The Man Who Mistook His Job for His Life: How to Thrive at Work by Leaving Your Emotional Baggage Behind

by Naomi Shragai

Overview

‘Wise and illuminating... A must read for those who care about the human side of work, which should be all of us.’ Kerry Sulkowicz, President-elect of the American Psychoanalytic Association

The book you wish your boss would read.

You probably don't realize this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behavior we learned while growing up.

Many of us spend eighteen formative years or more living with family and building our personality; but most of us also spend fifty years - or 90,000 hours - in the workplace. With the pull of the familial so strong, we unconsciously re-enact our personal past in our professional present - even when it holds us back.

Through intimate stories, fascinating insights and provocative questions, business psychotherapist Naomi Shragai will transform how you think about yourself and your working life. Based on thirty years of expertise and practice, Shragai will show you that what is holding you back is within your gift to change - and the first step is to realize how you, like the rest of the people you work with, habitually confuse your professional present with your personal past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780753558324
Publisher:	Penguin Random House UK
Publication date:	04/01/2023
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	4.94(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Naomi Shragai graduated from the University of Southern California and completed her training as a systemic psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic, London. She has more than 30 years’ experience as a psychotherapist and family therapist in private practice, as well as working in the NHS and private hospitals. She now specializes in helping businesses and individuals resolve psychological obstacles that cause work-related problems.

As a freelance journalist she has written for The Times, The Guardian and since 2008 has been a regular contributor to the Financial Times, where she writes predominately about the psychological aspects of working life. Her appearances on BBC Radio 4 include Four Thought (2012), Letter from America by Alistair Cooke, the 1970s (2014) and The Bottom Line (2019) business program discussing conflicts at work. Her television appearances include Good Morning Britain on ITV. In a previous career, she was a stand-up comic, working on the London comedy circuit as well as making radio and television appearances.

She lives in north-west London. This is her first book.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpts from the Book

While we believe our decisions are driven by rational thoughts, more often than not it is our feelings that are leading us. It is much easier to go by our ‘gut instincts,’ how we feel, than to take the time to think things through carefully. Thinking requires time and effort, and often creates confusion or ambivalence, states of mind we prefer to ignore. Furthermore, our feelings at work have multiple meanings. At one level, we could accept them at face value and allow them to lead us. That is, if we are exhausted, we need to recover; if we are suspicious of a client, perhaps we do need to be more cautious; if we are distraught at not being promoted we might need to work harder. Feelings can be a useful guide, yet they can also mislead. Optimism and desire, for example, can push a project forward but too much can mean signs of dangerous risk are ignored. Pessimism can alert you to potential pitfalls but it can also kill off ideas before they have begun. When we are hijacked by strong feelings it might mean we are operating more in the past than in the present. Being ignored by your manager is perhaps a reason to be upset but if you flip to rage to the extent that you lose all motivation at work, then you need to examine where those feelings originate. The current circumstances might be triggering repressed feelings from the past when you were treated badly or neglected by your parents. In other words, your feelings are misleading you.

Like many psychological traits I discuss in this book, overachieving runs along a continuum of healthy and productive at one end towards destructive at the other. Although where one is on this continuum is influenced by external factors such as one’s profession, the employer and changing societal norms, I believe it is the individual’s internal drives that can send them over the tipping point towards the harmful end. While they may not need more money nor to work so hard, they cannot stop. It is these people I will refer to as neurotic overachievers. Although the compulsion to achieve is common and easy to recognise in investment banking and other elite organisations, it also exists elsewhere. Indeed, anyone who uses achievement to solve a psychological problem to the extent that it harms them, people close to them or their business, is a neurotic over-achiever. Fear of failure is an underlying driving force. Failure implies weakness, a trait they despise and deny in themselves. They believe others would also find their weakness undesirable – who would be interested in a failure? Furthermore, any setback is not simply a failure but has the potential to wipe out all previous achievements. It is when ‘winning’ becomes the sole solution to problems that difficulties arise and this is what separates normal achievers from neurotic ones. Traumatic experiences in early life can leave individuals struggling to regulate their mood. Feeling dreadful as a result of failing, for example, is terrifying if one lacks the ability to overcome this strong emotion. When achieving becomes their sole strategy for easing or regulating such feelings, neurotic overachievers never learn how to tolerate them.

If conflicts led to dangerous or even violent outcomes in your family, any differing of views subsequently might feel threatening. If this describes your family history, think back to how you responded. Did you meet fire with fire, run for cover or attempt to protect the person who was being attacked? Now consider how these experiences influence your response to disputes at work. Do you find yourself playing the same part in your professional life that you had in your family? Perhaps you were the rescuer, the scapegoat or mediator. Do you adopt the same role at work? If the answer is a resounding ‘yes,’ then ask yourself if it is working well for you or not. Here, for instance, is the blueprint that I inherited. My parents were Hungarian immigrants in California. They argued often when I was growing up but only in Hungarian, so the meaning of their rows was a mystery to me. It is often the case in immigrant families that it is the eldest who speaks the parents’ language in order to translate, while the youngest – in this case me – is left out of the loop. So although I hadn’t a clue what they were arguing about, I saw that tempers ran high, as did the volume of their voices. Nothing appeared to improve after an argument – quite the contrary, as I observed their bad moods everyone seemed worse off and retreated to separate rooms. As I was a helpful child, my first approach was to try to understand what was going on. Gathering all my strength, I would stand up, look them both in the eye and demand they speak English. At this point, they would pause, momentarily look towards me in disbelief and then immediately revert to shouting in Hungarian. I eventually gave up. As a result, I came to believe that disagreements quickly escalate and leave everyone worse off, including and especially myself. I was also baffled as to how to resolve them. This undoubtedly influenced my eventual desire to pursue a freelance, self-employed career where I was less likely to be faced with interpersonal conflict. Learning to be objective and reflective, and even welcoming differences of opinion, came only after years of self-analysis and determination.

Editorial Reviews

"Work is emotional. But the foundational fiction of jobs - that they are separate from the people who do them - causes grief and frustration every day. The gift of this book is to help us understand who we are, who our co-workers are, in the round, as flesh and blood, not economic units of production. It can help managers and the managed, bosses and the bossed, to find in work and in each other the humanity and warmth, growth and forgiveness that this crucial part of our lives deserves." —Margaret Heffernan, author, Beyond Measure

‘A Miracle of a book...Captivating... I couldn't put it down. As Carl Jung once warned, "when an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." People would do well to not leave things to fate but have a serious look at this book.’ Manfred Kets de Vries, Professor of Leadership at INSEAD and author of The CEO Whisperer

‘A great book, packed with insights and evocative human stories.’ David Tuckett, Director of UCL’s Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty

'Nobody understands the everyday madness of working life better than Naomi Shragai. This book should be read by everyone who ventures anywhere near an office.' - Lucy Kellaway, author, In Office Hours

From the Publisher