Lessons From Carl Jung to Figure Out Your Aptitudes
Whenever you need to make a decision in life, be it choosing a career path, a job or when you go through a personal crisis like a family bereavement, it is important to know yourself and to know what your real potential is. Your real potential can be realized when you find something you can do amazingly well with minimum effort on your part.
To find your true calling, the path that can help you realize your aptitude, it is important to get to know yourself very well or, as Carl Jung said, to go through the process of individuation. Individuation is a process of personality transformation, of bringing the subconscious parts of yourself into your personality, becoming a whole.
Carl Jung was a one of the founders of psychoanalysis which is a set of psychological theories and methods aiming to release repressed emotions and experiences. He made huge contributions to the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology and religious studies.
Jung’s philosophy is called “Jungian philosophy” and some of his most important books are: “Psychology of the Unconscious”, “Man and His Symbols”, “The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious”, “Modern Man In Search of a Soul”, “The Psychology of the Transference”, “Memories, Dreams, Thoughts”, “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious.”
Jung’s mentor was the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. However, he split from him, founding his own school of psychology, called analytical psychology. Analytical psychology focuses on the present as well as mythology, folklore, and cultural experiences, with the purpose of integrating the human consciousness.
One of the most important aspects of this analytical psychology which Jung founded is the process of individuation. Jung considered the process of finding the self and realizing your aptitudes as an important task in human development.
To help you understand how to use Jung’s teachings to realize your aptitudes or potential in life, today I bring you 8 lessons you can learn from the philosophy of Carl Jung:
1. Don’t let others define you
“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” - Carl Jung
Jung departed from Freud in many ways. One way was that he didn’t consider that all psychological diseases come from some childhood traumas or that he was not for the concept of Superego — which for Freud represent the voice of conscience, the voice of other people inside ourselves. It is formed in childhood based on what parents and educators told us regarding what is good and what is bad and who we should be.
Jung believed that the internal voice which demands us to behave in one way or another can have many different causes, and is not limited to biological ones or to past events from childhood or teenage years. Jung thought that our behavior is also influenced by future aspirations and by the way we see ourselves.
When we don’t have a realistic and positive outlook of ourselves and of our future, we are weaker, with less resistance to face the possible aggressions from other people or from the environment and these can make us vulnerable to psychological diseases.
The world constantly demands us to be in one way or another and sometimes it gets aggressive with us; testing our limits. So what we need to do is to diminish its voice and increase the voice of our own self. From the moment we’re born, we are somehow forced to copy others, starting even before our school years.
If your Self is weak, then you will listen to them, you will do whatever others demand you to do. However, in time, you will grow bitter, full of resentment and regrets that you didn’t follow your own way of being.
Don’t try to copy anyone, but rather reflect first on what you really value in life, do you value more security or freedom, are you more competitive or collaborative, are you an explorer or do you feel better following a routine schedule and so on.
Don’t pretend to be someone you are not, for example don’t try to force yourself to appear to be outgoing, when in truth you are an introvert. This will only damage you in the long run. You need to always question yourself, who you really are, what your likes and dislikes are, and who you really want to be in the future.
Only after you have been through this introspection, you would know what actions to take and how to impose your will on the world instead of letting the world overwhelm you with its demands.
No matter your age, you should still invest effort in finding your own style, your own voice, your own behavior and your own way to conduct your life.
To live a good life, you need to live a life which represents you. Without knowing what makes you unique, you can’t know what kind of activities you should pursue that can help you reach your true potential.
2. Understand your passions
“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.” - Carl Jung
As one of the founders of psychoanalysis, Jung understood how important it is for his patients to have the courage to face the subconscious elements, which are usually repressed desires — for example, sexual desires or desires to harm somebody else or a desire for performing an activity that can put you in an embarrassing situation. Only when we have this courage to face them, we can heal ourselves from them.
When we run away from what upsets us, what makes us uncomfortable or scares us, that thing will come back to haunt us even worse, affecting our behavior and increasing our anxiety. These subconscious elements usually are related to repressed desires or passions.
We usually repress them because they are either immoral and unacceptable from society’s point of view or they are too overwhelming and we are not able to cope with them at all.
When we have an aloof attitude towards life, when we are passive, reacting slowly to external events, avoiding social contacts, we are usually running away from our passions or, in other words, from strong emotions which affect our behavior, especially when they are repressed.
For example, you might have a passion for communicating with other people, you might have the potential of becoming a great public speaker, but you have a childhood trauma: one adult made fun of you and your way of speaking when you were a child and this event made you fear about opening yourself up to other people and risk being embarrassed again.
The best way to heal from such anxieties and discover your real passions again is to practice more journaling, analyze your dreams, get to know yourself better, be more forgiving with yourself, make time for things you really care for, learn to overcome your fears step by step.
