I heard in a news item that many people associate their job with their identity. One such person, after unsuccessfully applying for two hundred jobs, committed suicide. This is a huge shame because his suicide was based upon a false premise – that without a job he was useless and unimportant and that without a job, his life was pointless. None of those things are true, yet it is easy to see why he came to that conclusion.

On a personal note, when I was looking for my first job I wrote to one hundred and twenty companies. Only one company bothered to reply. Fortunately for me, that company offered me a job, but during the wait for someone (anyone) to reply, I was starting to wonder how I was ever going to get a job and I started to feel a little low. Yet I still kept in my mind that somehow there was a job out there for me. I say this only so you to know that I have a good understanding of the situation.

Although I did not know this when I was looking for my first job, in this situation or in similar ones, it is possible to turn the things around just by thinking about it differently. When Thomas Edison was working on the electric lamp bulb, he was struggling to find a material that would work. The story goes that he had tried around 1,000 materials and he was still unsuccessful. People would say to him, “What is the point in continuing? You have tried 1,000 materials already and it is obvious that it is never going to work.” Yet Edison simply said, “Nonsense, I have already found 1,000 materials that don’t work, which makes me hugely successful. It means that the material that does work is now much easier to find.” Shortly afterwards, he used a carbon filament and the rest, as they say, is history. There is reason to suspect that this story is not entirely true, but it illustrates the point admirably.

Walt Disney had an idea that you could have a large recreational park where, instead of paying for each individual ride, you simply paid an entrance fee and all the rides would be free. He was certain that it would be successful, but he did not have the money to make it work, so he went to a bank and asked for a loan. They laughed at the idea saying, “If that would work, somebody would have done it already” and they wouldn’t lend him the money he needed. Walt Disney kept trying different banks, but the result was always the same. When people said to him that he was never going to get the money he needed and so he should give the idea up, he told them, “Nonsense, out there somewhere is the bank that will lend me the money. I have already eliminated two hundred of them and so I am much closer to finding the bank I need.” Shortly afterwards Walt Disney changed his approach, which enabled him to obtain finances from outside the traditional banking system. He started a TV programme called Disneyland that was broadcast on the ABC network and in return, ABC helped him to finance the new park. Millions of people have now been to theme parks and his idea worked so well that many others copied the idea.

Think how it might have been different if the young man who committed suicide after unsuccessfully applying for two hundred jobs had said to himself, “There are millions of companies out there and so there must be very many who will give me a job. I have only tried two hundred companies and that is just a tiny fraction of them, so all I have to do is keep going until I find one of those that will give me work.”

Sometimes a different approach is all that is necessary. I had worked as a sub-contractor for many years using agencies to find me work, but during a dip in the market I had been unable to find a new contract. After I had been out of work for a few months, a friend suggested and agency that specialised in manual work. I had never done that before and was somewhat sceptical, but as a temporary measure I was prepared to give it a try. I was absolutely amazed that while I was registering at this new agency, a couple of Polish men walked in the door saying that they had arrived in the country the previous day and they needed work. They were both told that they could start work that afternoon! I had been looking unsuccessfully for three months and yet they had found work in half a day. Why couldn’t I find work? Because I was looking in the wrong place and because I was limiting myself by the type of work I was prepared do. By going to this new agency I had temporary work the following day, which was exactly what I needed until I could get back to my normal work. I didn’t initially look for a different type of work because I associated my work with my identity. I didn’t want to do manual work because ‘that’s not who I am’. Yet doing it solved my short-term problem. Now I have done it, am I a different person? Of course not. I simply learned a valuable lesson. I am who I am; I am not what I do.

The English language makes it very easy to confuse what you do with who you are. We will often say things like, “I am a carpenter”, “I am an engineer”, “I am a cleaner”, “I am a company executive”, “I am a salesman”. Thus job and identity are confused. It is much better to say, “I work as a carpenter”, “I am doing a cleaning job at the moment and I enjoy doing it”, “I am working in sales”, “My job is a mechanical engineer”. See the difference? In the second list it is clear that the job is simply something that you are doing. You are not what you do. The job is not you any more than you are the job. You are much more than the job that you do.

We also confuse what we feel with who we are. For example we might say, “I am sad”, “I am angry”, “I am confused”. It is much better to say, “I feel sad”, “I feel angry”, “I feel confused”. What you feel is not who you are, it is something that you are doing. Yet even this is difficult for some people to understand. They may argue, “Feeling angry is not something that I am doing, I am angry because they made me angry”. This demonstrates a double confusion. The first is that they are still confusing their emotions with who they are, as mentioned above, and the second is that they believe that other people control their emotions. They believe that other people can cause them to feel happy, sad, angry, and so on. This is a very common belief, yet it cannot be true. Who controls your thoughts? Is it you or is it someone else? If you believe that others control your thoughts, then it must also be true that you can control the thoughts of others. Next time you see someone who is angry, see if you can make them happy simply by controlling their thoughts. Do you think you can? No, of course not and nobody can control your thoughts either. Don’t give away your power to others; recognise that only you can control your emotions. If you are not controlling your emotions, who is? Is it really the rest of the world, or is it you? Feeling happy, sad, angry, or any other emotion is something that you do. Nobody else can do it for you.  If you are sad, it is because you are thinking sad thoughts; if you are angry, it is because you are thinking angry thoughts; if you are relaxed, it is because you are thinking relaxing thoughts. Your emotions are not who you are, they are a result of what you do.

If life were always easy, what would you learn? It is the difficulties of life that challenge us and teach us new things. How many times have you heard people say that although they did not like a particular phase of their life, they are more mature as a result of going through it? That they now have new skills to help them cope with life. Be thankful for the difficult times; they help us to grow.

Filed under: Lifestyle • Self Esteem

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