Your career cannot outgrow your character

There are two insights worth taking from the story you are about to read. One is in it. The other is not.

In a Taoist story famously recounted by Alan Watts, a Chinese farmer’s horse runs away.

“How unfortunate,” the villagers say.

“Maybe,” the farmer says.

The horse returns with three wild horses. “How fortunate,” the villagers say.

“Maybe,” the farmer says.

His son breaks his leg trying to tame one of them. “How unfortunate,” the villagers say.

“Maybe,” the farmer says.

The army comes and conscripts all the young men in the village, passing over the son with the broken leg.

“How fortunate,” the villagers say.

“Maybe,” the farmer says.

The first insight is about time; the timeframe from which you view an event defines how you perceive it, whether it is good or bad. A setback now is not the same when viewed against everything that follows. Neither is a moment of triumph that, in retrospect, turns out to have taken you in the wrong direction.

The second insight is not in the story at all. It is in what is absent from it: There is no comparison to the people around him.

The pieces fall into place later

Life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards. In other words, you need experience to understand the lessons of experience, because life reveals itself slowly.

The lessons you are learning right now, however unjust they might feel, may set in motion a chain of events that only bloom a decade later.

In retrospect, you realize that if that one thing, many years ago, had not occurred, you would never have become who you are.

This is equally true for the positive as it is for the negative.

Once you become comfortable in your own skin, the comparison to others becomes irrelevant. The success of others becomes a neutral observation, something you can even rejoice about

An early promotion or a windfall might not turn out to be the blessing it seemed to be at the time. For all you know, you might find yourself reminiscing over the hard-earned lessons you learned from a strict manager that you did not like at the time but then find yourself passing those same lessons to the very people you one day lead.

Vanity at work

The truth about comparison is simple but hard to accept: We suffer most from comparison to our peers.

When you view your situation separately and subjectively, in isolation from your colleagues or your peers, it feels manageable. But once you put it into the context of what someone else might have or might be earning, their position or their salary, it might make you question yourself.

And yet the change in your situation is effectively just an optical illusion. You are comparing your interior to someone’s exterior and that comparison is not fair at all.

Beneath the varnish of any of the portraits of the people you have created in your mind, there is a hidden reality, a much more complex one. As soon as you begin talking to anyone, successful or not, you find out that they have their uneasy burdens to carry too, ones they keep hidden from the outer world, and understandably so.

It is easy to view the highlight reel of social media as an accurate depiction of reality, but it is really just a stop motion film of presentable moments. The unseen truth is that there is a lot of secrets left on the cutting room floor.

What finally changes how you perceive yourself in relation to others is the moment you realize that the supposedly little victories in your own life are not so little at all.

Once you become comfortable in your own skin, the comparison to others becomes irrelevant. The success of others becomes a neutral observation, something you can even rejoice about.

And with that comes a question worth sitting with: what if you are already a success, but the measuring stick is wrong?

You will be exposed

Impostor syndrome is a common sentiment. Sometimes it is completely unwarranted.

Sometimes it is just a sign of being where you are supposed to be — the growth zone — and that discomfort makes you question your abilities.

Sometimes, however, it is a genuine realization that you are covering up a gap that you know exists —  in your skillset, or in your character — and that you should address.

Eventually that gap will come to light. As always, it is better to face it willingly and head on, but sometimes that realization is too painful to admit, so you postpone dealing with it until a decisive moment arrives, such as being passed on an opportunity that you were considered for.

Sometimes it is the reverse order: you get the position or the title before you completely fill the shoes, and that is natural, but that gap needs to be filled.

The longer it goes unaddressed the more costly it becomes.

You will find out that gaps in your skillset or character are not things you can outrun or avoid indefinitely. In fact, if you are really honest, you are probably already paying a price for those gaps.

While it is true that there is a clear distinction between what is personal and what is business, there are parallels to be drawn between all interactions a human being faces. The same can be said about the habits that a person has whether inside the workplace or outside of it.

We can only be one person ultimately, and that person needs to be congruent, balanced.

Forget everything and run

Growth is uncomfortable by nature. The instinct is to run from that discomfort. But the discomfort is often the signal that something important is happening.

Wisdom is knowing the difference between discomfort that is building you and a situation that has become genuinely untenable.

Muhammad Ali said: “I only count the sit-ups that hurt, because they are the only ones that count.”

The process of training hard leads to becoming stronger. Ultimately, the goal in the short term is to win momentum towards progress and growth.

Factoring in setbacks, the trend should remain positive in the long run. Achieving that requires a certain level of stoicism, resilience and patience that most people have to learn.

While you may get away with limiting shortcomings in the short term, your role cannot sustainably be greater than the person you are.

• Bjorn Blomqvist is a Finnish executive search consultant and talent acquisition leader based in Saudi Arabia since 2023, working on senior hiring and the development of local capability in the region.