Naomi de Barra: Understanding your brain to craft a fulfilling career

In my role as a Chartered Psychologist, I always like to remind people, “you are you!” We are all different and our brains are unique. Understanding your own motivations, values, and the workings of your mind, can help you craft a career that is both fulfilling and sustainable.

Extrinsic and extrinsic motivations

Understanding what motivates you can improve your enjoyment of work, as well as your performance.

Motivations can be extrinsic (motivated by external factors) or intrinsic (motivated by internal factors). When we understand both, we can balance them to steer our careers in a direction that works best for us.

Examples of extrinsic motivators includes money and recognition from others. When it comes to money, or salary, rarely is it a motivator in and of itself. More often, it is what you want the money for and what it will bring into your life – whether that’s freedom, stability, status or power.

Intrinsic motivations are the things that fill you up just by doing them, such as walking or being outside.

As human beings we often look for external validation, or recognition. It can feel like the only validation that’s worthwhile, but that’s not true. Self-validation is important and can often come from intrinsic motivations.

Ultimately, your extrinsic motivators won’t keep you engaged for long. A career driven solely by factors like status and wealth, will be constantly up and down. What is more likely to keep you engaged is doing what you enjoy, just for the sake of doing it.

An effective approach to career planning can be to take a deep dive into the things that truly matter to you e.g. being outside, working with food, having enough time to spend with family, and making sure they are factored into your decision making, within and without your work. 

Establishing your values as you go

“What do you want to be?” It’s such an interesting question. The question should be, “What makes you happy?” instead. Especially for young people, who have not yet had a chance to explore. Who you are and what you want in your twenties is likely going to be very different to what you want in your forties.

When we talk about careers, we often use subjective terms like ‘meaningful’ or ‘stable’. To establish the kind of career you’d like, you need to question your values and what terms like ‘meaningful’ and ‘stability’ mean to you.

One person might view a meaningful career as one in the charity sector. For another person, it might be working in corporates but staying away from working for cigarette and alcohol companies.

Stability for one might mean being able to afford the mortgage every month but for another, stability might mean having a full fridge every week. Your interpretation of these words is likely to change throughout your life.

As I recently spoke about on The Switch with Gee Foottit, a career change podcast by St James’ Place Financial Adviser Academy, when I started out, I had no idea what I wanted to be. I just knew that I didn’t like the typical educational environment of school as I couldn’t control what I learnt, and I also knew I liked people. Once I knew I could learn about the things I was interested in such as people, soft skills, and the world, I enjoyed learning.

It’s important to continuously establish and reassess your values, desires and motivations as you go, doing this allowed me to follow my interest in people – moving from sales, to management, to organisational psychology.

Befriending imposter syndrome

I truly believe that imposter syndrome can be useful. I think the true imposters are those who “don’t feel it.” Seen through the right lens, imposter syndrome is a vehicle for growth: it helps you to keep learning and accept that you are never a finished product.

When the imposter in me turns up, I thank it and ask it to tell me where I’m going wrong – so I can write it down! If I know, I can find a way to practise what I need or learn about it.

When we fear imposter syndrome and withdraw from it – we stop learning from it, and it ceases to be useful.

Working with other people and realising that everyone has something to learn, really helped me to be able to use imposter syndrome in an effective way. The best managers, and people around you, should make you feel safe to put up your hand and say, “I don’t know.” 

Visualise the environment

Motivation theory is that feeling a sense of progress is a key indicator of motivation. If we can see the impact of our actions, the progress, then we will keep moving forward. 

Progress is most likely going to be seen in an environment that suits who you are – and your skillset.

Our understanding of actual jobs and careers can be limited until we experience what they are like for ourselves. For example, becoming a doctor might appeal to those of you who want to help others but, in practise, the daily tasks of being a doctor but not align with what fulfils you.

You need to be honest about who you are and match that to what’s out there. Envision what a working day would be like within a profession you’re interested in, and whether you would fit naturally into that environment.

Imagine what you would be like in a certain role, so you have a destination in your mind to move towards. At that point, you need to ask yourself what you need to do to get to that career. Question whether it’s really feasible for you.

Knowing the daily tasks of a role can help you fully understand the implications of that role and boost your motivation due to your increased understanding. Understanding the destination, you’re moving towards helps you feel driven to move towards it.

At this point, you also need to consider how you’d get to that destination. What is feasible? For example, you might need further training for your desired role – so how can you make this work? Or perhaps you can step sideways in your current workplace to get closer to your next goal?

Harnessing your personal “flavour”, into a superpower

A huge area of my work is around neurodiversity and helping people to understand their brains from a cognitive perspective. As human beings, we all spend too much time trying to be the same and trying to fit in. But we are all uniquely different. The more we can understand our unique contribution and our own “flavour” – whether we are brain-same (i.e. neurotypical), brain-different (i.e. neurodivergent) – the more we’ll know what we want to contribute and how well we can do it.

Professional support can provide look like cognitive assessments, or workplace assessments. This helps with self-understanding. Strategies and assistive technology can align the brilliant parts of your brain to your working environment to help you get through your day – so you reach your full potential.

For example, for those who have dyslexia, you might choose to verbally record your thoughts to share with others, rather than write them down. It transforms something that could have potentially caused anxiety into a superpower that sets you apart.

In conclusion

To establish a career that is truly fulfilling, you need to take the time to understand your own brain. What matters to you, and what motivates you, will change throughout your life. Regularly ask yourself what the ten things are that you need for daily happiness, and for you to feel as though your career is going in the right direction, for you. Then question how these requirements align with your current job, or a potential job.

These ten things should be reassessed, and can change, as we move through different life stages. But at every stage of life, we should make sure we take the time to recognise, and celebrate, our own unique mindset.