Resilience (3 of 5): distinguishing between assumptions and reality
Dr Emily Troscianko & Dr Rachel Bray
Expectations interfere with understanding – they cause us to misread, misdiagnose, or simply to miss what is really happening. That’s even more true when the expectations that you’re carrying around with you originated with others (your family, friends, peers, teachers, mentors…). Indeed, in a podcast series on ‘Overcoming a sense of academic failure’, this was one of the threads that ran most strongly through our contributors’ reflections on their own professional paths.
It can happen so seamlessly: your teachers want you to get to a good university, your lecturers want you to get a good degree, your supervisor wants you to get your doctorate, your PI wants you to publish good papers. Each of these ambitions directly supports the next, and all of them make a good deal of sense within their own system. (Of course they do: most of the time they are put forward by the people who run the system – the academics who stayed and who ‘made it’.) But it’s terribly easy for expectations to drift into becoming self-evident goals, as if they were obviously what your life should revolve around, with no question about why or to what end.
In other words, what we are talking about is the need to refresh and potentially renew your patterns of thinking. Understanding both your acknowledged and your tacit expectations, and where they came from, means that you can ask yourself more clearly whether you are content on your present path – and whether you might find a different path more congenial and fulfilling. What would happen if you asked yourself, ‘Am I happy?’
* * *
‘All good stories hinge on turning points, dramatic moments when the clouds part and the truth is revealed’, says Herminia Ibarra in her book Working Identity. But for many of the people she interviewed about their career progression, ‘a small, symbolic moment, rather than an operatic event, jelled awareness that the time was ripe for change’ (p. 18). Put another way: something may happen one day that creates a little jolt out of your usual mental habits and makes you see your life in a new light: ‘Suddenly, [they] saw themselves in a future they no longer wanted’ (ibid.). Trouble is, we don’t necessarily want to wait around for the universe to grant us a Damascene moment.
So, how can you chivvy along the jolt you need? And how can you make this exploration of meanings and motivations you attach to your working life maximally constructive?
Here are six practical ideas you might like to try.
Do a thorough audit of the constituent parts of your everyday life now. For example, keep an activity diary for a week, broken into hour-long segments. Include all your waking hours, not just ‘work’ time. How much of your week is spent doing things you enjoy and find meaningful? What are those things? (What are they really, not what you think it sounds appropriate or impressive to say they are.)
We can’t spend all our time doing what we enjoy and find meaningful, but the more we do, the more likely professional success and fulfilment are to result. Is your current role the only or best way of maximising the time you get to spend doing these things? Are there specific areas of your current work that are much more rewarding to you than others, and if so, could you expand them? Does your current work have knock-on effects in nonprofessional areas of your life (income, security, location, time for family and friends, etc.)? Whether you’re interested in a freelance career or employment or a mixture, you might find our portfolio careers workbook helpful for working through these questions step by step.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this? Does an alternative spring instantly (happily?) to mind? Do you draw a complete blank? In both cases it might be worth doing a bit more research: book a one-to-one with a university careers adviser, chat to friends who do other things, explore sites like www.research-careers.org or the Royal Society’s Changing Expectations case studies to see what people with your background went on to do beyond academia.
Expectations interfere with understanding – they cause us to misread, misdiagnose, or simply to miss what is really happening. That’s even more true when the expectations that you’re carrying around with you originated with others (your family, friends, peers, teachers, mentors…). Indeed, in a podcast series on ‘Overcoming a sense of academic failure’, this was one of the threads that ran most strongly through our contributors’ reflections on their own professional paths.
It can happen so seamlessly: your teachers want you to get to a good university, your lecturers want you to get a good degree, your supervisor wants you to get your doctorate, your PI wants you to publish good papers. Each of these ambitions directly supports the next, and all of them make a good deal of sense within their own system. (Of course they do: most of the time they are put forward by the people who run the system – the academics who stayed and who ‘made it’.) But it’s terribly easy for expectations to drift into becoming self-evident goals, as if they were obviously what your life should revolve around, with no question about why or to what end.
