The truth behind the fairytale career

Ever get frustrated with the “Instagram-worthy” stories people tell about their career paths?

Depending on what you say and how you say it, it’s easy to paint yourself as a Disney heroine when telling your own story.

Take my own story: “In the course of two and a half years, I broke free from a nonprofit job with little growth potential and doubled my salary by becoming an communications consultant in the private sector. I got to travel to Canada, England, and Indonesia for work, teaching people how to create advocacy campaigns and mobilize the public in favor of policy change.”

Sounds pretty badass, right?

But, there’s a catch. (There’s always a catch.)

Our words have power — especially the words we don’t say. And that shiny Hollywood story above is the product of some serious lies of omission.

Subtle lies are pervasive, and we intuitively know when we’re around BS. When we listen to other people’s heroic (and doctored) stories, they can make us feel physically sick or give us that gut feeling they don’t ring with emotional and intellectual “truthiness.”

Our inner wisdom is calibrated to know that there are almost always tradeoffs paired with triumphs in these stories.

When I was more honest about the pivot I made in my career, the lies of omission I told as a part of my story become clearer:

“While I was on track to be a Vice President by 28, I kept feeling like something was missing. I was a mercenary and hired gun, so I’d work on whatever client came through our doors. I felt like I was freely trading my values and principles for a fast-tracked, externally impressive corporate career.”

Not quite the same fairytale anymore, is it? But what it lacks in a heroine, it makes up for in honesty.

This happens to everyone. We lie to ourselves by omission accidentally and regularly.

This kind of deception is a societally condoned behavior, designed to either make other people around you more comfortable, or to make you less uncomfortable.

Do you know anyone who has ever uttered a phrase like this?:

“It wasn’t that bad!”
“I just kept the end in mind.”
“All those long hours were worth it to get that promotion.”

Sometimes — every once in a while — these statements are emotionally and intellectually resonant and ring true. But for the 99 other times these phrases are used, we can label them as Defense Mechanisms.

Anna Freud’s work on the psychology of defense mechanisms defined them as unconscious coping tactics to avoid dealing with the anxiety that “unacceptable” thoughts or feelings bring up.

Defense mechanisms are often shorthand referred to as “self-deception.”

We’re taught from a young age to abandon our truth in favor of a more nicely packaged story and to find any way we can to avoid anxiety or uncomfortable feelings. But while we can convince our rational brains to parrot back these socially accepted tropes, our hearts know the deeper truth.

“I mean, nobody’s happy all the time in their work, right?”
“My boss only made mysogynistic comments a couple of times.”

Feeling some internal tension about your work and wondering if you’re hiding deeper feelings from yourself? You can do a “truth-check” by looking for any of the following kinds of behavior:

• “I didn’t tell my supervisor about not wanting to take on that project because she would have fired me for speaking up.” This one is rationalization, and is usually used to explain away a past behavior choice by conjuring up a rationale that fits the narrative of you being a victim.
• If you tend to need to go for a long run or to a kickboxing class after a crappy day at the office, you might be using sublimation. This is when you take an impulse that’s socially inappropriate and channel it in a way that’s more societally accepted. Sometimes this defense manifests in societally approved behaviors like working out, and sometimes it ends up as less approved behaviors like binge drinking or emotional overeating.
• Statements like “I know I shouldn’t feel that way because…” or throwing yourself into dealing with logistics after something devastating has happened is probably intellectualizing. This is when you try to think away the feelings that come with a disappointment by thinking about things exclusively through a cold, detached perspective and trying to “logic” yourself out of feeling what you’re feeling.
• “It’s not a big deal…” “It doesn’t really matter…” “It isn’t important…” are surefire signs of minimization.
• Am I projecting something? This one is when your brain does a turnaround on you. This shows up when you, say, loathe your boss, but you tell yourself you aren’t allowed to feel that way anyone or anything, so you tell everyone: “My boss hates me.”
• If you have a tough day at the office and end up yelling at your partner about something totally unrelated when you get home, you’re probably displacing something. This is when you take the emotions aimed at a person who might be threatening, and redirect them towards a person who is less threatening like a spouse or pet or child.
• “No, I’m not drinking tonight because I resent my job…” and other straight-up rejections of reality indicate denial.

While defense mechanisms are an evolved way to cope with less-than-ideal situations in the short term, they don’t have to be your long-term destiny.

Be brave. Tell your real story.

No lies of omission, no defense mechanisms. No “filtered for Instagram” fairytale retellings.

Let it out, and you might be shocked at how much clarity and freedom have been waiting for you.

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Lisa Lewis is a career change coach who helps unfulfilled individuals create lucrative, soulful, and joyful new career paths. Don’t love your job? We should talk. Learn more at GetCareerClarity.com or check out The Career Clarity Show podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play.