Echo Chamber Image

Defining the Echo Chamber

The Echo Chamber Defined

Echo Chamber:  Defined metaphorically as the effect of career and life-based questions that "echo" within an individual. The questions are seemingly unanswered, lacking purpose, focus, or definition.

The questions that develop around the What, Where, When, and How all feed into the construct of the Echo Chamber.  They do not appear in any sequence or in linear fashion.  Attempts to answer one set of questions, leads to asking a series of the other questions in the Echo Chamber.  Answers can emerge to these questions at different times and randomly for the individual.  Most of the time, this is a lengthy and frustrating process.  Other times, these questions and answers can be quickly addressed and answered with ease and clear definition.  Regardless of the timing or sequence of which they are asked and answered, it is the "echo" effect of these questions bouncing around in the chamber of the mind and soul that can create confusion, frustration, and lack of clarity.  First, I'll walk through the model and clarify further with some key insights and actions.

Generally, the questions around career seem to start with the What.  Focus on the specific job type, role in the company, title, position, and department, all drive a series of questions around one's identity in the specific job the individual should pursue.
  
As answers emerge to the questions around the What, these begin to echo with questions around Where one should pursue this great task in their career.  This could be a named company or firm, the specific location in which it is located, or the city one would like to live and pursue this job or career.  All feed into the attempt to answer the question around Where to perform the job or career.
  
When questions come is soon thereafter.  These questions represent a higher degree of risk taking, anxiety, and challenge.  Other implications to these questions inform the essence of timing and pursuit.  Typical questions: When should I consider making this move to the other company, job, or city?  Should I wait for the bonus or go ahead and take the leap now?  Would another year of experience in the current role help in making this change?

Once questions around the What, Where, and When have started to take shape, facts are gathered, and decisions are starting to take hold, the How of moving forward becomes central to the Echo Chamber.   Typical questions:  How will I make this move?  Will this move or career fulfill What I'm seeking in my next step?  How will my family respond this change?  How will my Father-in-law react to this move?  Now that I'm in this new job, How can I perform better?  Informed answers to these questions provide the basis, along with others, around the final decisions one makes in the ultimate pursuit of the What.
At some point in the Echo Chamber, the answers to the many questions become sufficient for action and/or movement in the career or life.  Once situated in the new role, job, company, city, lifestyle, or the decision that has been made, the questions begin again at some point echoing in the mind of the individual.  The Echo Chamber is an infinite loop of questions and decisions that can leave one temporarily satisfied only to lead to the same unsatisfied place earlier when they entered the Echo Chamber earlier.

On the outside of the Echo Chamber, there are some very powerful pressures that push on the walls of our questions and answers that we seek in the process.  For example, we might seek a legitimate change in career and work but we have some very real pressures financially forcing, or seemingly forcing us to remain in our current position or role regardless of how much we seek the change.  It is important to note that while some of these pressures may lie outside our control, most of these have been created or dictated by us.  What seems to be a permanent constraint or situation, is generally something we self imposed or that with some sacrifice or change in lifestyle could be altered to support the direction we pursue.  A good example of this is debt.  We might want to pursue a new job that is more fulfilling and meaningful only to find that our lifestyle and debt requires our full focus and sacrifice.

Other pressures are the expectations that others impose on us and that we choose to listen to our detriment.  So many times I've heard people say they want to make a certain job change or pursue a profession, only to then state that a certain person (Dad, Mom, Teacher, Friend, Spouse, Boss) thinks that it would be a good idea or a bad idea to pursue that stated goal.  Conversely we might also have expectations of ourselves because we always thought that we'd be good at a certain thing or job and at some point started to believe it as a truth when deep down we really do know that there is a very different path we feel called to walk in our life.  

A very real set of constraints or pressures can also provide tremendous pressure on the Echo Chamber for us.  I think of situations like people who have special needs children, aging parents, sick spouses, and many other wide range of very real issues that are out of the control of the individual.  While they may want to pursue or feel the calling to something different, the path that they walk each day is in full sacrifice and dedication to the needs of someone else.  Talk about pressure on the Echo Chamber!  It doesn't get much harder than that in asking and answering these questions. 

Enter the Why.  Many of the questions that are asked in the Echo Chamber require one to first address Why they want to do what they do.  It is a much harder question to answer.  Mainly due to the fact that the answer does not lie in the Echo Chamber.  Regardless of how much money a job will pay, flexibility it offers, lifestyle, perks, positional power, office, you name it, we ultimately come back to Why do we do what we do?  The reality is the Echo Chamber is actually energized by the lack of asking and answering the Why question first.  At some point, we realize that we are not defined or driven within the Echo Chamber.
  
There is much written about the Why.  There are countless resources out there to help understand one's spiritual gifts, your passion, your mission, or calling.  I like to think of this as the point in which your deepest passions and strengths intersect with the worlds greatest needs and hunger for Why you do what you do.  More on this later; however, going through the challenging process of truly identifying and crystalizing your Why is one of the hardest and most soul searching processes you can go through in life.  

