“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
-Carl Jung
When I was 10 years old, I entered a split Grade 5/6 class. I remember the homework being challenging. I also remember crying a lot because I struggled almost every night to understand the reading.
After one tearful evening of feeling incompetent and struggling over an assignment, I approached my teacher, Ms. Ciach, the next day and asked her for a considerable favour.
“Miss, can I go to the other Grade 5 class?” I didn’t want to be in a split 5/6 class anymore and do the work the older Grade 6 students were doing. I wanted to do the work for my age level.
She looked at me, smiled, and shook her head. “No.”
I was to stay in her class.
When Others Believe In You, You Start to Believe in Yourself
Looking back, I’m so grateful she denied my request. Not only was Ms. Ciach a terrific teacher who was fair and skilled at her craft, but she gave me an important lesson that day that changed how I saw myself.
She believed in me. She believed that I could do the work of the older Grade 6 students. She believed that I was capable of doing difficult things. By making me stay in her class, she was telling me that I was smarter than I thought.
What You Believe About Yourself Influences the Career You Choose
In the mid-1970s, Albert Bandura, a psychologist born and raised in northern Alberta, Canada, created Social Learning Theory. This theory states that most of our behaviour is learned from observing others. For example, if you go to a concert and see many people screaming and yelling, you’ll probably do the same.
From Social Learning Theory came Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). SCT says that while our behaviour is influenced by observing others in the environment, how we view ourselves is also influenced by people in our environment.
More specifically, what you believe about yourself results from the interaction between what you see in your world, what others tell you, and how you act.
So, for example, if you spend a lot of time studying and other people praise you when you study, two things will happen. First, you will continue to study more often (behaviour), and second, you will change how you think about yourself (e.g., “I’m someone who is capable of studying”).
Similarly, suppose you spend time working on difficult projects, and people praise you for the quality of work you produce. In that case, you’re more likely to continue working on challenging tasks, and you will start telling yourself that you are capable of working on difficult things.
In the context of career theory, SCT says that what you believe about yourself as a result of the experiences in your life and the messages you receive will influence your career search.
If you’ve received messages which say that you’re good at doing X or Y, you’re likely to search for careers in the field of X or Y because you believe that you can do well in the area of X or Y.
Messages From Our Past Influence Our Present and Future, but They Don’t Predict It
All of these psychology theories can help you understand yourself better and why you may have chosen the career or job you are currently in. However, no psychology theory or life experience can predict with 100% certainty what will happen to you tomorrow. Only you can determine what happens.
You can change what you believe about yourself, and you can change the way you behave. And when these things happen, you can change the course of your career and your future.
Richard