In other words, what we are talking about is the need to refresh and potentially renew your patterns of thinking. Understanding both your acknowledged and your tacit expectations, and where they came from, means that you can ask yourself more clearly whether you are content on your present path – and whether you might find a different path more congenial and fulfilling. What would happen if you asked yourself, ‘Am I happy?’
* * *
‘All good stories hinge on turning points, dramatic moments when the clouds part and the truth is revealed’, says Herminia Ibarra in her book Working Identity. But for many of the people she interviewed about their career progression, ‘a small, symbolic moment, rather than an operatic event, jelled awareness that the time was ripe for change’ (p. 18). Put another way: something may happen one day that creates a little jolt out of your usual mental habits and makes you see your life in a new light: ‘Suddenly, [they] saw themselves in a future they no longer wanted’ (ibid.). Trouble is, we don’t necessarily want to wait around for the universe to grant us a Damascene moment.
So, how can you chivvy along the jolt you need? And how can you make this exploration of meanings and motivations you attach to your working life maximally constructive?
Here are six practical ideas you might like to try.
1. Do a thorough audit
Do a thorough audit of the constituent parts of your everyday life now. For example, keep an activity diary for a week, broken into hour-long segments. Include all your waking hours, not just ‘work’ time. How much of your week is spent doing things you enjoy and find meaningful? What are those things? (What are they really, not what you think it sounds appropriate or impressive to say they are.)
2. Identify enjoyment & fulfilment
We can’t spend all our time doing what we enjoy and find meaningful, but the more we do, the more likely professional success and fulfilment are to result. Is your current role the only or best way of maximising the time you get to spend doing these things? Are there specific areas of your current work that are much more rewarding to you than others, and if so, could you expand them? Does your current work have knock-on effects in nonprofessional areas of your life (income, security, location, time for family and friends, etc.)? Whether you’re interested in a freelance career or employment or a mixture, you might find our portfolio careers workbook helpful for working through these questions step by step.
3. Consider alternatives
4. Take a small, active step
Resist the temptation to do much self-reflection. Take a small, active step.
Adults are much more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than to think their way into a new way of acting. (Richard Pascale, Surfing the Edge of Chaos, p. 14).
Or, as Ibarra puts it, the best way to start is by asking smaller, more testable questions. Where could you start doing some exploration now? Can you identify projects that might give you a feel for a new type of work or way of working, or things you can do alongside your existing role before deciding whether to make a bigger switch? For example: small freelance tasks or informal consultancy in a new area, trying out some volunteering or work shadowing, writing for new audiences, or finding out about how other people have monetised ‘nonprofessional’ interests like yours.
Explore, but don’t commit too soon. Don’t narrow down your options yet.
5. Accept that it can be hard
Remember that there are systematic psychological reasons why it is hard to even contemplate making professional changes. Humans don’t like uncertainty, and many deep-rooted cognitive biases cause us to resist change: the sunk-cost fallacy, the mere-exposure effect, cognitive-dissonance reduction, etc, etc. (look them up and see how many of them you recognise in your own habits!). Better the devil you know sums many of them up. So, let’s accept that what you’re doing can be hard. Practise distinguishing the valid reasons for caution from the blinkers that will keep you from looking around you with an open mind. And work sensitively with the valid reasons, forgiving yourself for the things you find hard.
6. Let go of 'right' and 'wrong'
Remember that any conclusion is OK – there’s no right or wrong to who you want to be professionally. What is not OK is feeling it’s wrong (unjustified, self-indulgent, too frightening) to do any of this exploring.
Links to all posts in this series:
- Does academic complement or conflict with who you are?
- The feedback dynamics between you and academia
- Distinguishing between assumptions and reality [this post]
- Your working identities [next post]
- Having a strategy for cultivating resilience
For unabridged versions of these posts and full references, check out the Resilience Hub.
