Polarity and your career

The significance of polarity is that it can serve as a powerful decision-making tool. It helps you cut through the fog of indecision to reach a new level of clarity. When you look at a decision from the polarities of love and fear, the right decision for you will often become clear. So the whole point of understanding polarity is to make more accurate decisions leading to more desirable results.

Your drive and ambition

Your own position on the polarity spectrum will play a huge part in determining the kind of effort and energy you invest in your career or business. As a general rule, polarized people are far more ambitious and driven than non-polarized people.

A lightworker’s source of motivation is love. The “love conquers all” expression has some truth to it. The more deeply you love, the more you’ll be driven to act. Lightworkers have such infinite stores of love within them that they can’t help but express it. The drive to create and contribute is undeniable. There is a joyful compulsion to give.

A darkworker’s source of motivation is fear. Whereas a lightworker transcends fear by recognizing fear as pure illusion, a darkworker faces his/her fear as if it were a beast to be slain, taming it and using it as fuel. This primal fuel burns as a passionate lust for power, control, and dominance.

When you see someone lacking ambition and drive in their career, it’s a safe bet they haven’t polarized yet. But it’s an equally safe bet they’ll be working for someone who is fairly well polarized.

Deciding to polarize is not remotely easy. It’s one of the biggest decisions you’ll ever make. But you’ll never tap into your deepest levels of drive and ambition until you do. You’ll just remain stuck on the sidelines.

Making intelligent career choices

If you polarize with love, you’ll build a career based on where you can make the best contribution. You’ll want to work where your strengths and talents can be put to use serving the greater good. Your top considerations are service, creativity, and contribution, and you’ll evaluate your career choices based on how well they meet those criteria. Things like salary, job title, and benefits are still relevant, but they’re only important to the degree they enhance your ability to serve.

If you polarize with fear, you’ll build a career based on acquiring money, status, and power. Recognition and advancement are extremely important. You want to climb the ladder of success as far as you can go. If you end up contributing along the way, so be it, but that isn’t your primary concern. Making a contribution is only relevant to the extent it increases your power.

Your polarity will affect your major career decisions. Certain industries have polarity leanings, as do individual companies. I saw both ends of the spectrum in the computer gaming industry. On the one hand, there were some highly creative developers who were truly working for the sheer joy of creation. And on the other hand, I met executives who couldn’t care less about their company’s products or employees and just wanted to sell lots of units. Internally conflicted companies usually don’t perform well. The companies I saw do best were those where there was either a company-wide focus on sales or a company-wide focus on producing quality products. In both cases it’s essential that these companies avoided the traps of lightworker syndrome (going broke creating) and darkworker syndrome (imploding from excessive selfishness). I’ll explain these concepts later in this article, so keep reading.

You might think that a balanced mindset is more effective than a polarized one, but it just doesn’t work that way in the real world. The singular focus of polarity produces better results. A service-based company will still pay attention to sales and profits, but the purpose is to expand it’s creative output. A profit-driven company will still put effort into its creative output, but only to the extent those efforts increase profits. Both companies can be very successful, but they’ll operate with very different value systems.

Your polarity will determine what kind of company will be best for you. It would be torturous for a lightworker to work in a fear-polarized company as well as for a darkworker to work in a love-polarized one. You’ll learn a lot working for a highly polarized company, but for long term career enjoyment, it’s important to choose a company that matches your own alignment.

You might find it enlightening to rate your previous employers on a scale of -10 (fear) to +10 (love). Then rate yourself on that same scale, and consider your experiences in light of those ratings. Do the same for your current employer. Does this give you more clarity about whether you need a career change? Do the same for the industries you’ve worked in. Do you need an industry change?

Dealing with others

Now use that same -10 to +10 scale to rate your co-workers and associates. Which polarity is most predominant in your work environment? Do these polarity ratings give you new insights into the nature of your professional relationships?

Knowing someone’s polarity leanings can make your working relationships go much more smoothly. For instance, if you know someone is a -6, you must appeal to that person’s self interest to motivate him/her. Offer that person more power, recognition, rewards, money, etc. and you’ll see some good work and cooperation. These incentives won’t work as well on a +6 person though. With a +6 you’ll want to emphasize the opportunity for creative work and show how this person will be making a positive difference in the world.

Recently I was reading a passage from an author who’s written more than a dozen books. He stated very plainly, “It’s all about the money.” And his books reflect it, with many upsell offers in every chapter. This author is writing to maximize profits, and he’s shamelessly open about it. I had lunch with him a few months ago, and he really walks his talk. He’s wealthy, successful, energetic, motivated, and happy. His alignment is working for him because he embraces it.

You needn’t fear a darkworker if you understand how that polarity works. The nice thing about darkworkers is that you always know where you stand with them. You know you’re only in their life because they think they can gain something from associating with you. For this reason I’m more inclined to trust a darkworker than someone who isn’t polarized. With someone who hasn’t polarized yet, you never know where you stand. They’re internally conflicted, so their behavior is inconsistent and harder to predict. But with a darkworker, you know you’re on solid ground as long as you’re feeding their self-interest. So it’s a fairly safe relationship as long as you maintain the ability to help them get what they want.

Similarly, I love interacting with lightworkers for the same reason. You know where you stand with them. You just need to align yourself with their desire to create and contribute.

Now with respect to your own career, ask yourself these two questions: