Tag: Jobs

Being yourself in a clone world

We hear a lot about it, everyone is saying that we have to be ourselves, but only few people are actually able to accept the difference in others.

This whole year I have been working on myself to be a better and happier person in general, which also means that I tried to eliminite the fake persona I was showing to people and instead show my real personality.

Changing yourself is something that is really though because you have to lose old habits and ways of thinking. Finding solutions is not really hard, it only requires some thinking, what’s hard is to apply them in real-life situations without getting back to your old and fake way of dealing with it.

But there’s something harder, dealing with people who aren’t able to accept it (aka closed minded people), and from my experience you will meet a lot more closed minded people than open minded ones. I also call these people “brainwashed” because they only do what they are told to without questioning it. So when someone stands out of the norm, they won’t be afraid to criticize, even if it has absolutely no influence on them.

It is even harder if you are a sensitive person and if you have low self-esteem because you won’t be able to convince people that your way is right too. Even worse is the fact that you’ll also doubt your own life choices because of them.

You’ll also find out how much the world attaches importance to things that don’t really matter in the end, especially about appearance and jobs. Say to someone that you meditate everyday or that you make shrunken heads in your spare time and it will seem like you were talking to the table, now grow a beard and quit your job and see how much it annoys them.

Now you might be reading this and saying to yourself “I don’t care if you grow a beard”, I don’t either, but try growing one (or maybe completely shave your hair if you’re a women) and see how much people will tell you about it like it’s the only thing that matters in the world. I have a five months long beard, and I can tell that people put too much importance on physical appearance. I lost count of the negative comments I had about my beard, “it’s too long”, “you look better without it”, “you’ll never find a job if you don’t shave”, etc. Whose problem is it besides mine? Yet people can’t refrain telling me about it.

The other thing people can’t stand is someone that is not working five days a week like everyone else. I managed to live this whole year by only working for a few months, I didn’t had any kind of welfare money or anything else, I just lived with money I already had or worked for. So I’m not a burden for anyone yet everyone seems to be annoyed because I have more free time than them. I actually made the choice of having less luxury to work less. It doesn’t involve anyone else but me, yet people can’t accept it and keep telling me that I should find a steady job and work more.

It may seem unsignificant when you’re not facing it in your life, but constantly being criticize by people and endlessly questioning your owns choices gets really tiring. I’m not sure why people do this but I think they are either jealous or scared. Jealous of not having the courage to do the same with themselves or just scared of what they don’t know. Or maybe they are afraid of other people’s judgment, so they make for it by judging others?

This post doesn’t give any answer to the problem because I don’t have any, the only advice I can give you is to hold firmly onto your dreams and don’t let others break them with their close-minded opinions. If you are good at arguing you can try to make them understand but it will most certainly be wasted time and energy, spend that energy on yourself instead or on people that really matter.

Honesty doesn’t put food on the table

I don’t like to lie, I avoid it as much as possible but I think there is one time when it is better to embellish reality: when talking to a future employer.

I had a couple job interviews this year and I came to the conclusion that being completely honest will (sadly) lower your chances of getting a job. Before getting farther I need to clarify that I’m not encouraging people to lie nor to give false informations about themselves. What is needed here is that you turn every negative point to a positive one, which may require to “force” reality a little bit and to intentionally forget some details.

I tried what I call the “full honesty” interview which is to respond to the interviewer’s questions in my “natural” way. Just telling the true story and being myself during the interview. That also means that I’m counting on the fact that the interviewer will appreciate my complete honesty over my weaknesses (from my experience, most of them don’t). I didn’t get any job. The interviewers are obviously not there to meet “weak” people nor to understand your personality, they want to get the best ones, the ones that will help the company to reach success. If I analysed myself while doing these interviews I would say that I looked like a stressed and emotionally unstable person. I just speak as I would with anyone else, the casual way. I speak relatively fast, I switch constantly between subjects and I don’t filter what comes out of my mouth (I’m not talking about swearing here but about the fact that I don’t omit details that would make me look bad). That may look interesting from some point of view, but not from the employer’s.

If I remember the interviews from which I got the job, I was rather in a “just look good” mode. What I mean by that is to put your own person aside and just answer the questions in a neutral way that makes you look good to the interviewer. You don’t have to show your personality traits, whether you consider them good or bad, unless it could present a huge advantage over others applicants. You don’t have to say what they don’t ask you about either, keep out bad information about yourself when you’re not asked for it. They can’t judge you for what they don’t know about you. Make sure that what the employer sees is the best way he can see you.

The interview is just the step to get the job, so show that you’re the one for it even if it means to leave out some aspects of yourself for a short moment. After you get the job, you can start being the real yourself as long as you do the job correctly.