Looking at the given example, you could take some lessons of public speaking and maybe you can discover how talented you are and how unjustified your fear was. Get more in touch with what makes you feel alive and more knowledgeable about the inner workings of your inner passions.
3. Focus on who you want to be
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” - Carl Jung
Although Jung was deeply interested in mythology and even came up with the concept of collective unconscious, which is the part of our unconscious that is common to all human beings, deeply influencing us in many aspects of life without our awareness, he was for a stronger development of our conscious capabilities to decide our own fate.
It is also possible that precisely because of knowing how vulnerable we are to the unconscious elements, Jung emphasized on the importance of choosing who we want to become and integrating all the unconscious elements into this identity, even the components of our immature psyche — for example, some attitudes we got from our childhood, like a constant desire for love and attention or the fear of abandonment.
We need to integrate them over time into a well-functioning whole which is our individuality. This process of integration Jung called individuation.
What defines us is the end goal towards which we aim, this being the well-functioning whole, what we choose to become.
Having a goal regarding the person we wish to become is extremely important for the good functioning of our psyche. If we don’t know who we want to become, how we want to represent ourselves in the face of the world, we will just go with the flow.
One danger in living your life as it comes, without putting your will to work, without putting efforts in thinking through when taking important life decisions, is that you might find yourself in a situation that completely copies a traumatic episode from your past.
When we leave our life to the unconscious driver, it leads us back to something unresolved from early times and it is usually a negative experience that we need to find an answer for.
For example, if you come from a dysfunctional family in which you were neglected or perhaps abused, if you just follow your instincts or your heart in choosing your life partner, you risk ending up in the same type of household, copying the same situation. Following your instincts blindly and not using your reason into taking decisions that prevent you from taking the best decisions in life and from realizing your potential.
The immature element of the psyche in this example is the fear of abandonment and this fear makes you search for the same pattern of dysfunctionality. To overcome this fear, you need to have a clear vision of where you really want to end up, make a clear and rational plan on how to get there and follow through, not giving too much attention to your doubts and fears. Thus, while focusing on who you want to become, you integrate the components of your immature psyche into this new personality who is not afraid anymore.
To avoid being a victim of your fears and of your past, you need to spend more time with yourself, reflect on your past experiences, think what they can teach you, understand that they do not define you, what defines you is who you want to become. Then decide who you really want to become and strive in real life to be that person.
4. Give up your addictions
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism..” - Carl Jung
Addiction is a serious problem, affecting people on many levels, including the biological, social, psychological and even spiritual levels.
Jung encountered many types of patients suffering from addiction, however he saw some similarities between people with real addictions like alcohol, some compulsory gestures and so on and people suffering from idealism.
We sometimes become fixated on some ideal views over life, avoiding to see that reality is completely different than that rosy picture. We just try to find ways to escape facing the real problems of life, of what really hurts us because we don’t feel capable of facing those issues. That is why we find refuge in drugs, alcohol, and idealism.
To maintain our healthy psyche, we need to be in touch with reality, not avoid it. If you don’t like that you are overweight and unsuccessful in life, do not waste your days with narcotics, drugs, alcohol or idealism, but rather have the courage to face reality, make a plan to change the situation, apply more aggressively to jobs, and consistently follow a workout routine.
If you continue to spend your days partially unconscious or stuck in some damaging idealism, you can’t get in touch with your real self, you can’t think of any solution how to get unstuck from the situation you are in and start developing a plan to change your life into a life which better reflects yourself and gives you the chance to realize your potential.
5. Be honest about your capabilities
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” - Carl Jung
As a psychoanalyst, Jung always saw through his patients, no matter what they pretended to be. We are almost never who we pretend to be, what we do speaks for oneself much louder than anything we communicate verbally.
The process of individuation which Jung wrote about implies aligning your actions with your ideal about yourself. We are born with a Self, which needs a lifetime to be brought to a full realization.
At the beginning of life, we are not even sure who we want to be. Jung considered that the first stage of life is dedicated to both ego development and personal development, the image we show to the world. However, we need the second stage as well, the stage when we should reach a full integration of our Self.
In the first stage, you are not even sure who you truly are so you just experiment with different ways of living; one you reach above 40, the second stage begins, and you should get a clear idea of who you really want to be, and so you should align all of your actions with that image of yourself.
Even before this stage, it is always a good practice to keep your word and have a realistic view over your time limits and skills and this view should be formed according to your past experiences. If every time you studied for an exam just the night before and you always got a lousy mark, maybe you should not do that next time if you want better marks.
In the same way, if your boss asked you if you can do this task by tomorrow, don’t rush to say yes, especially if you know you are really not that strong in that area and it would be very likely you need the help of another colleague and that it will take you much longer than a well-practiced expert. If you fail in delivering your promises repeatedly, people will stop trusting you and your words won’t mean anything to them anymore.
