You Are Not So Smart

296 - Job Therapy - Tessa West

Sep 16, 2024

In a thought-provoking conversation, Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU, dives into the intricate emotions of job satisfaction and how they mirror romantic relationships. She discusses the disconnect between our feelings and the narratives we create about our work, revealing how this often leads to misguided career decisions. Tessa also introduces the concept of 'Job Therapy,' outlining key drivers of job dissatisfaction and offering strategies to regain joy in our professional lives, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic.

55:09

Creator website

Episode guests

Tessa West

AI Summary

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Job dissatisfaction often mirrors romantic relationship struggles, revealing that our emotional experiences can be misleading rationalizations.

The feeling of ambivalence between attachment and dissatisfaction can lead to indecision about staying or leaving a job.

Recent expressions of workplace unhappiness reflect deeper identity crises, indicating a shift towards anthropomorphizing careers similar to romantic failures.

Deep dives

Assessing Job Satisfaction

Many people experience feelings of dissatisfaction with their jobs, often questioning their happiness and considering career changes. These sentiments can stem from numerous subtle cues leading to a broader sense of unhappiness that is hard to articulate. Psychologists suggest that our narratives about job dissatisfaction can be misleading, resembling the feelings one might have in troubled romantic relationships. Instead of looking for rational explanations, it’s important to recognize the emotional complexity involved in职场relationships.

Work Dissatisfaction Mirrors Relationship Evaluation

00:49

Assess Your Star Potential

00:26

Navigating Ambivalence in Career Satisfaction

04:08

Intro

5min

Navigating Workplace Emotions

7min

Navigating Workplace Dissatisfaction

7min

Therapy and Critical Thinking: Keys to Personal and Professional Growth

8min

Navigating Job Satisfaction: A Relationship Perspective

29min

Understanding Routine Stressors and Their Impact on Well-Being

3min

A Heartfelt Conclusion and Book Recommendation

3min

Are you unhappy at your job? Are you starting to consider a change of career because of how your current work makes you feel? Do you know why?

According to our guest in this episode, Dr. Tessa West, a psychologist at NYU, if you are currently contemplating whether you want to do the work that you do everyday you should know that although this feeling is common, psychologists who study this sort of thing have discovered that our narratives for why we feel this way are often just rationalizations and justifications.

In fact, it turns out that the way we psychologically evaluate the jobs we think we might not want to do anymore is nearly identical to how we evaluate romantic relationships we feel like we might no longer want to be a part of. The feelings are usually undeniable, but our explanations for why we feel the way we feel can be wildly inaccurate, and because of that, our resulting behavior can be, let’s say, sub-optimal. We sometimes stay far longer than we should or make knee-jerk decisions we later regret or commit to terrible mistakes that could have been avoided.

David McRaney’s Twitter