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Have you read the latest Steven King novel titled, "No
One Behind the Wheel?" If not, here's the short version
and you get to play the lead character. Play along with me here.
You wake up one morning and look in the mirror. You're shocked.
Somehow you have been transported 25 years into your future.
At 50-something, you look surprisingly worn. You can't believe
it's you, so you slap yourself really hard, then again. Yup,
it's you all right. You're trapped in your future. Frantically,
you begin searching your house to see what has changed. Not much,
except everything is bigger. Bigger house, bigger car, bigger
spouse, bigger belly, and bigger bills to pay. You still have
the same job, different company, still bored out of your mind.
In fact, you've done the same thing all those years but can't
recall anything that really stands out. You ask, "What did
I do with my life?" Anxiety suddenly overwhelms you; you've
become exactly what you've feared the most--just like your parents!
For Harry, this nightmarish novel is a reality. This is exactly
what his work life looks like today--flat and uneventful. He
remembers back to his 20s, "I couldn't figure out what
to do, so I threw up my arms and took anything I could get. I've
been a miserable financial analyst for 25 years (grimace), but
had to raise a family." Why should Harry change tracks now
you might ask. The pink slip freed him. He's been fired, thank
goodness. Mediocre at best, he's been cut from the first team,
to be put on the bench of unemployed and dispassionate professionals.
He doesn't have the heart to go look for another job in the same
field; he's used up all his excuses to stay comfortably numb
for so long. This may sound like a sad story to some people,
but for most, this is how life really is. There's millions of
Harry's out there, sitting in traffic jams going to jobs they
hate--convinced that this is good as it gets. When you're living
Harry's life, you won't feel sad at all. You might be angry and
frustrated, but you'll find legitimate rationalizations for your
unhappiness. Have you met people like Harry, who are proud of
being miserable, or who stay in ill-fitted career in the name
of doing what they are "supposed" to do?
At 45, Norma has finely made a career choice she is confident
will work. Looking back over her life, she recalls waiting for
her life direction to dawn on her. She kept waiting, and waiting,
for 20 years. She asked God for answers, but he said he didn't
have a degree in psychology, so no luck there. Norma's approach
for setting her life course is one of the most common--hoping
for answers to come from an external source. It didn't occur
to her that she could steer her own ship; her life was not in
her hands. Starting off with a job as an office manager, a random
temp assignment, she bounced around for two decades doing similar
administrative work. At 40 she went to college to get a bachelor's
degree, and as it turns out, it was in the wrong field. This was also
a random choice; largely influenced by frustration to "do
something" to feel like she had control of her life. She
didn't have control, and she couldn't figure out who did. Her
ship was lost at sea, the waves and wind carried her where they
may. Who or what do you think was steering Norma's ship?
At 26, Carl is ready to break the rules--his mother's rules.
So far, his "career" has been a string of retail sales
and management jobs, from big box stores to electronics boutiques.
Mildly put, he's been bored to tears. Married young, he's main
passion is to "take care of my wife." His reason for
choosing this kind of work, "My mother said it's important
to have a secure job, even if it's not fun to do." As you
can surmise, Carl wasn't steering his ship either, his mother
was, but she wasn't holding a gun to his head. Our parents are
mere messengers; they are our initial connection to society at
large, and their job is to teach us how to navigate life. The
world his mother grew up in required a daily fight for survival,
but she hadn't quite noticed that that world had changed dramatically.
Most of us aren't living hand-to-mouth anymore, but you wouldn't
know it by our career choices. Carl and his mother are not alone;
our cultural values strongly honor the survival mind set. It's
not uncommon to hear recent high school graduates espouse these
values 100 years after industrialization completely reinvented
our way of life. Overnight--after living for over 10,000 of years
as farmers, haulers, and homemakers, when "work" wasn't
a choice but a lifestyle--we find ourselves with the freedom
(including the knowledge, wisdom, and resources) to direct our
destiny. Cultural programming proves to be a very powerful force
in influencing our career decisions. In listening to cultural
wisdom, be sure to ask what century that advice was most useful.
Then, talk to people who are following the same advice today
to see if you want the kind of life they have.
At 33, Larry the lawyer has it all. The McMansion in the suburbs,
a beautiful "stay-at-home" wife, and two adorable kids,
the American Dream come true. One catch, he despises the legal
profession. The six-figure salary that comes along with being
a corporate attorney has bought the prestige and status he wanted,
but is not enough to dull the psychological pain that stems from
an extreme misalignment with his values. As you might have guessed,
Larry isn't steering his ship either. As he said, "I did
it for the money." Looking deeper, it's more important to
look at "why" he wanted the big money. The answer is
in his commitments; he was on a mission to "get the perfect
girl," and he noticed that "high-status" increased
his chances considerably. Where male chimpanzees use a hunk of
meat to gain high-status (which gives them access to precious
resources, including females); Larry used the modern day equivalent.
Larry's not alone, lots of people, both male and female, chose
careers for social status. The higher your social standing, the
better your resource acquiring potential, and mating prospects.
As harsh as this may sound, when it comes to natural selection,
our biology tends to rule our minds. In fact, our minds are part
of the dilemma; our brains were "designed" in an environment,
long ago, when one of the main activities was to get your genes
into offspring. Of course, this is all unconscious to us now.
