…I heard a fair amount of people saying this. Up until now, I would usually hear it from people past their 40’s- people who have worked for many years in large companies, have developed themselves and reached the point of existential crises. It’s common sense, that from time to time, to question out life’s course, due to some fundamental anxieties. These are tied to the meaning of life and the need to know that you leave something behind; to our loneliness and the need to connect with others, to freedom and the need to control our own destiny, entrepreneurs, to have independence.
However, for some time I have started to hear quite often this “I can not find myself anymore” even form people in their 30’s. And I am wondering what the causes are.
Maybe is because they reach the existential crises faster, maybe some aspects of our bodies have changed, influencing the way we think and feel (for instance, a friend of mine-who is a doctor- told me that women go through big hormonal changes, and these affect their decisions such as: when to start their sex life, whether to have children or the age when menopause occurs etc.).
Maybe it is due to the speed in which things change around us that makes us unwilling to have patience with ourselves and our time.
Perhaps the pressures from this change around us are exerted upon the companies which makes their management ask more from their people; the heavy load that employees carry gets heavier, in addition to the many hours of work, which in return make people burn at both ends, or to reach the “burn out” really quick.
Of course, there are also people who want to do less and to receive more, but I believe and hope that these types of situations are isolated.
However, many of us want to have meaningful contribution, to make something that we are proud of, to have good results, to feel appreciated and to feel proud and pleased at the end of the day.
These complaints of this symptom of “not finding myself” come from the people who work in multinational companies (and honestly speaking there are a lot of them). I have never worked in a multinational firm; however, I collaborated, as a provider, with these types of companies in the last 21 years. I have seen many companies, many situations, many changes. A characteristic of these firms is that they developed their people. And so, if they reached the current level, is also because someone noticed something in them, and invested in them. Due to this, I think it is unfair to have mud thrown at these organizations which sustained their development or to invoke the fact that they cannot find themselves in it.
What I propose when faced with these positions is a change of perspective. I think it is right to have a different assumption of our self and our own decisions.
The bright side, when working in a company -large or small- is that when things do not go according to plan you can shift the blame on others (usually on the manager, strategy, stakeholders etc.) However, when you are by yourself you are unable to blame others. Everything happens because of you.