Carrying the Bag
On metaphor, the hero's journey, and identity-based habits.
I was recently speaking with an organizational leader about culture change and the challenges that come along with getting a team to adopt new ways of working. He had a metaphor that I thought could be of use to what we’ve been thinking about here.
As we go along in our working life we pick up different experiences and perceptions and ways of thinking. It’s like each time we accomplish something or interact with others we put a little token of that into a bag and carry it along with us. Over time, as our experience grows, the bag becomes quite large and full - we develop certain habits and tendencies, our ways of getting along and getting things done - and even though not everything in there is of use, we continue to carry the bag with us anyway.
Until we arrive at certain decision points - in the case of culture change that may be a new leader or a new strategy - where we are presented with a choice: set down the bag and go on a journey, or continue lugging the same thing along.
This same thing happens in our career decisions as well. Not to continue pummeling you with the metaphor, but we pick up experiences and perceptions of ourselves as we work and try different things that shape our identity, what we aspire to, and what we think we’re capable of.
This kind of baggage is one of things that can make career change so hard.
Making the choice to do something different may may be intriguing or exciting from afar, but up close it can also be unsettling, even frightening. Fears, after all, are born of uncertainties…
What if I’m wrong?
What if I fail?
What if people judge me?
What if I miss an opportunity?
What if I’m no good?
This may be overdramatic, but setting down the bag makes me think of the hero’s journey, where the decision point is the call to adventure, and setting down the bag is crossing the threshold from something known to something unknown.
I think of lawyers who become priests, bankers who become novelists, consultants who become entrepreneurs, architects who become filmmakers.
Now the idea is obviously not that everyone in a certain job or profession should be aiming to do something entirely different. But I do think that pang, if you have it, that persistent thought - is this really what I want to be doing or where I want to be spending my time - is worth listening to.
One thing that can be hard about doing this is that answering the call to action involves letting something go; whether that’s elements of a professional identity that have been built up over years of training and experience, or old goals and aspirations that may be less relevant to who you are today.
Reinhold Niebuhr summed this idea up pretty succinctly in my estimation:
“Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”
Apply this thinking
What do we do with this? There’s an interpretation of this idea that might fit into that category of “quit your job to write your book,” which is almost certainly not a good idea (check out
's delightful take on that specific question), because most of the time when we engage in this kind of thinking, we’re indulging an escape fantasy.At a practical level, I think it’s worth butchering Niebuhr’s poetic insight a bit and reversing it. Something like, invest in learning what you want to become so that what you are evolves in that direction over time. What we do can shape our identity in the same way that our identity can shape what we do, so taking action in ways that reinforce your desired identity, ideally very small actions to start, can help you start to “set down the bag” in a productive way.
For an endless amount of relevant, practical writing on identity and habits, check out James Clear’s writing.