Unfreezing Events

Saturday, February 21st, 2009 at 8:19 am

Early transition events unfreeze us—get us unstuck, ready to move—by making more vivid a feared possible self. Our early doubts about our current career may seem too vague and nonspecific to justify action; but after a defining event, we have concrete evidence of a problem. In Brenda’s case, the cartoon episode showed that her life as an executive was exacting a higher cost than she realized. The event unfreezes by challenging a strongly held or cherished self-conception, such as Brenda’s belief that she was a dynamic person with broad interests. That self-conception was shattered the moment she could not think of what might be drawn around her. Getting fired and receiving a bad performance review are classic unfreezing events. Events like these defy the view of ourselves as competent professionals; they can make us realize we are not in the driver’s seat when it comes to career decisions and bring our feared possible selves more sharply into focus.

Of course, the event by itself is insufficient for sparking change; we can always ignore the information; dismiss it as irrelevant; blame the undesired outcome on fate; or, most common, simply deny its validity.^[9] But, when we are ready (and as we’ll see below, readiness is only a matter of hard work and preparation), events develop self-awareness. Early philosophers argued that we cannot perceive our selves directly, rather our selves must be “caught in the act” of perceiving something that exists in the real world.^{[10 ]}Self-knowledge, therefore, comes from our reactions to things that happen to us and around us. Just as we learn about other people by observing their behavior and making inferences from it, we learn about our selves by examining what we do when events force our hand—yet another reason why solitary introspection is insufficient and why experimenting provides more useful information than reflecting on past experience.

One of the primary ways in which unfreezing events mark a cut with the past and herald the start of a transition period, according to psychoanalyst Manfred Kets de Vries, is by serving as an organizing scheme for everything that occurs afterwards: “From this point on, every new disturbance is recognized as part of the same pattern of dissatisfaction,” he writes.

Complaints coalesce into a coherent entity. Many people have an “aha” experience at this stage, a moment when they are finally able to interpret decisively what is happening to them. They see clearly that neither the passage of time nor minor changes in behavior will improve the situation—indeed the situation is likely to become even worse if nothing drastic is done about it. Even the insight that drastic measures are required does not automatically compel people to take action. However, it typically sets into motion a mental process whereby they consider alternatives to the adverse situation.”^[11]

Unfreezing events may be either happy or sad. People in transition often tell stories of jolts and losses in their personal lives that remind them of ignored possible selves or warn them of the harmful consequences of current identities. But joyful events like births or marriages can also be occasions for revising priorities. Events that mark the passage of time, such as a milestone birthday, a tenth anniversary, or an alumni reunion, can also unfreeze us. Likewise, a natural conclusion to a project or the time when a particular role comes to an end can start our juices flowing. Just as being passed over for a promotion can be a trigger, a new assignment might cause people to see more clearly that they no longer desire the future they were inexorably moving toward.

Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career