Have you ever tried to get the attention of someone you really
like? You noticed them in one of those online dating websites or out at night,
mingling around. Whoever that person is, they caught your interest. There was
something about his/her “profile” that attracted you to that person or you
heard great things about them that really sounded fascinating. My favorite, and
often very common is, “we met through mutual friends”. You gain the confidence
to approach them and you get a response. All of a sudden you are optimistic,
you see yourself in a long term committed relationship. You prepare to impress them
in the first few couple of dates, expressing your best attributes and what you
look for in your counterpart. You work hard to look the part and even seeking
advice!
At the end of each date, you find yourself with so much in
common… or not. What happens when all those emotions starts to bottle up
inside? I’m getting butterflies in my stomach! You are so happy because you
thought you found the one. Well, one day, that person tells you during a phone
call or email: “is not working out”, “I need something else”, or “I’m not
ready”, sometimes they don’t even answer your call, basically you just got
rejected. In many cases, you get rejected before you even go out on a date. You
asked your friends (connections) to hook you up: "Hey! Can you put in a
good word for me? I'm trying to take her out on a date but she won’t even LOOK
AT ME". So many attempts we conjure to induce the other person to notice
us.
I wouldn't say we have tried to go as far as stalking, but we do
look online to see if that person is dating (hired) someone else. You go
through every advice that was giving to you to see if you did them all right. You
ask those close to you and who are in very healthy relationships, how do you
know when you found the right one? Why can’t I find the right one? What am I
doing wrong? Is it the way I look? Did I come off too strong? But we have so
much in common during the first date (interview), what happened? This is
something I dread, the feeling of rejection, questioning yourself whether you
are good enough or not.
Yes, job hunting for me has turned out similar to the idea of
looking for a relationship or maintaining a relationship, but unlike my
relationship with my current significant other I’m stable, job wise, I am not.
There are many times when we are so sure of what we want in life
and usually those things end up being questioned too. Do you REALLY know what
you want in life? Is that person (career) right for you? Sometimes I feel like
my standards are too high and maybe I should settle for a person (job) that doesn't want me permanently but has me around “temporarily”. I don’t know if
anyone else feels this way, but it drives me crazy and I want to give up.
Finding love is the same as finding the job we aspire to have, both are hard to
established or even find. Notice how that is why most people like to focus on
one rather than the other, honestly, not everyone can balance both at first.
Multiple times in the past, I find myself constantly thinking
about switching career paths. I sometime say to myself that the job I really
desire isn't really what I expected. And we give up on the one we love, instead
of fighting. It’s very obvious to see the correlation between both, and we can
very much see how similar both life experiences are. The bottom line is that they
are both equally frustrating. As needy humans that we are, we seek, ultimately,
an acceptable quality of life and what those qualities mean to us as
individuals. Overall, we part ways and take more action in one area of our
lives than others. And then it comes to a halting point, what else do we need
to feel complete in the world we live in today?
Some pre historic time ago, we were Hunters/Gatherers and we asked
for only what we needed to survive, as the times kept evolving and the more
civilized and modern we became, the more we added to the pyramid, ranging from
most important to least. We pile on ideas in which helps us in creating our own
pyramid of what’s important to us individually, including but not limited to,
career, wealth, status, education, materialism, family, love, happiness,
ACCEPTANCE and so on. Therefore, we seek stability in our lives just as much as
we seek love from others to feel wanted. I know I am not the only one who seems
to notice this but this analogy came to me like a feeling. I had lost the one
job I was giving my all to and was very happy to be with.
I couldn't believe
that I would ever experience another lay-off with a company that I actually cared
and looked forward to working with for a very long time. The “breakup” obviously wasn't mutual, and it dawn on me, when someone told me, “Everyone at
some point in their lives have been there, you just can’t give up, you’ll find
the right one”, now where have I heard that before? Ah! Yes, in break ups.
It’s so irrelevant but it makes some sort of sense. True story, you
can sneak in the same advice you give to someone who is going through a break
up/can’t find love, to someone going through a layoff/can’t find work! I have
use this analogy on other people before and the majority of the time they 100%
agree that they are similar, in more ways than none. I am just simply
observing. And, as the visual person that I like to believe I am, I dealt with
the reality of being bumped by my job, as if I was going through a break up with
the guy who broke up with me (between you and me, I actually found the right
guy after the one that dumped me, so there is still hope in my career search).
I told myself, life goes on and you have to move on, don’t hate, congratulate
those that did find “the one”, know that this isn't personal, it’s actually BUSINESS,
whatever that means...
One of the things I feel fails to be noted during finding the
right candidate for a job is passion, drive and enthusiasm for work. Those are
very important and hardly ever regarded in an interview or screening. No matter
how much I tried, my passion is not enough, and I wonder why. When you go on a
date with a girl/guy, do you sometimes go for someone who has personality,
passion and ambition? What about his/her potential to be a great partner? Or, do
you find yourself trying to find more of a physical attraction than anything
else. At this age, I have to figure things out on my own regarding my career. I’ll
bring up another example and I will end with that.
I want to compare this example with the idea of Identification
(Google it), there are many sides to Identification in psychology, but I’ll
stick to the more relevant one for this topic. It’s called Partial
Identification, and why maybe my Partial Identification with the adults in my
family growing up, is probably the reason I am not advancing in my career like
I would like to. Will I be confident enough to go after what I really want,
jobs that fit my interest and skills?
In a family where mom and dad are successful and raised you
together, you feel more confident with the idea of love and success. You grow
up knowing that you will meet someone who will share with you a lifetime of
happiness the way you have seen with your parents growing up. You will also be
more prepared to face hiring managers during interviews. I grew up with a
single mother, poor and with no education. My mother only spoke Spanish ever since
she came to this country with my brother and I alone. All of the women in my
family, at least 60% of them are all single parents. I was raised by my uncles
as well, who in respect, also raised their children alone. The adults in my
family, during the time I was growing up, had no formal education, and we
struggle to make ends meet. I understand why my family was in the situation
that they were in, but they did raise us to be fearless and leaders. They raised
us to be strong and to learn to face the toughest challenges no matter what. At
the same time, they were discouraging, seeing me or my other siblings and
cousins struggling through our studies, they knew in their hearts they had
nothing to offer or how to help, so my mom will say to me at times to leave school,
get a regular job and to not frustrate myself. I know she didn't know any
better, but that was her way of being supportive. I went to college to pursue a
career in the Arts, to find out I had no mentoring, coaching or luck after I
graduated. I have no confidence, nor did I grow up with any examples around me
that would have helped me meet the requirements needed to succeed in the real world. In other words, I
identified with the instability my family faced. But I know they did not bring
me to this country to fail.
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| picture by: holykaw.alltop.com |
Where do I go know? How do I believe again? It did not work out for
my mother, should I believe that it won’t work out for me? I don’t want to get
too deep with this. Though, I do hope you can see my point. Our career is our
relationship, whether we like to admit it or not. What makes us wake up every
morning is not just our intimate relationship
or family, it is the job of our dreams. Whether we hate it or
love it, every day we run to it like if it’s the only thing in this world that
matters. We dress up for it, we buy things for it, we laugh with it, we cry
with it and we enjoy life because of it. The truth is that once you don’t have
a career that you can identify yourself with, soon enough you’ll realize something
is missing, and it’s the same feeling you get when you wake up next to no one.
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