Career Identity and Well-being
Our Early Influences
We all want to do something with purpose, self-efficacy, and meaning in our lives. We often choose careers that can fulfill these needs.
Once selected, our profession is often associated with how we define ourselves and our goals, sharpen our skills, who we hang out with, our social status, our ability to meet challenges, and most importantly how we seek purpose.
When meeting new people, we often ask, “What do you do?” We try to find things in common with others. We ask ourselves, “Are they like me?” or “Can I relate to this person?”
When asked the same question, how do you answer? We often answer with a self-defining “I” statement, but we are more than that statement.
Our career identity becomes central to developing our well-being as we seek meaning and purpose.
We all want to feel that we matter. just wrote a really informative article, How to Create Mattering at Work, that connects mental health, well-being, and mattering.
Have you ever found yourself doing a less-than-desirable task or in a job you didn’t love but years later used the lessons learned from that job to do what you love now?
It sometimes feels that the Universe has this pre-written script for all of us. Where we are is where we are supposed to be.
, in her article, Your Career Do-Over: Tarot Pick a Card, discusses the power of the Universe. This was a really fun read!
Having a job is like being in a relationship. We spend most of our day with our colleagues and in the workplace (even if it is virtual). Choosing what we do and who we choose to do this with is essential.
We have moved on from choosing just one career to define who we are. We design our own lives through many professional choices.
We can define our path. We are allowed to fall in and out of love with what we do. It is okay to start over.
The Complexities of Choice
Choosing a career is complex and involves assessing interests, values, self-knowledge, abilities, and environmental influences. Notice that this list is strengths-based.
You don’t want to list what you’re not good at because people change. Your interests and abilities may change the more you learn, so let’s focus on strengths, not weaknesses.
For example, my strength is the ability to teach, connect with my students, create, and produce art that brings me joy.
What I don’t — or didn’t — like are math and numbers. After starting a small business and being forced to manage numbers, I found that I enjoyed balancing the books.
My dislike of numbers became a strength of mine. I found I was good at it. My weakness turned into a strength over time. Thus, I like to focus on my strengths and redefine my weaknesses as opportunities to grow.
** Takeaway: Create a list of your skills that focus on your strengths.
Interests Ebb and Flow
Career development evolves throughout a person’s lifespan and encompasses different stages, tasks, and roles. According to Super (1980), a career is “the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during a lifetime.”
Your career choices have most likely been ebbing and flowing your entire life. This is how we explore our interests and test out our skills.
Career development is how we understand how we relate to the world of work and the role we play in this world.
Preparation for work progresses through elementary school, high school, college, school-to-work transitions, and mid-life career changes. Hartung et al. (2008) define childhood as “the dawn of vocational development.” Studies have found that choosing a career is influenced by our self-perceived abilities developed as early as elementary school.
Do you remember what or who influenced your career choice? Reflect on the messages you’ve received throughout your life. How have these messages influenced your choices? Is what you are doing congruent with your passion and values? Are you building on your skills and talents?
* Takeaway: Reflect on the messages you’ve received throughout your lives and how they may have influenced your professional identity.
What were these messages — can you list them out?
Let’s explore some of the historical influences that have helped us to define and understand the formation of our professional identity.
Exploration
Psychosocial Theory: According to Erik Erikson (1968), identity formation occurs over a lifespan and is influenced by the interaction between one’s needs, abilities, self-perceptions, and the social world.
His eight life stages of development occur on a continuum, reflecting the importance of earlier stages on later stages of development.
In late adolescence, during the Identity vs. Role Confusion stage, people begin to question who they are and how they fit into the world.
Erikson called adolescence most challenging stage.
Failing to accomplish this stage can have a negative effect on adjustment and one’s place in the world. Successful completion of this stage forms the basis for career direction and choice.
* Takeaway: Our adolescent years can be very challenging, but successful navigation of this stage sets the course for our career direction and choice.
Do you remember a challenge you had to overcome at this age?
