Hello Billy Bob,
It's good to meet you again. I hope you find this answer as useful as
you found the one I provided you about sleeping problems.
I'll address your current subject in two aspects. First, following
your own thoughts about it, I do encourage you to bring up these
issues with a psychologist, counselor or the psychotherapist of your
choice. I do believe that you will find some orientation in this
answer, but even if you do, a professional's support will help you
walk the chosen path. I notice in your recounting a possible added
challenge to deal with. Just like it happens to many people, some of
your desires seem to be contradictory -- namely, you do feel more
comfortable (if I understood you well) when working by yourself;
still, you crave for a more outgoing social behavior.
One possibility is that two real characteristics of yours mutually
interfere. But you should also consider that, maybe, what you crave
might be not an actual characteristic of yours but a way of being that
for some reason you idealize (the neighbor's "greener grass"). If this
was the case, compelling yourself to achieve that goal might be the
highway to a painful and unhappy living, by constantly forcing
yourself to play a role that is not in your nature, that takes you a
lot of energy and that you ultimately dislike. One thing is the
alleged social reward of being extrovert -- popularity, recognition --
and a very different thing is the effort of playing every working day
a character that is not really you.
Of course, social realization is an aspect of life that everybody
looks for, and most people achieve it to the degree of their needs,
which differs from one another. Thus, an introvert person surely needs
a much lesser amount of social recognition than, say, a standup
comedian, a lecturer, a politician or a high profile businessman --
and still may have a social life as much or even more happy than any
of the latter. (In terms of happiness, which should be the measure of
any type of success.) In any case, your determination to better the
social aspect of your life sounds very auspicious -- just be aware not
to unnecessarily distress yourself in search of more social reward
than what would actually make you happy.
Anyway, all that was mere speculation, not even a hypothesis, and your
wish to expand your sociability may very well be the manifestation of
a genuine impulse that has been inhibited for some reason and is
pushing its way out. Now, in either case, a therapist's assistance
would be most useful -- to help you visualize what is your real drive,
and clear up any obstacle from your way. Even though I have training
and practice in social psychology, it is not possible for me to
provide you with that assistance from the distant perspective of a
Google Answers researcher.
Now, the core of your question is what would be the type of job that
would better fit your personality. I believe that a good approach for
this is the widely accepted standard of the Holland Codes, created by
psychologist John L. Holland, who identified 6 types of personalities,
matching as many groups of preferred careers and work environments.
These categories are Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social,
Enterprising and Conventional (the whole categorization system
abbreviated as RIASEC). Combining information from (1) the
Occupational Interests page
(http://www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/cfe/eggs/occupationalinterests.htm
) at the University of Central Lancashire's Centre for Employability,
and (2) the article Human Behaviour in Business
(http://www.chuckiii.com/Reports/Business/Human_Behaviour_in_Business.shtml
) at Chuck III.com, I compiled the characteristics of each category:
REALISTIC:
"...careers such as laboratory based work, environmental, agriculture,
horticulture, forestry, mechanics, catering, production and
manufacturing, professional engineering, sport, leisure, tourism,
direct health therapists, production planner, building inspector,
safety engineer and marine surveyor." (1)
"Personality characteristics include being shy, genuine, persistent,
stable, conforming, and practical. (2)
INVESTIGATIVE:
"...work in any field of science or technology, such as chemist,
physicist, astronomer, biochemist, orthodontist, anthropologist,
economist, researcher, management analyst or specialist in one of the
natural or physical sciences and many other forms of intellectual and
academic work." (1)
"Personality characteristics include being analytical, originality,
curiosity and independence." (2)
ARTISTIC:
"...visual or plastic arts, occupations such as architect, copy
writer, technical editor, story editor, composer, stage director,
interior decorator, and commercial designer all aspects of design,
music, writing, multimedia, film, video, broadcasting, theatre etc."
(1)
"Personality characteristics include imagination, disorder, idealism,
irrationalism and impracticality." (2)
SOCIAL:
"...careers (such as) lecturing, teaching, health professions and
therapies, marketing and sales, leisure and tourism, event management,
psychologist, psychiatric case worker, HR or personnel manager, legal
careers, speech therapist, counselling, advice and welfare work,
charity and fundraising." (1)
"Personality characteristics include sociability, friendly,
cooperation and understanding." (2)
ENTERPRISING:
"...management, public relations, financial planner, estate agent,
stockbroker, investment and pensions management, some legal work,
finance management, sales and marketing, buying and procurement, or
setting up your own business or consultancy." (1)
"Personality characteristics include self-confidence, ambition, energy
and domination." (2)
CONVENTIONAL:
"...accountancy, bookkeeping, budget analysis, business programming,
finance and administration, IT and computer related work, data
management and research, quality control and testing." (1)
"prefers rule-regulated, orderly, unambiguous activities. Personality
characteristics include conforming, efficiency, practicality,
unimaginative, and inflexibility." (2)
[For a more comprehensive list of careers for each category, visit
Holland Codes article at Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Codes )]
No one is so simple to have only one of the six characteristics, or
even only one dominant. In fact, most people have all of them, and
normally two or three are dominant, typically -- and preferably --
compatible. However, some people have incompatible dominant
characteristics, what usually becomes a challenge to overcome.
