Picking Paths
Are you in the right career? Local counsellor Luis Murillo discusses finding your path…
An electrical engineer on assignment in China has a hidden passion for designing children’s toys. The head of marketing for a fast food conglomerate has a strange affinity for making gourmet salad dressings. A young man’s parents want him to study finance and accounting, but he can’t put down his guitar or his dreams of rock stardom. In picking a path for ourselves in life, we often get caught in a conflict between expectations and desires.
Luis Murillo, local counsellor at the Community Center Shanghai says that this tension is well-known in psychoanalysis. “One of the big insights of Freudian psychology is that society puts a burden on people to sacrifice themselves to achieve something for the good of society. We sacrifice ourselves with our work and maybe what we get out of that isn’t the dividend we want in terms of personal happiness.”
Many times we have a choice between two paths, each of which satisfies some of our desires, but not all of them. When it’s time to choose, Murillo advises his clients “to look at their total life quality. That doesn't necessarily mean succeeding at leveraging [oneself] into a higher social status; sometimes that means taking a lower paying job, but having more creative opportunities to connect with [your] humanity.”
In making these types of choices, Murillo notes that there is a current trend in developed countries throughout the world towards “downshifting”, where people look to cultivate lives for themselves defined not by achievement, but by their singularity.
But not all of us are able to “downshift”. Some of us are already firmly committed to one path or have familial obligations that keep us from making big changes. Still, Murillo doesn't think that means we can't find ways to incorporate those sides of ourselves that look to create or inspire. “With my clients, I try to exploit synergies between passions and the realities of the marketplace.” And the marketplace isn't as adverse to creatively minded people as you might think. In fact, it's proving more and more welcoming to them. “Having creativity and cultivating that creativity is going to be increasingly valued in the future.”
Our electrical engineer might help his company license miniature designs of their products for toys. Our head of marketing might have some interesting suggestions for how to increase sales of salads in new markets. Our aspiring rock star might not make it to sold out stadiums, but intimate knowledge of what it's like to be up on stage will undoubtedly prove helpful in a career in entertainment marketing.