Adapting to Changes
Life-Span, Life Space: Donald Super (1980) explained that people play different roles (e.g., child, student, mother, etc.) in four main settings (home, community, school, and work) throughout their lifespan that directly influence decision-making.
Super identified the need to accomplish specific tasks throughout our life, from early childhood through mature adulthood.
Early life stages are when interests and self-perceived attributes peak and one’s professional identity begins to form.
As life’s challenges occur, one must be able to successfully adapt and change to meet the demands of each stage.
* Takeaway: Successful navigation and preparation for career development in young adulthood influence career choice and maintenance of this choice.
What influenced your career choice?
Expressing Your Personality
Personality Types: Do you remember taking the Holland Personality Test in school? John Holland’s (1959) career development theory significantly impacted matching personality types with career domains and personal career choices.
Career choice is influenced by one’s personality, work environment, and behavioral type. Holland defined these behavioral types as realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional (RIASEC).
Each type is characterized by a specific set of interests, preferred activities, beliefs, abilities, values, and characteristics that make up one’s personality.
A common theme within his theory is that occupation choice is not random but an expression of one’s personality.
* Takeaway: The more congruent or similar our values and behaviors match our career environment, the more satisfied and secure we feel.
Make a list of your values — do they match your career choice?
Self-Efficacy
Self-Efficacy: Albert Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory emphasizes the concept of self-efficacy in career exploration and decision-making.
Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capacity to successfully perform a given behavior, which involves carrying out this behavior to meet the desired outcome.
Self-efficacy is developed and influenced by past successes and failures, role models, encouragement or discouragement from others, and emotional factors.
Choosing a career that one feels competent in influences choice and satisfaction in one’s career.
Choosing a successful career depends on identifying one’s strengths, weaknesses, barriers, and opportunities within the environment.
* Takeaway: Career exploration and engagement in different career experiences help build the self-efficacy to choose a career with purpose and meaning.
How did you build your skills?
Designing our Lives
Career Construction: One of my favorite theories comes from Mark Savickas (2002). Career construction theory emphasizes how we design — or construct — our careers. Our choices are influenced by the meaning we assign to our choices.
These choices are influenced by our past memories, present experiences, and future aspirations.
Drawing upon Super’s Life-Span, Life-Space theory, Savickas emphasized the meaning people place on developmental tasks, occupational transitions, and work traumas within each stage.
One’s attitudes, beliefs, and competencies ultimately shape problem-solving strategies and coping behaviors in creating a self-concept within one’s work role.
I like his idea of Life Design — We don’t have to choose one career, retire, and sail away into the sunset.
Fellow medium writer, , wrote “Therefore, as masters of our thoughts, we are creators of ourselves, designers and builders of our own environment.”
Conclusion:
The goal in designing a career life would be to choose an occupational role that enables you to overcome challenges by contributing to society, cooperating with others, and creating a meaningful life.
This can be done throughout your life — designing the life that brings you joy.
How have you designed your life? Comment below and share! Please follow to learn more!
References:
Amundson, N. E., Borgen, W. A., Iaquinta, M., Butterfield, L. D., & Koert, E. (2010). Career decisions from the decider’s perspective. The Career Development Quarterly, 58(4), 336–351.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Betz, N. E. (2004). Contributions of self-efficacy theory to career counseling: A personal perspective. Career Development Quarterly, 52, 340–353.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York, NY: Norton.
Holland, J. L.(1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6, 35–45.
Howard, K. A., & Walsh, M. E. (2010). Conceptions of career choice and attainment: Developmental levels in how children think about careers. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76(2), 143–152.
Nauta, M. M. (2010). The development, evolution, and status of Holland’s theory of vocational personalities: Reflections and future directions for counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychologiy, 57, 11–22.
Savickas, M. L. (2012). Life design: A paradigm for career intervention in the 21st century. Journal of Counseling & Development, 90(1), 13–19.
Super, D. E. (1980). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16, 282–298.