It is okay at the beginning of life to overpromise and push your limits to accomplish certain things, but there will be a time in your life when you need to draw some conclusions regarding your limits and you need to align your promises according to those conclusions.
In our journey to reach our potential, it is important to face our limits which can be considered as good indicators to turn around and do other projects instead. It is always better to be honest with yourself first and with others regarding your capabilities. It can help you enormously to find the most appropriate path for you to achieve your potential.
The more honest you are regarding what you can do and what you can’t, the faster you can find those activities which you can excell at with minimum effort, and the faster you can find your way to achieve your potential.
6. Make strengths from your weaknesses
“I regret many follies which sprang from my obstinacy; but without that trait I would not have reached my goal.” - Carl Jung
In his book “Memories, Dream, Reflections”, Jung reflected on his life and how different it could have been if he himself was different.
He considered himself being too obstinate, stubborn, but at the same time he acknowledged that without this stubbornness, he would not have reached such successes in life as he did. In some ways, any weakness can prove to be a strength if it is explored in the right direction.
Perhaps outside the professional world, Jung’s obstinacy was wrongly placed, but in professional life this proved to be the best tool to achieve success. As long as you are going through the individuation process, your life would be for you as it should be.
Jung believed that we all have a kind of destiny which is strongly tied to our personality and we should just follow it wherever it takes us.
The most important thing is to live in harmony with our Self that is in a continuous process of realization. Do not criticize yourself for your weaknesses, but rather think how they can help you in certain areas of your life. Make a list of all the things you are criticized for and of how you can use these bad traits in a useful way and avoid using them where you should not.
For example, let’s say you are a very sensitive person, living more in your imagination and others used to criticize you for your lack of practical skills, that you don’t even know how to fix a common problem in your household. Instead of fighting with yourself, trying to prove others wrong and focusing on upgrading your practical skills, you should turn your focus to your creative side, towards your imagination. Perhaps you can discover that there is a great artist living inside you who just needs the right tools to come out. Perhaps you could be a great painter, a musician, or a great writer.
It is much better to work around your skills and make sure they are directed in the right way than to focus on fixing your weaknesses.
7. Find a connection to the infinite
“The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life.” - Carl Jung
Although Jung liked to be viewed as a man of science, his work has deep metaphysical implications. This is due to the fact that he could see that many of people’s problems could be solved if they were able to add a metaphysical dimension to their life. It can be religion or another type of spirituality.
When our life is understood in the context of something bigger than ourselves, our life gets more meaning and we start to feel more secure and happier, stronger to tackle life’s problems. Even if you are not religious or particularly spiritual, it is recommended by Jung to link your existence to something infinite.
Perhaps you could think about the universe and how everything is connected, coming from the same source, including every human that has and will ever exist. The effort you put into your work, the kindness you show to the humans around you can be reinforced by the thought that you are part of this human species and your life matters. You are one of the millions of forms through which our species evolved and continues to expand.
Looking at all the amazing advancements of human civilizations can leave us amazed and fascinated and we can feel grateful that we are a part of this human civilization. Some people can see the infinite in their faith in God, some in the mysteries of the universe, some can see the infinite in their children, our successors who will continue to expand human civilization.
The infinite can be described as anything which gives you a meaning beyond your time-limited existence. Your connection to this infinite can boost your desire to want to reach your potential here on Earth and give your contribution to human society whatever your primary reason might be, whether that’s religious, spiritual or otherwise.
8. Make time for deep reflections
“You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself.” - Carl Jung
Jung has personally seen solitude as one of the best ways to heal oneself and he even said that solitude makes life worth living. To find happiness and realize our potential, we need to live in harmony with our inner demands and solitude is the best occasion to discover what our inner demands are.
This is especially true when you face difficulties in life and you feel helpless. You should go into solitude to reflect on what can give you meaning in life, what can support you emotionally, and what steps you should take next to realize your true potential.
Maybe a stroll by the lake can make you understand that life’s beauty does not rely on how many bucks you have in your wallet or how many titles you hold, but on the happiness and the state of peace you feel when you have most of your affairs in order, that you perform in life those activities which make you feel happy and fulfilled, helping you realizing your potential.
Think of what activities make you happy. Don’t hold back. Imagine money was no object, what truly makes you happy? Identify that, and you’re now free to stop and think, to find ways to focus your energy on those activities which help you recognize yourself better.
Realizing your potential or aptitude is a journey, and solitude can provide moments of reflections that can help you assess how far you are on this journey and what you should do to advance more.
Thank you for your contribution. Another Shout-out to RAINNA who wrote, using specific metaphysical statements. Thank you both from Robbi K. Mark, SR ED-BOP and Be Open.
