One of the most eloquent writers on the subject of finding your life’s work is the poet David Whyte. There are very few people talking about the subject of work with his level of depth, imagination and insight.
Because Whyte is a poet, it is not surprising that throughout his writing there are sentences that ring out with aphoristic clarity and power. One such sentence expresses a central element of the Jungian career counseling work that I do with many of my clients. It comes from Whyte’s book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America and it is an idea that is both simple and profoundly difficult:
“We must stop being so sure we know who we are.”
Entering the Territory of Silence
Photo courtesy of Thomas Leuthard(CC Attribution)
Often when I am working with someone and guiding them through a career transformation, everything depends on their ability to stop knowing who they are. All our feelings and ideas about work are so bound up with our identity and, for many of us, what we have done in the past becomes the lens through which we view ourselves in the present.
Finding your life’s work is not the same as finding another job. It means shifting your center of concern from who you think you are and what you’ve been told you ought to be to what wants to be lived through you. In Jungian psychology we might call this a shift from the ego to the Self, or from the mind to the soul.
David Whyte calls it the “fiery practice of not knowing.” He points out that all the contemplative traditions of the world place central importance on entering the “inner silence” and declares:
“In the beginning, then, our ability to respond creatively, whether at our desks, on the production floor, or on the yet-unwritten page, depends on our ability to live with the unexplored territory of silence.”
Knowing Through Not Knowing
When Gerry came to see me for career counseling, neither of us had had much experience with this “territory of silence.” Gerry worked in the IT department of a small firm and his work was giving him ulcers and sleepless nights. I had just launched my private practice after several years apprenticing at an organization that offered a conventional approach to career counseling and had only just begun my studies of Jungian Psychology.
As I had been trained to do, I gave Gerry a battery of assessments to help him find his new career path. The results were spectacularly underwhelming. Every suggestion generated from the tests was met with indifference at best and outright dismissal otherwise. They all pointed Gerry to some variation of what he was already doing. It was one of my first insights into the fact that, by themselves, career assessments do not work.
What went wrong?
Assessments are only as good as the information that is fed into them and most career assessments generate their results through a self-report from the individual. The responses that a person gives to these tests are generally derived from what they already know about themselves and because of that, they are poor instruments for helping a person “stop being so sure they know who they are.”
I believe that this is why, despite their best intentions and a lot of hard work with a career counselor, many people abandon the idea of a career change and end up back in a new version of their old work. They have never been helped to engage in the “fiery practice of not knowing.”
Faced with the disappointing results of our work together, Gerry and I simply sat in a tense and frustrated silence. Little did I know at the time, this was the beginning of the real work.
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The Inner Voice as a Guide to Finding Your Life’s Work
Photo courtesy of AlicePopkorn(CC No Derivatives)
I felt at a total loss with Gerry and didn’t know how to proceed to help him find answers. I asked him how he felt and he simply said, “Frustrated.” Something I had read in my Jungian studies came into my head and I asked him to give a voice to his frustration. “What would it say if it could speak,” I asked.
Gerry’s answer, and what happened because of it, changed everything about the way I work.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, “but I hear it saying, ‘I want to work with people, not machines.'”
Gerry had never expressed this kind of desire before and consciously he doubted whether it was true. Mostly, he doubted that he had the patience or ability to work with people. But in that moment, in the silence, a door opened, an unconscious desire was voiced, and a new possibility emerged.
We followed this clue together and, eventually, Gerry would return to school to study sports medicine and embark on a whole new path of helping people. It was my first experience of something that I have witnessed many times since then: your inner voice is an essential guide to finding your life’s work.
Silence is a rare commodity in our contemporary life. Every moment of every day is filled with a constant stream of information–TV, computers, smartphones, tablets, billboards, radio. The over-stimulation is endless.
But in silence, a new voice can be heard.
Carl Jung believed that the inner voice is the voice of our true vocation. In his essay, The Development of Personality, Jung expresses his view that the symptoms of a person’s neurosis–like Gerry’s ulcer and sleeplessness–are the result of trying to “escape from the inner voice and hence from the vocation.”
This is how Jung explains the experience of the inner voice:
“[It is] the objective activity of the psyche, which, independently of conscious volition, is trying to speak to the conscious mind through the inner voice and lead the individual towards wholeness. Behind the neurosis is concealed his vocation, his destiny: the growth of the personality, the full realization of the life-will that is born with the individual.”
Silence and Transformation
My work with Gerry transformed me from a conventional career counselor to a Jungian career counselor. I have come to trust in the power of the inner voice and to work to find ways to help people begin to hear it for themselves. I know that the first encounter with this voice is often halting and fragmentary, but if it is tended with patience and sincerity, it can blossom into the voice of vocation.
Ultimately, finding your life’s work involves many different factors. It is not enough just to hear the inner voice. A person has to respond and find a way to put that voice into action. But the process of career change has to begin with a deep listening.
This approach is certainly not easy and many people struggle with the idea of giving up their knowing and practicing not-knowing. However, when a person is finally able to enter their own unexplored territory of silence, that is when new life can begin to grow.
Real transformation starts in silence.
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This is a sensational article and completely in service if the soul’s desire to have legs and a voice. I love how you’ve pulled it all together. I want to read more! The way I approach marketing and message has often been connected Jung. Now I know why. Great article. Love it.
Thank you, Tina. It’s a profound shift to live “in service of the soul’s desire to have legs and a voice.” But it deepens the experience of living immensely. Glad you enjoyed the article. Take good care.
This is an epic post, Jason. I’m glad I found it. I’ve noticed that many figures from sacred stories—like the Buddha and Jesus—have a time in solitude before they embark on their life’s work. That reflects what most of us have to do in our everyday lives—as you eloquently put it: listen to our inner voice and put it into action. It’s something I’ve done recently and it has helped me to find a direction in my work.