68. The myth of the “dream job”

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. So great to have you here. It's so great to have you back for another episode of the show. I'm so excited about what we're talking about today, and I think we're talking about something that is so relevant to our twenties. I'm surprised I haven't done it sooner. And that is whether the idea of the dream job is real or whether it's outdated, and kind of going into some of that psychology behind things like career anxiety and the cultural pressure to make our professional decisions so early on in our lives while we feel stuck and all that comes with trying to figure out exactly what we want to do with our lives. I think a huge component of our twenties is this task that we're given to figure out what we want to do with our lives. It's a fairly common question, right that's lobbied at us from a fairly young age, not just our twenties, from relatives, teachers, and job interviews almost every direction. And that's that question of what do you want to do? What is your dream job? It's a fairly large and terrifying question, and in many ways, I think it can leave us feeling fairly stuck for a number of reasons. You know, the world is so large, there are so many opportunities and possibilities, but there are also so many barriers and limitations, so many factors that are going to contribute to what career we want to have and also what is available to us. And sometimes I think we get to our dream position and we realize that it is not all that we want, or that since setting that goal, our desires have changed. So what I want to discuss today is whether the dream job, our dream job really exists, whether there is only one dream job, and just dissect some of that pressure we often face to have it figured out so early on in our lives. If you have been feeling perhaps a lot of anxiety around choosing your career pathway or your degree, or trying to figure out what is actually going to make you happy career wise, I promise that you're not alone. I've definitely felt this way, even recently in my current job and asking myself those questions of is this really what I want? Does this make me happy? And simultaneous to that, I've been having this discussion quite a lot with my friends the past few months about their perspectives and their struggles as fellow twenty something people, And throughout all of that noise and those conversations, I couldn't help but think there has to be some research, some psychological explanation behind this concept, and there definitely was. So perhaps you're listening to this with a fairly clear idea of what you want to do, a fairly mapped out path to your destination. I think jobs like being a surgeon or a lawyer, they're fairly traditional career pathways, and they have clear entry points, clear degree and experience requirements, and they might take some time. But the idea is that if you do everything right, if you follow the correct path, you know, in five years time you'll be where you want to be. And that sounds straightforward, right, But so often we're forced to decide fairly young, even at the beginning of high school, what we want to do when we're you know, sixteen, seventeen eighteen years old. And those dreams that we set for ourselves, then they are, they're going to change. And what happens when you arrive at that destination or you atrieve that dream job and you find it really unfulfilling, that's a massive dilemma. And my friend Aaron, a good friend of the show, she also said something to me the other day that was actually really enlightening and kind of struck me as really poignant. And that's what if you just don't even have a dream job, what if you can't imagine your ideal career or that just doesn't appeal to you. You know, a job is just something that you have to pay your bills and allow you to live out your passions elsewhere away from the workplace. Like why is that not an acceptable answer to that question of what do you want to do? I think it should be fine to say, you know, well, my career and my professional life it isn't actually the enter of my universe. A job. It's just a job to me. It doesn't need to mean more than that. And there's so much just to discuss around this concept of the dream job, and as will uncover a lot more research and literature than I thought, because regardless of whether you have a dream job, whether you know what you want to do with your life or not, the truth is that work and our careers are a fundamental part of our lives, not just our twenties. How we make money, it's going to consume more hours of our lives than any other activity besides, you know, maybe sleeping. So understanding the dynamic around the decisions we make when it comes to our careers is super important. There's so much to cover. I know I say that every time, but there is so much fascinating research and psychology around this topic. There's literally an entire field of psychology called organizational psychology that is dedicated to our relationship with work and our jobs. So buckle in because today we're going to break down the psychology of the dream job. Is it fact, is it fiction? All of those good things I think to begin, we all have some concept or idea of what I mean when I talk about the dream job and all the fantasy and the dreams and the hopes that we attached to it. When we think about the dream job, we think about the thing that we feel we were perhaps born to do, the thing that lights our soul, the job we think will complete us and in some ways make us really really happy. And there is no denying that there are some people who have their dream job, who have discovered their dream job, maybe they have stumbled upon it, you know, the thing that they feel they on this planet to do and