Inspiration for Career and Life: Genesis for Change

19:23

UNLOCKING THE CODE: FIRST, FIND YOURSELF

You are a secret code—so different from anyone else that only you can decipher the true meaning of who you are and need to be. Knowing some aspect of another person’s life is good if it reveals something critical to being yourself. Otherwise, why worry about being more like them if it takes you in the wrong direction? Joseph, in the book of Genesis, tried to be like his father, but it did not work out. He studied languages, religion, animal husbandry, medicine, trading, math, and human relations. We know this because he had no trouble talking with Canaanites, Egyptians, and traders. He interpreted dreams, did well at raising sheep, healed prisoners, and became a grain trader for Pharaoh. When Israel gave him a coat of many colors to acknowledge his abilities, it looked like their stars would merge. Instead, Joseph’s star sank. He flunked human relations by making his brothers so jealous they almost killed him before selling him into slavery. Joseph ended up nothing like his father, but each of them developed the capacity to become connected with an entity that demanded complete loyalty in exchange for unending understanding and adaptation. Everything Joseph did seems disjointed, unrelated, and inconsistent with the position of power and success he was headed to. He knew powerful spirituality and sheep herding under his father, Egyptian household economics and mysticism under Potiphar, and penal practices, administration, large labor management, and seeing reality in dreams under the captain of the guard. None of that goes together…unless you are in charge of Egypt in a bad drought. His personal history allowed him to answer each of the following questions: How much grain do you need for a typical ancient Egyptian family and their cattle for an extended period? If you are going to maximize crop production, how do you commit manpower to acreage? How do you determine weather patterns, and storage methods? How do you convince Pharaoh that you know how? Now the whole twisted road of Joseph’s life comes into focus during fourteen years split between plenty and famine. From Joseph we see that diversity leads to more rewarding work and life experiences. He understood where his faith and talents lay, he just didn’t know where they would lead him. However, his life would eventually be revealed as the interpretation of the star dream vision he had so many years before while tending his father’s flock.

Basic to any career search is an ability to identify aspects of our personalities and engage them. It is written in the old Greek temple at Delphi, Know Thyself. What they didn’t explain is that you constantly change as you mature. Tracking yourself is a lifetime pursuit. The ancient seer’s questions are: Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Like a Delphic seer, we must ask: What was I? Who am I now? What do I want to be? Answering all of them provides the basis for creating self-awareness. Your personal inventory of interests, experience, talents and skills are tools for the future. Each is like a seer stone or window to look into and find insights. Career counselors use them to find motivation. Which are you capable of, willing to use, and under what circumstance? How will you adapt them?

Read your emotions in order to better shape the future. Think of it as a sailing metaphor: you are setting out on uncharted waters and need to keep re-orienting and centering yourself. Sailors (like Joseph) take star readings to avoid getting lost, or hitting obstacles. You might lock up and be unable to go in the right career direction if you encounter low pay, a job you really can’t handle, or co-workers with different agendas. Be ready to take new bearings so you can avoid being stuck on those rocks.

Emotion is tied to motive. When do things wished for and invested in conflict with your best interests? You might want to be an actor or a doctor, but few ever become employed in those occupations. Many are forced to give up pursuit of a deeply desired goal because obstacles are too great. Intent and desire are two emotional motivators, or energy sources that help you determine which barriers can be overcome. Separately, they don’t tell us anything—but represent two legs of our internal state of mind. They are as old as dreaming.

Desire: to wish or long for; crave; covet…⁴

Intend: one’s mental attitude, including purpose…⁵

We need a mental mapping compass to find how intent and desire should combine to create positive energy and action. A mapping compass is a measuring instrument that takes you from the known into the unknown. Take personal compass to measure your arc of hope, or the distance and direction of what you are seeking but don’t yet see. Doctor Helen Harkness, a top career advisor and author, said in her book The Career Chase,

…we can’t choose our career direction wisely at the critical instant if we lack insight into our own strengths and motivations…⁶

When is desire appropriate; intent best defined and served? To keep these forces of energy in perspective, assign each a compass leg with self-awareness as a pivot point. Then all principals, experience and options are circumscribed or compassed into real achievement.

