“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
— Albert Einstein
In my early twenties, when I graduated from University, I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life, career-wise.
I knew I was good at foreign languages but I didn’t want to be a translator (because in my opinion, it was boring and repetitive work) nor did I want to be teaching French and Spanish to high school kids.
I went to a university with a lot of high fliers who had successfully found jobs in the civil service, intelligence, management consulting, investment banking and recruitment. So initially in my job search I just mindlessly copied what everyone else was doing.
Unfortunately, I was very much unsuited for the types of jobs I was applying for and didn’t know it.
I remember one interview process that was particularly torturous.
The day of the interview, I made my way into inner-city London wearing my power suit. (Going into the big city got my hackles up before I even got there, as I will usually avoid any place where you will find crowds.)
During the interview, I actually found I was to be put in a room with the other candidates, and we had to interview each other and sniff out who was NOT suited for the position we applied for. I was soon outed as the weakest link as the other candidates commented on my lack of skills in selling myself or anything else, and my shy and uncompetitive nature at the time. During the interview I felt like a gazelle with a pack of lions circling around me – the whole process was so uncomfortable I wanted to walk out mid-interview and leave the city behind!
It was clear I was wholly unsuited to the job, which required a lot of confidence, competitiveness and ambition.
I left that place feeling demoralized. Why couldn’t I sell myself or anything else? Why was I not a persuasive communicator orally? Why did I feel uncomfortable poking holes in the other candidates or trying to sniff out their weaknesses? Why couldn’t I think on my feet as quickly as I needed to?
I felt bad about myself. But now I know that I wasn’t passionate about any of those jobs. I would not have been comfortable within the corporate system. I was simply copying my peers and going through the motions, hoping it would all click into place somehow. I had a temperament that was somewhat different from the majority of the people who were interviewing for that job, because they were not going to be working in the areas I now do.
I wish I could have told 2005 Anna that she was going to make a career from writing and healing, that she was a non-conformist and that it was OK to be gentle as a person. And she didn’t need to be an extrovert, and definitely not competitive or aggressive.
Our Western society values some traits over others. Introverts are sometimes made to feel ‘less-than’ for liking their own company or for being quiet, for example. And sometimes, especially when we’re younger, we cave to peer pressure, try to copy others who seem happy with their choices or we beat ourselves up for not being a certain way.
I used to think that healing was about becoming someone else – being the person I always wanted to be back then, and the person others around me clearly wished I was, too – someone more extroverted and confident perhaps. But these days I know that the outcome of healing is about becoming comfortable in your own skin and knowing it is OK to be who you are. In fact, it’s more than OK – it’s all you’ve got and you’re meant to be that way. Those traits are going to serve you on your path – in your career and all other areas of life.
If I had had an Akashic Record Reading back then, I would have known that my gift is that I am here to help others reach their goals and improve their lives using spiritual tools and principles. My archetypes show I’m here to impart information, and I also bring the energies of harmony (not competition).
Someone who works in a competitive, corporate job such as recruitment would ideally have different gifts from those.
Obviously, all gifts are valid.
This is one of the reasons why I now love doing Akashic Record Readings (and teaching others how to do them, too.)
Akashic Record readings are all about our soul gifts and soul’s past – they can help us to remember what our strengths are and why we have those strengths in the first place. They can even help us to know which careers will fulfill us and which won’t.
It’s about helping us to release our conditioning about what we should be, and just remember who we are.
“I used to think that healing was about becoming someone else…”
Wow! That sentence right there hit me like a ton of bricks. I never realized until I read it that that’s what I’ve been doing a great deal of my life – trying to become someone else, someone better than what I think of myself and as compared to what is acceptable in mainstream society.
Thanks for another thought provoking article. I do hope to have you read my Akashic Record in the future when we are available at the same time. Until then, I greatly look forward to it.
Blessings,
Dawn Marie
Hi Dawn,
So glad you related to this!