One of the most striking current phenomena: Many people are resigning from jobs they have held for a while and are pursuing different careers.
This has been referred to as “The Great Resignation.” Or perhaps more appropriately, “The Great Reprioritization.” This isn’t the first time in history that people have thought about continuing their current direction or pursuing a different one.
We are sometimes forced to do so, for example, if we lose our job. Decisions about life direction include whether we want to go to college or stay in college, whether we want to major in child studies, psychology, English, engineering, or something very different.
Beyond that, there are relationships, where we want to live, our values, goals, and many other things when reflecting on our future. But how do we decide on our plans? Research on identity formation provides several insights.
If you want a short answer about where you or someone you know stands with their plans, ask them how committed they are to their current life path and whether they’ve been thinking about (or explored) their plans.
You can classify people based on their high or low levels of commitment and exploration. This is referred to as the identity status approach. For example, if you wouldn’t be very committed to your job at this very moment and think a lot about alternative jobs or even about going back to college, you’d likely have a combination of low commitment and high exploration. This is referred to as a moratorium status, Three other combinations are possible with this approach, based on combinations of high or low commitment and high or low exploration.
This approach is useful for figuring out where someone is currently in their identity development process. For example, in the current “Great Resignation,” we’d expect a relatively large number of people to be in a moratorium status defined by low commitment and high exploration. That’s interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the details of the process that people go through when deciding their plans. Several comparable approaches have been developed to gain more insight, including the dual-cycle approach,
The two cycles in the dual-cycle approach are the commitment-formation cycle and a commitment-evaluation cycle. If you’re in the commitment-formation cycle, you compare your current life path and plans to alternatives, a process referred to as exploration in breadth,
For example, you go to work every day, you’re never late and never leave early, and get everything done neatly. However, if asked whether your job is important to who you are, the answer might be no, This is because you are in the process of becoming psychologically committed. In the dual-cycle model, you would score high on a dimension called commitment making but low on identification with commitment.
Once your present life direction becomes part of your daily routine, you might stop thinking about alternative life paths and reflect more on how your current direction aligns with your values and goals. If that’s the case, you may have started the in-depth exploration process that is part of the second cycle of identity formation: The commitment-evaluation cycle.
You will have an initial sense of commitment. Then it’s a matter of evaluating whether those commitments are really “you.” If they are, you will be experiencing an increase in the identification with your commitments.
People who score high on identification with commitment are typically those who would immediately reference their job, college major, or refer to their present direction in life in other ways when you ask them to describe themselves.
It may turn out that your commitments aren’t really “you,” as you might find that they don’t align with your values. If that’s the case, you might start looking for alternatives again and reenter the commitment-formation cycle.
Given that new opportunities arise at any point and something like retirement requires a big readjustment, you can probably imagine moving back to the commitment formation cycle. Thus, unlike what has been suggested in the past, identity formation is not restricted to adolescence or young adulthood. It is a lifelong process.
As liberating as it may be to change your direction at any time, it can also be confusing and become unproductive for a while. This can happen within the commitment formation and evaluation cycle, where we partake in ruminative exploration, It’s certainly stressful to be in ruminative exploration, but don’t worry about the worrying: It’s typically just temporary.
It’s important to realize that no position in the identity formation process should be viewed as “good” or “bad.” You can be at a particular stage in your identity development process for various reasons, and you can’t be committed or self-reflective all the time.
Being anywhere in this process can feel weird, stressful, and dissatisfying. However, wherever you are in your identity formation process, you know that you likely won’t be there forever, and it is all just part of an ongoing process of figuring out where you want to and can go with your life.