they can't imagine doing anything else. I also think, you know, there are people in the broader pop culture sphere who we can't imagine doing anything else, you know, like Taylor Swift or Oprah, Like can you imagine them being a barista or a gardener. No, There's just some people, I think who have a calling and they're able to follow it through. But I'm sure even these people at time have doubts. But if that is you, and you've had the system and you have achieved your dream job, I think that's incredible and I'm so proud of you, and I'm sure you're doing amazing. But you're definitely one of the lucky ones. And maybe you were someone who always thought they had a clear idea and you always knew what your dream job was, and now you're listening to this podcast because you realize that maybe you're a mistaken. It's not as easy as that, and you're feeling a little bit stuck. One question I had when I was thinking about this concept and writing this episode is where I did this idea even come from? Like, this idea of a dream job seems so bizarre, and I had a few ideas and did some further digging just to kind of understand where this idea came from. And it was pretty hard to find the etymology of the term. But it appears that it became popular in the twentieth century, especially as education levels begin to rise and incomes expanded. People were no longer resigned to work the jobs that their fathers and their mothers had worked. And after World War Two, I think many Western countries saw what was a massive rise in wealth and with that an opportunity to be able to pick a job that you enjoyed rather than one that you just prevented you from starving, and the idea of the dream job was born. That belief, I think has slowly expanded and the idea has become a lot more common, especially as we've seen you entirely new industries emerge in recent decade with the invention of the Internet and the expansions in technology basically, there was a shift from work being a chore a necessity, to something that we can hopefully enjoy and strive towards. I think we all know the term exists, and maybe for you it means nothing. You're not someone who dreams of labor, as they say, But undoubtedly from many of us there is still a lingering feeling or a need to absolutely adore what we do to be happy. So where exactly does that pressure come from? Where does the pressure to discover our dream job come from? I think personally it starts really really young. Think back to when we were children. Already we did have some concept that what we would eventually do for a living was something to fantasize about and create goals towards. We dreamed of being ballerinas, or doctors, or teachers, marine biologists, fashion designers, you name it. Even at such a young age, we were already conditioned from modeling our parents behavior and the people around us, to see work, to see our jobs as something that was hierarchical. Whereby there were some jobs that were filled with joy and passion and which will make us happy, and there were other jobs that just needed to be done. And we may have even seen our parents, you know, incredibly dissatisfied with work, and those early childhood experiences, the experiences of our parents, they leave an impression on us, and it kind of determines where we see ourselves in a future in the future, and it kind of leaves its impression of you know, I never want to be like that. I never want to work a job that I hate. You know, I feel like a lot more children probably want to be an author or the prime minister than a debt collector, even though I think all jobs have an important place in society. And part of that is because there are jobs that are idealized and made to seem amazing and made to seem like a dream, and others that don't really get a mention. They're just not glamorous or they're not visible. And so from that early age, we're indoctrinated with this idea of a dream job. And there's other ways that this concept comes up and leaves an impression on us, unconsciously or implicitly. There's a quote that I'm sure we've all heard in some form that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life, and we see similar messages in so many areas of our lives, and it might seem innocent enough, and in some ways it definitely makes sense, right, like when we love our work, when we enjoy doing it, we will to do it the same way we want to do a hobby or anything else that we love and enjoy. But I think there's something more insidious about this idea that can create a lot of doubt and pressure on those of us who don't have it figured out yet, which I think is probably well, you know, the majority of the people who are listening and do what you love is such privileged advice, right, and it really ignores the fact that most of the world's population, most of the people walking up and down the street, they don't really have the luxury of choosing to do something they really love. You know. A job is the way that they receive financial support, it's the way that they eat and they house themselves, and it's not necessarily for emotional fulfillment. I think also it can be kind of awful and it can create a lot of shame when you don't love your career and when people are telling you that you should, because it promotes this idea once again from an early age, that what matters most in your life is what you do professionally, that our jobs they are the center of our lives, our primary source of happiness. And if we don't enjoy what we do, if we don't have a clue about what we want to do, you know, we're not going to be happy. And you know, there's sometimes there's things that we love doing and we just can't make a living. You know, work can just be work, and you're allowed to be satisfied with that. And when we're continually