Which leads us to Who.  As we consider our Why, we have to address Who.  To have a calling requires a caller.  To have a mission requires a missioner.  Imagine an army unit with a mission and no missioner.  It is impossible to do so.  The mission requires a missioner.  Therefore, realizing our Why is informed and first answered in Who do I have my calling?  What gifts have been given to me to exercise for the great needs in the world?  Where did these gifts come from and who bestowed them?  Have I acknowledged the missioner in my life and submitted to that which I've been called?  Regardless of when we ultimately ask these questions, it will ultimately rest in the fact that we have submitted and recognized that higher power who has called us for a specific purpose.

Now that we have asked In Who am I called, our Why becomes informed from our Missioner.  That mission or our Why must be brought into the center of the Echo Chamber as a form of integration with the questions that we ask around life and our careers.  The integration of the Why into these questions brings clarity to our questions and centers our answers in a much deeper and richer meaning and context.  The Why becomes the filter for the questions and answers we seek within the Echo Chamber.  Decisions based on these answers now answer to a higher calling, caller, and purpose.  

Stepping back and looking at the model of the Echo Chamber, we can see that the focus at the top with the Echo Chamber are questions that help us answer the broader question of how do I make a living?  As you move through the Why and Who questions we see the answers to our question of how do I make a life become more clear in all that we do each and every day.  It is so easy to confuse the activity of a job, the promotions that we seek and obtain, the pay increase, the better house, schools, cars, and titles as being the most important thing.  We know these things leave us unfulfilled and yet we seemingly go after them more aggressively going through life.  Only by recognizing that which we are called to do and in service of the Who that called us do we see the fulfillment and meaning in life that we so desperately seek.

Another key point illustrated in the model is the tension between the earthly and the eternal in terms of timing.  The questions that we seek answers to in the Echo Chamber are based on an earthly timeline.  What job, Where you do that job, When, and How all are based on answering these questions with an earthly timetable.  Questions around the Who are certainly Eternal or timeless.  It has been said that we all have our Why in us from the moment we are conceived.  Life is about uncovering that which lies deep within us, called out and experienced every day as we move through life.  It is our awareness, trust, revelation, and self understanding of that which lies within that we seek as we grow and mature in life.

The fact that the Echo Chamber answers questions in earthly timing and the Who questions are answered eternally, that leads to some very interesting friction in our lives.  Our Why sits somewhere in the middle, informed from an eternal source with Who and pulled into an earthly context within the Echo Chamber.  We always want answers immediately to our big questions in life.   Our frustration grows when we find ourselves continuously unsatisfied with the next job or move only to find that we still seek answers to our Why and in Who.  This tension in timing is only resolved when we die to ourselves and recognized the missioner who has given us our mission or our Why.  Only then do we have the true integration and ability to bring this into an earthly timetable and into our Echo Chamber of questions which we so desperately seek to answer.

Putting it together

My favorite question I love to ask after reading something like this is, "So What?"  So I ask it to you.  "So What?"  Like me, you've most likely read many books like this before in your life and career.  You might have even heard elements of this advice from a mentor, friend, or loved one along the way The question becomes what do you do with this?  I've seen that one of the greatest distractions for me has been in answering the Why and Who questions has not been in challenges and distress (although I've certainly had those) but in my successes.  I get so focused on seeing the progress in the career, the next big thing, the promotion, the pay raise, the list goes on, that I fail to really step away and ask the questions that I have captured in this blog.

There are many resources out there that can help you find your strengths, skills, personality tests, spiritual gifts.  I'm guessing you most likely even have a few of them already within arm’s reach of this book.  So if you are like me, you still are wondering why those same questions still echo in your mind and heart. I hope this book has been helpful in framing the right questions for you in your journey.   

The real hard part and work begins with stepping out of the Echo Chamber and asking your Why and In Who?  Sometimes this requires coaching, counseling, advise, discussion and reflection with a spouse, or other forms of reflection.  Regardless of how you do this, it is important that you start by becoming significantly aware of the true reality of where you stand currently and those deep under currents pulling you from a distance deep within your soul.  

Let me leave you with this.  I have found my wife of many wonderful years to be one of the best life counselor's available to me.  She knows how to pick her shots.  The one question that she asked me one morning as I was leaving to go to work was a real zinger.  Still lying in bed on a dark winter's morning she asked, "When are you going to start using your gifts as a leader, teacher, and writer for God's glory and not just for work?"  I was stunned.  First, this is some great timing.  It's a normal work day week and this is your parting comment for my day?  After the shock of the question, I told her I loved her and walked out the door.  Shock turned to being just slightly ticked off at the question.  Why would she dare ask such a question?  I can tell you that this question has stayed with me and will stay with me till the day I die.  This blog is one of many attempts in answering this question.  Sharing it with you is another - and so it goes. 

So perhaps there are people around you that can also help in this journey.  You need to engage them with some honest questions.  Listen to what they say.  Some of it will make you mad, mostly  it will be true.  Some of it will confirm what you know already.  Dig into it and ask clarifying questions to what they say.  You'll know the truth about you when you hear it.  Keep and open heart and mind to the feedback and answers to these questions.  If you are not willing to face the honest answers as you work through this experience, then who will?