A year ago, I started the “Redefine my professional self” project. For a year, during the phase of professional reorientation, I wanted to focus my work on what could define me professionally, or whether I have a passion that I can follow. The as-is analysis took a lot of time and was more difficult than I thought, because I wanted to be honest with myself and hopefully gain new insights from the process.
I met professionally successful (and not so successful) people, observed them, talked to them. I read books on marketing, motivation, communication, organization and self-care. I have reflected on my own professional experiences, projects, learning processes and recalled persons who have inspired and shaped me. I have tried out new things and tried to repeat and analyze old ones.
This project has now come to an end, and it is with great relief that I can say for myself:
There is no professional self
I should have known: In my professional work as a counselor for people who were on the path to professional reorientation, I tried in the first phase of the process to show them that they were still someone – even if they didn’t have a job at the moment. Because the loss of work – especially in a country like Germany, where many people define themselves by their job – often leads to a feeling of failure and not being enough. And I have often seen people only find themselves again when they had a job again.
I think many of us do work that’s okay, that earns us money, that we enjoy or that we get something good out of. That’s why I like the English question so much: “What are you doing for a living”? In German, the question is: “What are you doing professionally?”
“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right.
If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.” -Steve Jobs
We read from many successful people that they don’t feel like they are working, they are pursuing their passion and because they are doing something they love so much, they are successful. And I think it takes a lot of luck and opportunity to be able to experience that.
As you may have noticed, I have great difficulty with Steve Jobs’ saying, in fact I find it aggressive. I also expect myself to give my best, to show commitment and dedication, but I don’t have to be on fire.
A “self” – even a professional one – is a name, a designation, but not a passion, not an activity. A “self” is a description of a current state, but every change, every further development actually requires a redefinition of the “self”. It is therefore not suitable as a starting point for a career path.
Professional challenges are met with knowledge, skills and abilities that enable you to work on something, or not. During the process of as-is analysis, I came to the point of whether my skills matched what I wanted to work on and realized that in my past careers, I was used to doing things that came to me as challenges. I couldn’t have sought them out, as in many cases I didn’t know they existed. We all know the saying: “You grow with your tasks, or you fail at them”. Both are true.
If I hadn’t started a family, I wouldn’t have changed my job. I liked it. It wasn’t a job I had dreamed of, but it suited my abilities, my values and the conditions were good. It wasn’t my professional self.
There are all kinds of reasons why people find themselves in the situation of finding and pursuing new career paths. The phase of reorientation is unsettling, and I experienced that I was unable to return to my job after moving to another country because this type of work (state vocational guidance and support) does not exist in that country. I wanted to find a new way and worked on it, as I am used to working: After the as-is analysis comes strategy development and then implementation. But my as-is analysis followed the wrong approach.
Reorientation is work
I think developing or finding a new career can be based solely on what is possible professionally, personally and in terms of time – apart from the requirements of the job market – not on the definition of a professional self, but on a professional profile. However, in addition to the profile, the answers to the question of what you actually do or work every day are an important component. In the phase of reorientation without a permanent job, many people describe themselves as “not doing anything at the moment”. And that is always wrong. We are learning, organizing, researching, writing, working on frustration tolerance and promoting acceptance, or in other words: the reorientation phase is very busy and not for the faint of heart.
“You must not let anyone define your limits because of where you come from.
Your only limit is your soul” Gusteau, Ratatouille
If I write and earn money with it, I am a writer. If I don’t earn money from it, then I’m a writer too, but it’s not my professional activity. We separate the “self” from the profession, which is understandable from my point of view.
What I’m trying to say is that the question of the professional self is too all-encompassing, too engaging and at the same time too narrow.
The guiding questions in a phase of professional reorientation could therefore be:
Who are you?
What do you stand for?
What are you working on?
What does your professional profile look like?
What could your professional activity be?
And now? I’ll describe that in my post next week…
Just a thought….