hearing that message, particularly if you are working a job that you don't like or you realize that your dream job is just kind of hyped up, the panic, that career anxiety that we talk about quite frequently, that's when it starts to emerge. In addition, and on top of that messaging like that quote that I mentioned, we're also getting a lot of these expectations from our families and our teachers, and our friends and the media that we need to know what we want to do, we need to have a dream job in mind. And a lot of that pressure has been passed down from generation to generation as our careers have become much larger and a greater contribution to our identity. You know, we spend more time in the workplace, we retire later. We're seeing inflation rise to the extent that we do have to work longer hours and for more years. And you know, we're in a recession right now. The cost of living is so high and we need a way to afford to live and to pay our bills. And being told that there's a way to work and still enjoy life through this myth of the dream job is a pretty excellent way to distract us from the cognitive dissonance associated with maybe that deeper acknowledgement that work doesn't really have to be the center of our days and of our lives, and that it's kind of unnatural. We probably want to be doing other things rather than being cooped up in an office. And like I said before, most of us will end up working eight or more hours a day most of our working and adult lives. So it does make sense that if we're told that we can enjoy what we do, and even bigger than that, that our careers determined so much of our identity, it's going to make us feel better about how much time we're devoting to these tasks and That's another point. Our career is a huge determine of our identity, so we want to choose the right one. Right. Think about the most recent time you met someone new. Maybe it was a party or through a mutual friend, or you matched on a dating app. I promised you. One of the first questions I'm sure they asked is what do you do for a living or where do you work. It's so common and it indicates how much our identity and people's perception of us is determined by what we do for a living. You know, I was asked this question and a party the other day, and it was so exhausting. There are so many new people there. By the end of the night, I honestly just started making stuff up. I was so frustrated. I was like, I think I told someone I was a reptile vet. I don't even know if that's a job. And you know, another person that I was an electrician. Almost as like a social experiment to see their reaction and how they change their perception of me, because we might try and deny it, but our jobs, our careers are a pretty major pillar of our identity, particularly the outward appearance of our identity as you know prominent. I think, as you know, our friends and our families, our likes, our dislikes, our appearance, our personality, and this is only exacerbated when we begin to link our self esteem to our work performance or to our job selection. There's been some really interesting studies on the outcome of this interlinkage between our professional lives and our identities, and a longitude or study in the US. It's actually still ongoing. It's still being conducted, but so far they've shown some preliminary insights that the work we do does shape our personality and the things like our sense of control over our environment, our confidence, how proactive we are, and our work also has an important economic and social implications, such that the outcomes of our work performance actually have consequences for our sense of security and our livelihood. So research has found that when we are happy at work, when we are feeling fulfilled, this can actually lead us to feel more secure and then more extroverted. Whereas when we feel that we are underperforming or are unsatisfied or unfulfilled, we experience more neuroticism, more anxiety, and even depression. And with all of that in mind, I want to stress you know enjoying what you do does come with lots of benefits. Like I just said, you know, personality, identity, self esteem, it's linked to we do in our professional lives. It's linked to our careers. And I don't think that that debate you know that you shouldn't be allowed to enjoy your career is what I'm talking about. I think more than that, it's that you can be satisfied without knowing what you want to do. And even if you haven't discovered your dream job, or maybe you don't think that you have won, it doesn't mean that you're not going to be happy. It doesn't mean that you're not going to be confident, and it doesn't mean that you need to have a dream job. So what I want to talk about next is the alternatives to the dream job philosophy and how we can almost resenter our relationship towards figuring it out. How we can resenter our relationship towards work without putting that undue pressure in ourselves and falling into that dangerous cycle of feeling really guilty and really shameful and feeling anxious about what we want to do. Our next partner has a product I use literally every day. I started taking ag one because I've been on a bit of a health journey. I wanted to take better care of my immune system and my gut health. And with one delicious scoop of ag one, you're essentially absorbing seventy five high quality vitamins, minerals, probiotics, all that good stuff, and it's really great for your nervous system and your immune system. It's just one simple micro habit that you can incorporate into your daily life with big benefits. 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But it doesn't mean that there's only one job that's going to make you happy, and then if you're not doing that, you're destined for misery. And this cognitive scientist from the University of Bristol, he wrote a really fascinating article on this, and I really wanted to share it because what he concluded is that loving what you do doesn't actually lead to greater happiness, despite the temptation to equate happiness with being successful at work or loving what you do. Often there is this pattern where you start working harder and harder, to the point where all of the sudden you feel guilty if you're not working. And the moment that happens, your work life balance and your family obligations and your hobbies and your life beyond your career it begins to suffer. Sometimes you arrive at what you think is your dream destination, your dream job, and you realize that it's not at all what you expected. And not only that that you know there are sometimes factors that make it really unenjoyable or really unpleasant. You know, the long hours, the rewards are lower, it's more physically demanding than you thought it would be. And I think in that moment, whether or not that position is your dream job, it's not going to matter if you're unhappy, and you should feel confident enough to be able to change, and you should feel supported enough to be able to choose something different. It's not always about the specific job you're working. It's about things like the environment in which you're performing that role. It's about the people that you're associated with. You know, there are times that I was happier working as a barista or as a waiter than I am in my professional job, even though one of those from society's perspective, comes with more prestige, because it's not always about your job title. It's about the environment in which it's being performed. And I do firmly believe that there's not one perfect job or career out there for all of us, and not only that, there's not one job that's going to suit our lives. I think humans are incredibly malleable. They're adaptable, They're flexible creatures with a lot of facets and a lot of strengths. And many of our strengths and qualities are going to change over time, and many of our desires for what we want from our lives are going to change over time as well. And I read the statistic that the average person born in this century is going to have three to four career changes in their lives. That's us, that's this generation. You know. I've already had two career changes, and probably like you, I'm only in my first decade of adulthood. And the dream job that I thought I wanted and my final destination at the time, it certainly was not my dream job. And I'm doing something entirely different now. And one thing I realized when I was thinking about my own journey is that there isn't one thing that was going to make me happy, not one job, not one career. Those jobs made me happy for a time, but there are other things out there that I don't even know about yet that are probably going to fulfill me even more. Think about it this way, we don't just have one hobby that makes us happy. We don't just decide, you know, I love painting and that's all I'm going to do because it makes me happy and I'm good at it. We don't just have one friend that we like being around, or one amazing skill, or one favorite food or one favorite place. There are many things that make us fulfilled and happy. And the same goes for the line of work we choose. So I'm hoping that if you feel stuck, that makes you feel better that whatever you're doing right now, whatever you think you want to do right now, there are things that you haven't even discovered yet which could feel an even deeper in even deeper need or desire within you. And so I wanted to kind of talk about and talk to the people who might be experiencing that right now and some of the tips for overcoming the anxiety about finding the right career path for you or the right job. Like I said, there is an entire field of psychology dedicated to this and dedicated to this idea of our professional lives, and there's so much literature on how we can find jobs we find fulfilling and we can create meaning even than those that we never dreamed of Firstly, instead of trying to imagine a specific career you think you'd be good at or that would make you happy, take a more holistic perspective. I want you to ask yourself, you know, the following questions. What do you love doing, what is your greatest personal strength? What is an activity you could spend hours on. What is a subject at school that you never really had to work that hard at but you still did really well. What are some of your non negotiables for your personal life? And what kind of life do you want to have beyond work. I think this reveals a lot more than simply choosing your job at a certain age and deciding that that's the one. That's what I've decided to do. Let me use an example here. You know, maybe one of your greatest strengths is that you really connect with people. You're really nurturing, and at school you did really well in biology and anatomy, but have a desire to balance your work life with travel, and maybe you want a family, so you want to work part time or take periods of time off. If you just took one of those elements at face value, you know, people told you that you were really good at science and you're really studious, you might be like, Okay, well then I should be a doctor and that's going to make me really happy and fulfilled. But there are other elements of that self appraisal that we're forgetting, which is the flexibility and the connection to people. You know, if you're a surgeon, most of the time, your patient's probably going to be an ethicized, so you're not really going to be able to connect with someone who's unconscious. And maybe you would actually be happier as a traveling nurse or as a school nurse, something that allows you to satisfy the other things that are important to you while still leveraging your skills and your strengths, and it's probably going to make you a lot happier. When we assess the full picture and the scope of our life, it may be a better decision because our expectations are more aligned. