Why You Should Start Your Career Frustrated
Everyone knows your first job sucks, but your second should be great, right? Actress Sarah Paulson suggests that it would actually be better if your career started out in frustration and improved over time.
Recently, Sarah Paulson has started to get a lot of leading roles, especially in the popular TV series American Horror Story and People vs. O. J. Simpson. For a long time, however, she was a relatively little-known actress. To prove your point, you probably forgot that she was thewoman in the hologram at the end of Serenity . According to IMDb, she landed the role for over a decade in her career.
Most of us would bristle with the thought that for two decades we will have to do mostly secondary work before we can do the truly amazing job of our dreams. However, Paulson suggests that starting with less will make you feel more significant when you actually get there:
If my career developed like my fantasy of what it should be, it would never make me happy. But I could not know this until it happened. I found success much bigger, deeper and better because it happened later. If something that’s happening to me now — success — happened to me when I was younger, I would be broke. Because when you are young and everything is very easy for you, and you immediately achieve success, you tend to think that this is true. You start to think that you don’t need to be fully prepared or strive for these things to greet you.
You also have the advantage of being forced to work harder. When success comes easy, it is tempting to relax. You are already at the top of your game, why work hard? It may seem exhausting or ungrateful, but if you are struggling early in your career, take it as a positive and let it motivate you to improve rather than being discouraged by temporary “failure.”