. And that screws with us playing the game effectively.
But when we tie our self image to missions like “contributing to a field” or “serving our country” or “helping people” or “being a builder of things” or even “discovering our mission”; what happens in the outside world and how society reacts to us becomes less emotionally significant. With the emotional stability, we automatically become more competent at playing the game.
When I’m trying to get a job to become validated as a valuable professional and I can’t, every silent rejection is evidence for my brain that I suck and I’m not good enough. And each next job I apply to becomes harder as I get more and more jaded.
When I’m trying to discover my mission in life, however, and I apply to a hundred jobs and don’t hear back, I’ve just learned that my mission is not in their direction. And I can easily apply to another hundred with zero additional emotional labor.
Of course.. You can’t fake this paradigm shift. If you keep telling yourself that “whether I get the job or not doesn’t matter” while you secretly have heart palpitations every time you get an email, you’re still living in an accomplishment based identity.
This is because the switch isn’t just in your conscious mind. The switch is in your conscious as well as your subconscious mind.
If you’re interested in making this switch, we have some resources like our 10 Day Career Imprint Challenge (won’t tell you where it is, you have to find it). It is a free process that guides you in creating a high-value career imprint. And it is designed to help you turn the tables with the corporate world and finally get the career you want.
Also, if you’d like to learn the type of career skills I mentioned earlier, you should check out Launch Your Career.
Ultimately, you achieving the highest and best use of your time is good for the entirety of humanity. We no longer live in tribes with finite zero sum games and scarce resources. We live in the world of infinite games where there is more than enough for all of us.
We are rooting for you.
And we want you to free your subconscious and start rooting for yourself too.