The epidemic of perpetual unhappiness and mid-career crises..

Nobody would have envisioned the term “Mid Life Crises” coined by Mr. Elliot Jacques to become an endemic issue across the world. While conventional wisdom and understanding denotes that typically GenY remain agnostic over and suffer from “Mid-Career Crises” some shorn of job/business, well-nigh with-in job or in whatever business we have, for variety of reasons best known to us, but are these the ‘real’ reasons? Do we really know the reasons? If yes, do we have an answer for all the possible bouncing questions with “How”, “What”, “Why”?

Off late I was wondering if I am one those numerous cynical and negative fellows cribbing daylong of their work? This comes without asking when every other colleague of mine keeps humming of more than 10 things which make them unhappy or at least not very satisfied with their current role, sucking boss or often their team.

Now since I happen to know them closely, I admit some of them are too bright, meritorious and set high benchmark for themselves and therefore harsh and cynical words from them make me think deeper of the reason.

But we all have a common symptom of being unhappy vis-à-vis outside view of good role, decent job for our exp vs career level. I have 8years experience with 7 consecutive outstanding rating, 3 different distinct roles to perform, with many different roles to play in between, so if someone would have asked me, when I started my career 8years back, would you be happy if you get all this 8years down the line. I would have happily taken it and went home being most satisfied person on the earth. But today if you ask me, I am unhappy with lot many things in my professional remit and that leads us to question WHY?

So why do we live the life of perpetual unhappiness? It is safe to say that we live alternative life (Because this is not what we want)! In other words, the prime reason for this unhappiness is the gap between what I am? And What I want to be? While most of us have answer to later in forms on CHRO, CEO, Indian Cricketer, IPS and IAS etc . Point B is clear but where we are lacking is to have honest answer to first question, “what am I”? If at all we can answer that honestly we’ll know whether our point B is in line to who we are? Or perhaps we need to change our point B.  If we look at this picture from 2*2 matrix, X axis has “Aspiration” with “what am I” and “What I want to be”. Y axis has “Actions” which I “know” And “don’t know”.

Example- 

“Imagine if there is a doctor who happens to have good name as cardiologist   and he aspires to be a best cardiologist in the town, he will make journey from left hand side bottom corner box to upper one that journey is simple since he “knows” what is takes to be a Best cardiologist in town. But If same doctor aspires to be a politician or Chief Minister of his state, he doesn’t know the skills/competencies it takes to be a Chief Minister of state therefore will fall in right hand side top corner box.”

What I want to be ?		High on aspirations and low on action
Who I am?
	KNOW	DON’T KNOW

Most of us are stuck in TOP right corner box in below matrix, high on aspirations, to be the best, to be a CEO, to be CHRO but we don’t know what it takes to be there? What are the competencies, skills, required to make journey from our current position, to the position we aspire for.

We (GenY) are full of energy positive and negative both, negative we tend to develop when our aspirations are not meted. Low energy transpires in Low action thereby impacting the result on the contrary high energy transpire the high action and more often than not turns the result in your favor.  

We (GenY) are different when I compare ourselves to our predecessors and biggest differentiator is “CHOICES”. We have abundance of choices today wherein our parents (baby boomers) had limited choices, therefore they were ‘ACTION’ oriented to prove a point and grab one of the choices wherein we have many to choose from therefore we are ‘Thought’ oriented since decision making becomes difficult with more choices and hence dilemma of TO BE or NOT TO BE. The Paradox of Choices is notion is already spelled in“The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” is a book from 2004 by Barry Schwartz” , it explains that companies selling 24 different types of jam make less sales than those who only offer 6 varieties of jam: at a certain point, too many options get suffocating & turn us off making a choice at all.

Summing up top 3 reasons for unhappiness of GenY or “Mid-Career Crises’ it can be following-

• Ø  Disconnect between Aspiration and Knowledge/skills
• Ø  Negative Energy result into low actions
• Ø  Paradox of choices (To many choices to choose from)

Now since we know above are 3 primary reasons of our happiness and Mid-Career Crises, how do we attack these to come out as winner? All of us set a goal but that goal should be break into small short term objectives with actions in ‘Step-up model’ to reach the ultimate goal.

References- My dialogue with founder Sampark Foundation Mr. Vineet Nayar and some soul searching.