the Village Knittiot

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”
~Dale Carnegie

Not knowing what you want is the biggest barrier to getting it. Furthermore, this particular pursuit of happiness is complicated further by the fact that often times what we thought we wanted in the first place turns out to be much different than expected. Earlier this year I started reading a book called Stumbling on Happiness, in which Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about why our brains make it so difficult for us to accurately predict what will make us happy. Apparently we are wired in such a way that makes it darn near impossible to figure out just what we want and how to make decisions that actually lead to true happiness.

As I mentioned before, I had two job interviews this week. I was somewhat lukewarm on the first one. It went well. They loved me, and it always feels good to be loved, but I wasn’t convinced it was the best fit for me. It might have been a comfortable fit, but didn’t comfortable mean boring? Didn’t it mean I wasn’t stretching myself? Afterall, I was looking for something *more*. A challenge. Something to sink my teeth into.

Before the second interview, I spent quite a bit of time pouring over their website (like I always do) and the more I read about the company, the more excited I became. This was the place I wanted to work. I just knew it. I completely nailed the interview, and was absolutely certain that this was the best move for me. New territory. Challenging role. Exciting opportunities. Larger company with many flashy perks and benefits. I mean, this company was really good at marketing itself as a great place to work.

But if there is one thing I know, it is that emotions and thoughts come in layers. The lukewarm feelings about the first place and the excitement about the second were all my initial impressions. And this is where we human beings live about 99.9% of the time — on the surface. In areas that are inhabited by anxieties, societal expectations and our own ideas about who we are or would like to be. Yet below all those initial thoughts and impressions are more subtle nuances. The kind that you have to get quiet to hear.

In my adventures in therapy I spent a lot of time working with my therapist to discern between the rational mind, the emotional mind and the wise mind. The first being that part of you that sees things from a very logical point of view. The second being the one that is sheer emotion — often hard to control and rarely having anything to do with facts. And the later being the part of you where reason and emotion meld and move beyond just thought and feeling into a more intuitive place. It is the part of you that is you, free from external pressures and worries. It has a sense of stillness, a calm at the eye of the storm. It is your voice.

After my second job interview, while I was incredibly excited about the opportunity, there was this element of desperate wanting, a sort of high-pitched note of anxiety attached to everything. There was no calm assurance. This buzzy feeling is often a warning sign for me that I am moving far, far away from anything resembling my wise mind. In the midst of filling in Mr. Knittiot about the progression of events, I happened to mention that I had this feeling that I was trying to grasp on too tightly and that I wasn’t going to get it. I attributed it to the post interview let down.

The next day I got a call. A job offer from the first place I had interviewed at. I was surprisingly excited to hear from them. The offer was better than I had expected. The enthusiasm in their voices was infectious. We talked through some details and everything, and I mean everything, worked out to my benefit. I told them I just wanted to discuss things with Mr. Knittiot before making a final decision and I would call them back the next day.

Now I had a dilemma. Do I jump at this great offer or hold out and see what happens with the other company? A quick chat with Mr. Knittiot, and a couple others whose professional opinion I hold in high esteem, convinced me that I needed to call the second company and let them know that I had been made an offer so they at least had an opportunity to match it. They were very interested, I was told. The HR person started scrambling and by 5:00 pm I was on a phone interview with one of the Sr. VP’s. Shortly into the call, my excitement started to unravel. Unlike the other place where I felt I was being actively pursued for my professional expertise, I suddenly felt like I was having to convince him that I was capable of the job. I realized in hindsight that he wasn’t really listening to anything I said, because all of his questions were answered in the first 5 minutes. His “concerns” I now recognize as a classic ploy (which I have encountered more times than I care to remember) to put me on the defensive, to remind me that they were the ones doing me a favor by hiring me, and, if I accepted the position, to keep me constantly working for the approval I never really had despite being offered the job. I do respect that he was trying to give me a realistic impression of what I was coming into, but frankly, everything just started sounding like a great big pile of stress and misery. The amount of work compared to the salary suddenly seemed a bit unbalanced and all the high-pitched anxiety that was underneath the excitement became clear. In that wise mind moment, all of the confusion and indecision cleared and there was a calm, still assurance. I knew what the next step was. The only thing left to do was call and accept the other offer, which I did the next morning.

Thus ends the unemployment.

As a postscript to the story, the next day, shortly after I called and accepted the first offer, I received a call from the person in HR and the woman I had first interviewed with at the second company. They had received my e-mail informing them that I had decided to go with the other position. You could tell they were just shocked. They wanted to know what had happened on the call and why I had changed my mind. They felt I was such a good fit and you could tell they were just livid with the Sr. VP, because they were certain he had done or said something wrong. The truth is, he didn’t. I am so happy that he said and did what he did, because without it, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get really quiet and discern what I truly wanted.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 10:29 am and is filed under this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.