Self-awareness or insight is pivotal in keeping intent and desire from banging into each other and creating havoc in our lives. It allows unencumbered focus on worthy objectives. Success requires coordinating and balancing passion and principle. It is always a challenge. I tried explaining all this to an attorney I know. He understood intent because he wanted to be a great lawyer, but he hesitated in relating desire. I explained that as a successful attorney (his intent) he probably desired high-level clients to help him establish a good reputation. If such an influential person did something illegal it would bring him into conflict with his client’s interests, and requirements of the law (the principles he intended to succeed by). He saw my point and smiled.

Sailors change course depending on many factors, but always keep an eye on destination. Business owners also have a map called an organizational model. It is used to maintain objectives and profitability, hopefully leading to going onto the stock market and eventually docking or merging with a larger company that makes it worthwhile. Those who follow religious models also seek a kind of merger with a larger spiritual entity. There is a problem. Do both kinds of achievement converge at the same co-ordinates?

If you compass or circumscribe spiritual and financial success into your life, more power to you. The best destinations have many different stops before you get there. Just be aware that both business people and dreamers will tell you that to achieve either objective requires full sail, or all the energy you have in order to really be successful. Radically changing course at full speed is a disaster. It requires prioritization. Life is short, so finding the best destination should be done before nightfall. On what point of your compass does it lie?

Sailors know the seasons. Changing conditions require the ability to adapt to them. A better view of the horizon is needed, and there were times I had to take a larger view of my career and life. I left safe jobs, and found myself thankful in other positions better suited to me. I remember a story of two navies anchored at the same port, vying for territory. When waves crested port defenses one navy sailed out, and didn’t lose a ship. Those remaining were badly damaged or sank. The wiser navy recognized real security required going out into the teeth of the storm. That story reminds me of a company re-organization I went through. Conditions were changing in how they would operate. I took an early retirement package and left. That allowed me to gain special training and open a new career and chapter in my life, which gave me great satisfaction.

In the sub-prime mortgage fiasco of 2006 and beyond, the intent was to release pent up money in low performing mortgages by putting them into special investments. Desire for profits spun that money throughout the economy. When market demand collapsed Federal intervention had to save the US financial industry. All those investment packages had the highest safe harbor ratings, but each failed. Many lost money. No ship, relationship, life, career, or investment survives at anchor.

Webster gave an older definition for compass: [Archaic] a circuit, course.⁷ How does course and compass relate to us? Joseph Smith, Jr., the first modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader put it this way while talking about the eternal destiny of mankind:

I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man—the immortal part, because it has no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round.⁸

If you go just part way around your personal arc you will never find yourself. Stop at a safe point (cut the ring into one strand with a beginning and end—forget compass) and you may never get where you need to be. Many wooden sailing ships docked in San Francisco during the gold rush of 1849. Each vessel was made to follow trade routes using a complete circuit or circumnavigation of the seas. They were abandoned as sailors jumped ship and went off to gold fields. Boats would rot at anchor. There were so many un-seaworthy vessels that city leaders just filled in part of the port with dirt and sunken boats. Occasionally, when streets are dug up in San Francisco for renovation, a ship is found where it was moored. As you might expect, that part of the city has the weakest foundations and most potential damage during earthquakes. They built on ships that never completed their course; a city built, in part, upon abandoned intents and desires. It is interesting to note that more people became wealthy sticking to their boats and supplying the miners than those who went looking for quick wealth and abandoned original purpose.

If, as Joseph Smith indicated, man’s mind is destined to escape mortality, it will chart itself in eternally new rounds (circumnavigations) of space, time and intelligence. In this life, don’t sit on