Free Your Identity From Your Job
It is easy to let your job become your identity. Especially if you have a title or function that is considered high-status, or you work for a well-known organization. This manifests as “I’m important because I’m Senior Director of Finance!” or “I’m important because I’m a surgeon!” or “I’m important because my company is a nationally broadcast news station!”
American culture and language may be partly to blame for over-identification with work. For example, in French, a guy doesn’t say “I am hungry” because he isn’t the embodiment of hunger. Instead, he says, “J’ai faim”, which more literally translates to “I have hunger.” Wouldn’t it be great if instead of “I am a mechanical engineer”, people thought of their job in terms of “I do mechanical engineering work for a living?”
There would be less annoying egos to deal with and more focus on producing the outcomes that job functions are intended to produce. Haven’t we all been to a party where people ask each other what they do for work and someone puffs out his chest and says “I’m the head of the ______ corporation,” and we think to ourselves, “you might be the head of a company but you’re an ass at this party.”
If you’re taking your identity from work, here are four steps to break free:
Step 1) Stop, just stop using your work email address for your personal correspondence. Using “me@mycompany” for personal use reinforces to you and everyone you email that you are inseparable from your job. I will reblog this point until you stop.
Step 2) Acknowledge to yourself that you are not your job. You are a person who does work in exchange for a paycheck. No matter what title you have, whether you work for yourself or someone else, regardless of your salary and how much or little your role is favored by society; you are still not your job.
When interviewing people about quitting their jobs, many men told me they took their identity from their work. Women often told me they think of themselves first as a mother or wife and then in terms of their work. I dislike all of this because it is taking on identities from factors outside of yourself. If you are your job, what are you when the job goes away? If your reason for existing is your child or spouse, what happens when they turn on you or disappoint you, or you end up living vicariously through them?
You can still be an employee/parent/spouse and be happy and proud of being those things. I hope you are! That is different from getting your sense of self from them.
Step 3) Start defining yourself by your own qualities and attributes. Then repeat the words to yourself, silently or aloud, every single day, until you believe it. For example, “I am a kind, generous person” or “I am strong and resilient”. Your job can’t take your innate characteristics way from you.
Step 4) Have a life outside of work. Spend time with people other than your coworkers. Have a hobby. Participate in a club or organized group. Yes, you spend many of your waking hours at work. Maybe too many. It is said you can tell a person’s priorities by how they spend their time and money. Make your life bigger than your job by caring and participating in activities that have nothing to do with work.
If you need to spend more hours working each week than on any other single activity, you can make your reason for working have more meaning. You’re supporting a family with your salary. You’re learning a skill that will allow you to transition to a better job. You’re saving money so that you will have more choices about work in the future.
And then? Do step number one right now and the repeat steps two through four until you identify yourself by your unique qualities or you die, whichever comes first. C’est tout.
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