The Story phase
“Get to the chopper” is one of those lines people still imitate to this day from the movie Predator, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s thick Austrian accent.
But Schwarzenegger himself did not like his accent one bit. Early in his acting career, he says, he took English, acting, speech, and accent-removal classes, but he never fully lost it.
In the end, though, his accent worked out well for him. What was seem to be an obstacle eventually became an asset, helping him become the international leading man he became.
But you gotta wonder, why do people have different accents, and why are they so hard to get rid of?
For example, someone grows up speaking Russian, then later learns English. With time, they may become fluent, master the grammar, read complex books, and understand almost everything.
But when they speak, we can usually tell the country or region where they first learned to speak.
Obviously, this is not because they were careless when learning English, nor because they are less intelligent. Their accent somehow survived all their conscious effort to change it.
Even though we do not think much about it, accents have an entire science attached to them. They depend on many things: how sounds are heard, how the mouth learns to move, how we respond to rhythm, and how the brain learns what a language should sound like. Research shows that the age at which someone begins learning a second language strongly affects how native-like their accent becomes, although some people can still achieve native-like pronunciation later in life.
So, learning your first language is more than just learning a bunch of words. It trains the whole system you use to hear and produce language.
So what else in us works like an accent? What else is so hard to change that we should at least be aware of it?
The Structure phase
A lot of research has been done on this, not only on accents, but on the broader idea of plasticity, that is, how much the brain can change after childhood.
The brain is most plastic early in life, but that plasticity does not simply disappear in adulthood. The adult brain can still change its structure, connections, and patterns of activity in response to learning and experience.
So yes, you can still learn to play the violin, even if you did not start at five. It may be bit harder, and you might not be playing arenas in 2 years, but hey, you still have a chance.
Most importantly, this tells us two things:
- The idea that much of self-help tries to promote, that you can become “whoever you want to be,” is not entirely true.
- But it also means that you are not “fixed” as an adult. You can still change and improve, but it’s much easier to do this around something you are already good at than to rebuild yourself from scratch.
To quote Peter Drucker, “Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves—their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.”
So, when you’re choosing a career, you should be careful to look past just “interesting stuff” or what you wish you were good at. Instead, there is a much bigger chance that you will find a well-fitting career if you look for patterns: the kinds of problems you solve well, the conditions in which you do your best work, and the kind of work people repeatedly trust you with.
But unlike your first language or accent, these patterns—your core strengths—can be difficult to recognize. At least at first. Research on self-knowledge suggests that people understand some parts of themselves well but have blind spots in other areas. Sometimes, other people can see what we are really good at when we cannot see it ourselves.
But it is not a waste of time to figure these things out, because you are more likely to enjoy what you do, and do it well, if you put some effort into understanding them.
So, how do you do this?
The Interface
The most practical way—and the easiest—to find your “first language” is by asking, “How do I work?”
- In what ways do you work best?
- Do you process information most effectively by reading it or by hearing others discuss it?
- Do you accomplish the most by working with other people or by working alone?
- Do you perform best while making decisions or while advising others on key matters?
- Are you in top form when things get stressful, or do you function best in a highly predictable environment?
The whole point of this exercise is this: career fit does not come from inventing a new self, nor should it.
It comes from finding the best version of yourself within who you already are.