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when we only see ourselves doing one thing, we limit ourselves. So instead focus on those fundamentals of why you want to choose a particular career and give yourself the freedom to see where else you may fit, what might suit you better, What might actually make you happier, even if it's not as prestigious, even if it's you know, doesn't require as much study. Instead of finding your career that you love, find something that you love. Find something that's going to fulfill you, regardless of how much you're getting paid, regardless of your co workers, regardless of where you live. Find something that's going to suit your life and your strengths. And I think another tip is to allow yourself to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. Not much in life is certain, but the one thing that is is change and inconsistency. It's a really good reminder, not just when we think about our careers, when we think about everything. There are jobs in the future that haven't even been created yet, life changing moments that will completely alter your entire outlook and expectations for your life. There will be so many opportunities that you cannot imagine and thinking that you need to commit to one dream job, especially at this stage, especially when we're twenty and we're allowed to make mistakes and try things out, I think it actually restricts those opportunities. Your dreams are going to change. It's normal to not be the same person with the same goals as you were when you were eighteen, and five years from now you could be living a completely different life based on circumstances both within and beyond your control, and being comfortable with the knowledge that things will change and that uncertainty will allow you to embrace more options and opportunities and maybe end up at a place that is better for you than if you did believe this myth of the dream job and you did pursue it to the very ends of the earth. One final reminder that I know we've already mentioned, but I really want to finish on this note, is to remind you that if you're feeling stuck, if you haven't figured out your dream job yet, regardless of whether you think it's real or not, what you choose to do for a living is not the sole source of your identity. We get so wrapped up in wanting to appear like we have it all together and doing something that is admirable that we forget that life is a lot more than how we choose to pay our bills. Our jobs can just give us the means to an end to enjoy the other things in life, because our entire lives are not our careers, you can build up so many other components of your life that are going to make you equally happy. And I think it's a myth that it is the sole responsibility of our jobs to do that to make us happy. You know, your life does and will continue to consist of so many more components than just what you choose to do for work. And I think pursuing a dream job, especially something that's really difficult, it might bring us satisfaction. But sometimes if we do that with too much of a singular, narrow focus, we end up in a place where we realize that we've neglected other things. And I think we can be happy in any job that we choose as long as it allows you to live your life, as long as you're focused on the things beyond your career that make you happy, as long as it pays your bills, you're still going to feel satisfied. You're still going to feel fulfilled. And we should allow ourselves, I think, to kind of relegate that idea that there's only one thing that we're born to do. To understand that the world is large, The world is wide, and there are opportunities that we don't even know about yet that are going to completely change the course of your life, the course of history. I think that's a lovely message to end on this episode. Like I said, I cannot believe I didn't do it sooner, because I get so many emails and messages all the time of people being like, I really don't know what I'm doing, I really have no idea, and I'm going to tell you I don't either. I have no idea. And there are so many people in their twenties in my life who have no idea as well, And that is totally okay. It's totally okay. Like I said, You're going to have so many career changes. There's going to be so many things that happened. You found hobbies, you found passions, and nurturing the other things in your life that aren't just based in work will allow you to have a healthier relationship to your career and a healthier relationship to your professional life. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed it. I hope that if you're feeling a bit of career anxiety or feeling a bit stuck right now, it made you feel better. I really hope that that is the case. And if you enjoyed this episode, feel free if you feel cool to do so, to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever you are listening right now, and if you want more content like this, follow at that psychology podcast on Instagram. Every month, I let my listeners decide what episodes they want to hear. They get a decide what comes next, what's on the show, And it's also where I announce the guests that are coming on, people that are coming on, merchandise that it's coming out soon, so many different things. So follow me over there if you want, and I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you for listening, thank you for coming on this journey with me, and I will see you next week for another episode.