Working Identity (From The Argus)
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Working Identity
2:10pm Thursday 13th October 2011 in Blogs
One of the frustrating aspects of career change can be knowing that you don't want to continue in the work path you are on but not knowing which path to take forward. There's a lot of talk about finding your unique purpose, and I suspect many career changers spend a fair bit of time in introspection, trying to dig out this imagined gold that must be in there somewhere. Of course a degree of self awareness is useful and valid. The best book I have read on career change, however, takes a different tack and I have found it useful where conventional approaches have failed miserably. The book is called 'Working Identity' by Herminia Ibarra, a Professor of Organisational Behaviour who has taught at both INSEAD and Harvard Business School.
The quote below is from the chapter 'becoming yourself'
"If we knew from the start what it means to be fully ourselves, finding a new career would be so much easier. But because we are growing and changing all the time, the oft-cited key to a better working life, "knowing yourself", turns out to be the prize at the end of the journey rather than the light at its beginning.....We don't find ourselves in a blinding flash of insight, and neither do we change overnight. We learn by doing, and each new experience is part answer and part question".
This is what I am trying to do. Learn by doing.
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anubis says...
3:35pm Thu 13 Oct 11
‘…. When I enter most intimately into what I call ‘myself’, I always stumble on some perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch ‘myself’ at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible to ‘myself’, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither think , nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated …. If anyone upon serious and unprejudic’d reflection, thinks he has a different notion of ‘himself’, I must confess I can reason with him no longer.”
Whatever ‘we are’ is determined by what ‘we do’. If you are absolutely determined to search for an imagined ‘inner self’ or ‘soul’, then join a religious cult of some sort (and your problem is resolved!) – but I’m beginning to repeat myself (some months ago I picked up on your ‘navel gazing’).
I hope you are not classifying my comment as a ‘snipe’; your topic this week, was raised centuries before David Hume (in ‘Buddhist’ philosophy’s idea of Anatta) … and still remains very central to current work in ‘artificial intelligence’. Emulate DH …. and think on …..