Archetypes and Your Career Development

Claudio Pardo Molina, Constantin Popa

• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781071549902
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

In your work experience you have come to the conclusion that values and ancient wisdom have become more necessary today than ever. A large part of the current problems come from ethical problems that are drawn from the past and from the depth of the contradictions of the human being.
Claudio Molina's book tries to bring to present ancient wisdom both from the east and the west. Hoping that this knowledge can help us answer these endless self-existence doubts. Where do we come from? Who are we? Where do we go?

Introduction to the monomyth

This book will use the monomyth theory developed by Joseph Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" as a way to develop parts of our personality that we have not released and that could prevent us from developing our full potential in our professional career.

Campbell's theory assumes that all the myths of humanity have a similar structure where we are gradually being accompanied by various archetypes.

The term archetype^[1] etymologically comes from the Greek and has several meanings "source, principle, or model." To be more specific, a Jungian archetype^[2], belonging to the psychologist Carl Jung, refers to a construct proposed by him to explain all those dream images and fantasies that correlate with special similarity to universal motif. These belong to religions, myths, legends, etc. which are basic constituents of the collective unconscious.

An interesting aspect about these personality models is that they have been applied currently in various psychological tests to understand, for example, the leadership style that we can have. The psychologist William Moulton^[3] developed the DISC test (Dominance, Influence, Submission, and Compliance) to understand the leadership style that dominates our relationship with others and is still applied today in the selection of executives for positions of high responsibility.

My contribution in this book is my firm belief that despite having a certain DISC profile that dominates our leadership style, we will be able to grow professionally if we are able to think of experiences that we have lived where we have had to apply other sides of our personality. Perhaps the reader is surprised to read that I am inviting him to examine his own life to grow professionally. However, this reflection must be done using the path taken by the journey of the hero with a thousand faces. We will discover that we have at least twelve archetypes that have appeared with more or less power in our past experiences.

For this reason, the structure of this book will consist of four chapters. The first chapter will present the 12 types of leadership of the DISC personality test, as well as the axes that group it. The second describes the apprentice's departure. The third exposes the initiation process that the hero must live. Finally, the fourth chapter describes the return to career development.

It is important to use these archetypes in our career development^[4] because "Personal development includes activities that improve awareness and identity, promote the development of personal skills and ones own potential, contribute to building human capital and facilitate employability, improve quality of life, and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. ”

From the people I have met, I think those I admire the most are those who are able to act in the same way they think, even if it differs diametrically from them. This is because I consider it very difficult to maintain coherence between feeling, thinking, speaking and acting. Many times, I observe how we contradict ourselves between what we say and do, because our behavior consists of what we think or feel. I totally agree with James Allen who tells us that our character is the sum of all our thoughts.

The interesting thing about assuming that our thoughts determine our character is that if we were able to dominate our thoughts to decide the archetype with which we must think and, therefore, act, we could solve a large number of our problems and develop our career in a better way. By this I do not mean to say that we have to be hypocritical or fake, but that I consider it an option the fact of thinking about our own past experiences where these various archetypes emerged from within us (or in our dreams) to point out how to act even against those atavistic phrases such as "I am like this and so what".

The collective unconscious is inside all of us. In this unconscious state of mind there are at least 12 invisible seeds of thought that can come out at any time. That is why I honestly believe that we can have spontaneous reactions, however, the intention of this book is that we cultivate the seeds of thought that allow the most useful seeds to sprout in those moments that are so necessary.

The myth, although it does not have a unique or universally accepted definition, is used as in the sense of Joseph Campbell, that is, the myth is characterized by symbolizing the Man. In other words, the myth is a story that structures reality from a symbolic language, which allows people to be guided and gives them meaning in the world they live. I want to use it in this direction, not in order to understand what the myth is, but to use it to our advantage and, therefore, be better professionals and better people.

I think that the myth appears to us very often in our own dreams, like images that are repeated throughout humanity. For instance, in these dreams we are chased by a wolf; we feel ashamed for standing naked in front of an unknown public; or we can fly like a Hollywood superhero. As I want to explain in this book, the myth presents archetypes in images that seem irrelevant but that want to communicate enigmatic ideas that often go unnoticed in our daily lives.

Another way in which the myth appears can be seen in the stories that our grandparents tell us, where perhaps they present themselves to us as heroes who emerged from the most inconceivable difficulties to become who they are today. Perhaps the perspective of these stories allows us to realize that these experiences could be the daily bread for all those who belonged to that generation of long-lived, but today they seem almost sacred or as if they were an ideal reality. It is precisely the myth, an ideal model that we must follow.

Now, these actions to follow can be the result of lower or higher thoughts, so we must take care of it thinking, speaking and acting well. Professional development is surrounded by myths of various kinds and not all of them are well-intentioned and the law of cause and effect is almost inevitable in the realm of myth and therefore sooner or later it will express itself in our reality.

Modern literature tends to highlight personality traits of leaders with a certain reputation. But in all these books there is a tendency to affirm the traits that differentiate the personality of the leaders instead of showing experiences where these same characters had to resort to hidden fragments of their personality to solve problems that they did not expect to have. These leaders have not accomplished great projects by chance, but rather as a natural result of a constant and systematic effort of those who let out various archetypes if they dominate their thoughts.

In the opposite direction you will be able to see the indomitable and bestial crowds that have been dominated by vile thoughts and that are generally promoted by television, radio or social ...