We're not thinking, "I've got to get my genes into the next
generation" as we go about our daily lives. Rather, we experience
this genetic reproduction programming as a "desire"
or a "feeling" for someone attractive (whether it be
physical, intellectual, or material attractiveness). Evolutionary
psychologists speculate, rather precisely, that our present behavior
to seek social status is rooted in our genetic "code"
to survive, our genes have a mind of their own, and hold the
blueprints for our brain hardware. Status seeking (and optimizing
mate selection) is a behavior deeply "wired" into human
nature--and all of us know what this "feels" like--especially
when we were teenagers and young adults. So, theoretically and
practically speaking, Larry was hijacked by his genes. Larry
didn't "choose" his career, maybe his hormones did.
If this is similar to your story, cut yourself a break. Human
nature is just doing it's job. Interestingly, most of us choose
our careers during our peak reproductive years. Personally eager
and socially encouraged to climb the status hierarchy, we are
more vulnerable to getting a DUI-HH citation -- "Driving
Under the Influence of Hormonal Hammering."
So who's behind the wheel? Are we the captains of our own
ships? Whether it's our cultural or genetic programming doing
the steering (or both), the above stories illustrate that the
objective is the same--survival. And our career "choices,"
or lack thereof, seem to reflect this part of our nature. While
our basic survival is important, it's only part of the picture.
If it was our only necessity, then logically, Harry, Norma, Carl,
and Larry should be "happy" right where they are. Maybe
we'd all be satisfied with dull jobs if we were still living
in a environment that was shaped by life and death decisions
everyday. Unfortunately, our genes don't know the world has changed.
They're still urging us to play the survival game of life. So
why aren't we happy just surviving for a living? What's different
today? For one, we are no longer living in hunter-gatherer societies,
where climbing the social hierarchy was the only way to get access
to food, sex, and resources. Life offers much more today than
ever before. Yet, as the above stories suggest, many of us are
still operating as humans did 10,000 years ago. The obvious solution
would be to override our genetic programming, we don't have to
live by our gene's value system. Just because our genes "want"
us to gear our lives as survival and reproduction machines doesn't
mean we have to. Easier said than done. It's still a social taboo
to suggest that human beings are not fully steering their own
ship, we're supposed to be the superior animal after all.
Even though many people believe in evolution, discussing genetic
influence on the "human animal" has a public tone of
political incorrectness. A small school of evolutionary biologists
are posing daring new theories about human psychology, using
the Darwinian science of natural selection to explain human behavior.
As such, they look to our ancestral environment to raise questions
about what environmental pressures likely shaped our biological
design, namely our brain. In short, early humans figured out
that living in social cooperation was a huge survival advantage.
In environments of scarcity, your social status (social reputation)
meant the difference between eating and dying. That is, your
"good-standing" in the eyes of those in charge of the
resources, kept you alive. In peering through the lens of evolutionary
psychology, our inborn "default" setting is designed
for "survival" by "looking good." This suggests
that our biology was hard-wired and fine-tuned long ago in environments
of scarce resources, seeking higher social status appears to
be an automatic pre programmed survival mechanism. More research
is underway to show this definitively, but for now it's on the
table as one of the competing theories for human social behavior.
All said, we like to think that we have complete control of our
lives, just like the people in the stories above. If you don't
want to buy the biology schtick, you can look to our long history
of folk wisdom for achieving "success," handed down
by parents and society for many generations. Human history is
one long tale of "climbing up the social ladder" to
a better life. Cultural wisdom of how to succeed in life informs
our decisions today, as thoroughly as it always has. Our cultural
wisdom for steering your life course hasn't caught up with modern
times, either. With people we love advising us in our formative
teenage years to design our careers as a security blanket (on
top of peer pressure to pursue high status), it seems near impossible
to make choices otherwise. It's no coincidence that today's high
school seniors are fiercely competing to get in the "best"
colleges, to guarantee a top post on the hierarchy of high paying
jobs. Full of blind ambition, most are going along for the ride
without much thought for career direction. Doctor, lawyer, accountant,
whatever, show me the money and prestige. How many will find
themselves at mid-career as socially and materially successful,
yet baffled as to how they ended up in a career they don't enjoy?
Although our survivability is a key part of our nature, it
was designed for only one task. Our genes are not concerned for
our long-term happiness; they don't give one hoot whether we
love our jobs, or even our spouses for that matter. They're "goal"
is to keep us alive at all costs, and prompt us to make "little
ones" to keep the game of life going. Our social norms are
closely intertwined with these genetic interests. When it comes
to taking chances with your career, you likely won't get much
encouragement from "culture" either. Remember Carl's
mother? And of course there's always fate, luck, or external
sources to give us answers, right? Maybe Norma can give you some
sailing lessons, be sure to bring a compass.
Early in our careers our biological and cultural influences
(cleverly disguised by Mother Nature as desires) are like stormy
seas, welling up emotions that are difficult to navigate. As
the captain of our own ship, we can steer a true course by looking
out beyond the horizon of our survival needs. We no longer have
to spend the whole day just surviving for a living, and in today's
world these obstacles are short-lived. In designing and choosing
your future, you can honor your needs for survival, while also
honoring your needs for long-term fulfillment. When it comes
to having a great career, day-in and day-out, it's gonna be all
up to you to design something that will keep you engaged for
the long-haul. Human nature is designed to maximize your survivability
through seeking social status and playing the mating game, it
doesn't care about your needs for creativity and self-expression.
Once your survival needs are met, only you can know what will
make you feel really alive and full of vitality 8 hours a day,
5 days a week, for many years to come. Grab the wheel, because
if you don't, who will? |
