Are You Willing to Numb Out to Stay Comfortable?

January 11, 2011

Professional Destiny is about finding purpose and meaning in our profession. It’s about realizing a deeper level of satisfaction in what we do. It’s about not accepting status quo, or allowing ourselves to become complacent.

In other words, we don’t get to numb out.

Just recently I saw this TEDx talk by Brene Brown about the importance of vulnerability and its link to connection, purpose and meaning. I found it fascinating. And although we come at it from different angles, I saw the similarities between the quest to become whole-hearted as she discusses, and the quest to discover purpose and meaning in what we do.

In my book Professional Destiny, I wrote:  ”Many people confide in me that at some point in their careers, they feel as if they’ve come to a fork in the road. They have reached a level of success and confidence and now they need to make a choice between pursuing an unknown road toward fulfillment, or choosing the familiar path that feels secure. One client so aptly put it, ‘I know I can go work for company XYZ and make six figures if I want a mind-numbing job, but I don’t. Now what do I do?’ It’s a challenging choice. On the one hand, if you decide to bite the bullet and pursue a deep yearning that you have, you are often venturing into the unknown—especially if it’s very different from the career you’ve known. You are venturing into unfamiliar territory and you can expect to feel significant anxiety over this. If, on the other hand, you settle and choose not to take that next step forward, you can expect to feel a deep-seated sense of disappointment followed by a sense of lethargy and possibly a low-level or high-level depression. Many people try to mask these feelings by keeping themselves ‘numbed’ through alcohol, prescription drugs or anything that takes their focus away from the fact that they are ignoring a message from their soul. Others simply try to keep frantically busy and convince themselves that they are so important, that they don’t have time to notice the uneasiness from within.”

Brene adds another twist from her research and perspective on those who live whole-heartedly. She says in this excerpt from her talk: “We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. I think there’s evidence—and it’s not the only reason this evidence exists, but I think it’s a huge cause­—we are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. The problem is—and I learned this from the research—that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment, I don’t want to feel these. I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. I don’t want to feel these… you can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.”

So you can’t choose to numb the hard stuff—the uncertainty, the fear, the risks, the vulnerability—and expect to find a deep level of satisfaction and true creative expression in your life. In other words you’re not living your Professional Destiny and you’re not living wholeheartedly. Thanks Brene Brown for adding this perspective.

Filed under: Job vs. Career vs. Life's Work

Tags: Brene Brown, career satisfaction, mind-numbing job, Professional Destiny, vulnerability