Increase Productivty

Living the Contradictions

Well into her second semester of auditing M.B.A. courses, June followed her stockbroker’s advice and applied for a position as a broker at Taylor Roberts. What at first had seemed so far from the world of Wall Street, so much less glamorous than private banking, revealed a different set of advantages: independence, flexibility, good training, good public schools for the girls, the prospect of buying a house with land around it, and a less stressful environment in which to earn her stripes. The interviews took place in March. By the end of the month, she had accepted a job offer. A few days later, an offer from one of the top Wall Street banks came in. The recruiters were relentless in their efforts to persuade her to change her mind, but by this time, Plan B had become her favorite.

By the end of that summer, June had earned her SEC certification and had set up her office and business in a small New England town.

Taylor Roberts is turning out to be quite good for me, even if the culture shock was real at first. I have learned a lot, and as I go over material now, I am really understanding it better. I can make connections between different pieces of information that I could not make in the early going. My assigned mentor and regional leader have been very helpful, and my own stockbroker calls and checks in all the time! I am working all the time, every day, and am counting the good things already coming from it. Tonight I finish teaching my first investment class. It has been a lot of fun and has brought me to an obvious truth: I quite like teaching and I was sick to death of the university. I also gave another talk last week and am hoping to teach an investing course in Spanish.

After a year in the new job, June feels she made the right choice.

Once I became a wife and mother, my interests and values changed. My personal and intellectual life at the university had no importance compared with my wish to create an environment that would permit me a full dedication to my family—a real chance at making more money, giving my children good schools, being with them, and being with them out in the world in a way that would be consonant with my work life. This job gives me those things. Everywhere I go with the children—to their schools and their field trips—can and sometimes does lead to more business. All is joined together. There is no pull between the life of the mind and the life of the heart.

The between-identities phase of a career transition is about bringing possibilities to life, proving they are feasible and not just pipe dreams, and learning whether they are appealing in practice or only in theory. To discard outdated identities once and for all (that is, to do the work of ending), we need some good substitutes. Old possible selves are always more vivid than the new: They are attached to familiar routines, to people we trust, to well-rehearsed stories. The selves that have existed only in our minds as fantasies or that are grounded only in fleeting encounters with people who captured our imagination are much fuzzier, fragile, unformed. The middle period is the incubator in which provisional identities are brought, tentatively, into the world via the projects we start, the people we meet, and the meaning we lend to the events of that period.

What happens in this period sets the stage for the degree and success of one’s reinvention. Whether it takes months or years, living the contradictions is one of the toughest tasks of transition. Indeed, living with uncertain identity can feel like “living inside a hurricane.” But as we will see in the next post, premature closure is not the answer. People who can tolerate the painful discrepancies of the between-identities period, which reflect underlying ambivalence about letting go of the old or embracing the new, end up in a better position to make informed choices. With the benefit of time between selves, we are more likely to make the deep change necessary to discover more satisfying lives and work and to eventually restore a sense of continuity to our lives.

taken from; Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career