Do You Really Work Well Under Pressure?
The modern man’s CV is thing of beauty, isn’t it? Among the gems are standard lines like being ‘a team player’, ‘working well under pressure’ and ‘a results-oriented individual’. Quite nice. So, how does this play out in real life?
The duality of modern man is that he has to be an undertaker during the day and the gentle and innocent father to a three year old beautiful girl at home in the evening.
Life is a balancing act and while we may not be expected to take our work home (taking a body to your house to prepare it for burial would be extreme), we do bring traces of ourselves inside our abodes.
Let’s take your personal anthem, labelling yourself as “quick to learn and execute objectives with minimal supervision.”
Is that why we wait until we’re falling apart to go to the hospital? Why are we poorer versions of ourselves away from the workplace? We all know of a man that’s an efficient, surgical killer in the boardroom but can’t wrap his head around taking his own dinner plate to the kitchen after eating.
The average man has a glowing CV that would make him look like the ideal husband, father, son or partner if he has the same attributes at home, in a marriage, in his circle of friends or relationships.
Ultimately, our CVs are not really who we are.
Why do you “work well under pressure” but cannot manage your temperament with the children when they just want to be children? Or when the wife keeps going in and out of stores at the shopping mall and you have to follow her around with a trolley?
Because that’s what life is as a man, isn’t it?
To be constantly challenged by bills, money or the lack of it, aging parents, unresolved childhood traumas, present adult trauma, getting to know our partners, balancing work with adult education, broke landlords and even broker tenants.
You would think we can learn something from ourselves once in a while how we manage to keep a job through sheer hard work, discipline and focus. To be a good colleague that gives and gets in equal measure.
So why does it all fall apart the moment we close our laptops?
Because we’re human and our identity is not tied to the work we do but how we do it. It’s in how we can wait for an invoice or salary with patience the same way we give those in our lives the same grace and time.
You’ll know who you are the day you’re challenged in life to do what your CV says you can do. That’s when you’ll know if you have “critical thinking” during the lows in life.
