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I am a strong believer in people’s ability to take agency over their lives. Hence, when I came across the topic of job crafting while working on my Career Management textbook, I fell in love with the concept and its potential to help my students craft their careers. In simple terms, job crafting is a process in which a person actively and purposely redesigns their job and their perception of it to align with core values, interests and strengths.
Why would someone want to craft their job? We spend at least 40 hours per week working. It makes total sense to live these hours in a more meaningful, enjoyable and energizing way. Also, we may love our job but still feel unhappy, unfulfilled or drained due to some of its aspects.
What are some approaches to job crafting?
- Task crafting: We can craft what we do at work daily by taking on a new project, spending more time on the work we enjoy or finding ways to make routine tasks more interesting.
- Relational crafting: We can also craft our relationships with the people we work with by building stronger connections and adjusting how we interact with them.
- Cognitive crafting: We can craft the way we see our job by looking at the bigger picture, focusing on what feels valuable and connecting what we do to who we are and what matters most to us.
Experts suggest that we should craft our jobs to our values, interests and strengths. I fully agree. My recent experience, however, proved that it might be just as crucial to craft our jobs to our limiting beliefs and core wounds.
I am a full-time professor teaching at a college, and I love my job. I enjoy the flexibility and freedom as well as the constant creativity that comes with teaching. I am in awe when I help someone understand a concept they may have struggled with. I enjoy constant self-development. I love being somewhat of a stand-up comedian to keep my audience engaged.
On the surface, it seems like my job is a great fit and there is nothing to craft. So, why do I find myself so emotionally drained and physically exhausted by the end of every term that I start contemplating quitting teaching? As a person responsible for my own life, I started digging. With my therapist digging alongside me, here’s what we uncovered.
Humans are wired for social mirroring. When we communicate with others, we need their signals – eye contact, nods, smiles, posture shifts and shared reactions – to make sense of ourselves and to feel heard and understood. When those signals are present and authentic, we feel connected. When those signals are absent, our brains interpret it as disconnection or rejection. Hence, we get stressed and emotionally drained.
Professors – especially those who teach face-to-face – are exposed to the negative consequences of social mirroring in a big way. For most of us, teaching is connected to a sense of purpose and impact. We come to the classroom with a desire to share our knowledge and make a difference in someone’s life. We bring enthusiasm, curiosity, excitement and humour – and we expect that people around us will mirror our effort and energy.
If we come to a room full of “flat” faces or disengaged expressions, the absence of social mirroring conflicts with our expectations of meaningful connection. So, we overcompensate by pushing harder. We put in more energy with no actual result, which leads to social and emotional depletion.
What I need to do is heal my wound and craft my relationship with students and my perception of their disengagement in class.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not trying to blame students for the way we feel. There are many reasons why students may be disengaged in the classroom. Phones and laptops can easily steal students’ attention, breaking the mirroring loop between them and the professor. Heavy workloads, money-related stress or part-time jobs can leave them tired and emotionally drained. If the content we teach feels too hard, they might shut down; if it’s too easy, they zone out – either way, we see fewer signs of engagement. And sometimes, it’s cultural – in some countries, people are taught to stay neutral in public, so many international students might actually be paying attention even if they don’t look like it.
However, no matter how much we consciously understand why students might be disengaged, we still experience the lack of emotional mirroring.
Adding to my struggle in the classroom, I happen to be the daughter of an emotionally unavailable mother, whose “flat” face was the most frequent reaction to any effort I made to make her happy. The “flat” faces in my classroom don’t only frustrate me as a professor, they make me constantly relive a strongly negative emotional pattern – “I reach out emotionally, and there is no one to meet me.” Situations that recall my mother’s emotional unavailability activate a core wound or limiting belief – “I am alone.”
I cannot tell you how relieved and empowered I felt once I (and my therapist) uncovered the key reason behind my exhaustion. Hurray! I don’t need to quit the job I love. What I need to do is heal my wound and craft my relationship with students and my perception of their disengagement in class.
I’ve tried a few steps so far, and I’m no longer feeling as emotionally tired at the end of my work weeks.
First, I openly communicated to students how professors feel when their students seem disengaged. I don’t try to put responsibility on them, but I want them to see a human at the other side of the classroom.
Second, I try not to allow my past wounds to bleed into my current experiences. I manage my perception of my students’ faces while in the classroom. I remind myself that my students’ faces are not my mother’s face.
Third, I use expressive writing about past and present relationships, emphasizing moments when others did meet me. This helps me rewrite a negative story I used to tell myself and rewire my brain.
This recent experience showed me how important it is to craft my job not only to my values, interests and strengths but also to my limiting beliefs and core wounds. Do you have any thoughts or experiences you would like to share?
