We often get asked some of the big questions like, who am I in the entire
process of career management and my working life. The short answer is that
we do not answer that question, you do!.
Human beings possess the unique psychological ability to self-reflect.
This capacity for introspection, or reflexive consciousness, extends to all
human activities in all domains of life,from work to play and rests
“at the heart of the self” . The social psychologist Roy Baumeister argued
convincingly some years ago that for nearly as long as we human beings have
self-reflected, we have confronted four fundamental problems of selfhood across
these and other life spheres:
(a) self-knowledge, or how we understand ourselves.
(b) self-fulfillment, or how we construct meaningful and purposeful lives.
(c) self-definition, or how we construct an identity that both distinguishes
us from and connects us with others
(d) self-in-relation, or how we interact and cope with the social
contexts and conditions in which we live.
Each one of these problems of selfhood retains deep historical roots in both the
Eastern and Western traditions. These long-standing problems of self continue to engage
scholars across psychological specialties, and I am sure will as long as we have human
development. At Affinity, we believe your career and your life should travel on similiar
paths, but not neccessarily the same path.