Dr. Holland arranged the six categories in a hexagon
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HollandHexagon.png ) -- one for
each triangle within the hexagon -- so that contiguous categories are
best compatible, and compatibility decreases as the categories grow
farther. Ultimately, categories opposing each other in the hexagon are
the least compatibles. Thus, if you fill each of the hexagon's inner
triangles in clockwise direction with each category in the order
listed above (RIASEC), you'll visualize that the most compatible
combinations are: Realistic-Investigative; Investigative-Artistic;
Artistic-Social; Social-Enterprising; Enterprising-Conventional, and
Conventional-Realistic. Conversely, the most incompatible combinations
are Realistic-Social; Investigative-Enterprising, and
Artistic-Conventional.
The only way to rigorously determine one's dominant characteristics is
taking a Holland-type test. You can access the one available at The
Career Key website (http://www.careerkey.org/asp/your_personality/take_test.asp)
for a $7.95 fee, or else the one at The Self-Directed Search ( ) for
$9.95. (There might be others -- these are the ones I've found.) Also,
at the abovementioned Occupational Interests page
(http://www.uclan.ac.uk/facs/class/cfe/eggs/occupationalinterests.htm
) at the University of Central Lancashire's Centre for Employability,
there is a short version that you can perform manually -- I prepared a
rudimentary automation of it on an Excel spreadsheet that you can find
at http://h1.ripway.com/mirarki/Holland_Test.xls
Now, following your thorough description of your characteristics, I
could make a guess that in no way can be taken as an actual assessment
of your type of personality -- rather as a supposed approximation,
ultimately fictional -- to orientate your further thinking over.
However, I would suggest that you TAKE THE TEST BEFORE CONTINUE
READING, to avoid being influenced by my suppositions when you do.
------------------------------------------------------
Well, whether you decided to take the test first or not, these are my thoughts:
You said that you're very attached to familiarity in your job, and
that often your attempts to engage in a change end by throwing you
off. Also, you seem to be a very meticulous person, who cares about
details and likes to address issues orderly and methodically. That
would suggest that you might have a strong Conventional component in
your personality. On the other hand, you seemingly need to have your
curiosity stimulated, and once you feel sated of a subject, it loses
interest for you, and starts to bore you. You find improving your
understanding of the world gratifying (history, economics). And
rationality seems to be your preferred approach for comprehension,
rather than intuition. That would point to an Investigative component
of your personality -- thus, I'd say that your two dominant
characteristics are Conventional and Investigative.
According to this, you may consider to orient yourself towards
research in any of the fields you expressed interest about, such as
history, science, economics, political science, etc. Even though the
widest job opportunities probably lay on teaching, there is the
possibility of research. You might get to know people with similar
interests and personality features as yours, and join research teams
in the academic world, which tend to be more smoothly approachable
than those in the faster-pace, more competitive environment of
business organizations.
Changing a bit the focus, you may think of training yourself as a
writer -- I wasn't thinking about fiction (although one never knows),
but of research journalism, history again. One way of becoming a
writer can be the preparation of a doctoral thesis if you decide to
train yourself in any of the research fields of your interest. At the
same time, writing courses might be a good environment to meet people,
exposing you, yes, but with the mediation of a teacher and a task.
Also, you may take advantage of your IT knowledge with a different
approach, by developing one or more websites on subjects of your
interest -- which may very well be the same fields mentioned above.
Chances are that eventually a website provides a decent income, and
also a community builder -- online communities are often a good start
for real life relationships.
Finally, you may also consider -- as a goal in itself or else as a way
to improve your present life at work while you start walking your new
path -- to keep on looking for more challenging tasks in your current
job, and -- without stressing you to an unbearable point -- face an
deal with the expectable and understandable anxieties that doing so
would trigger. It is to overcome this type of obstacles -- whatever
the path you chose, there'll be such -- that I suggest you walk
through changes with the professional assistance of some sort of
therapist.
I believe that you will find this answer helpful, otherwise please let
me know via clarification request. Best of luck in your search for a
change!
Warm regards,
Guillermo |
