The biggest risk to defining yourself by your job is what happens when it gets taken away.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with work. For many years, my job and my identity were closely intertwined. I defined myself by my profession, often introducing myself in new situations with some variation of what I did and creating a blurred line between where Work Tim ended and Not Work Tim began.
All of that was great while it lasted, and then not so great when it fell apart. When I left my full-time job after 15 years at the same company, a part of me assumed I’d be deliriously happy with my newfound freedom.But, surprisingly, the opposite happened. My identity – that is, who I thought I was and how I projected myself to the world – was so interconnected with the work I did that it took me a few years to delicately reset it back to a healthy state.
It’s common to use your profession to help carve out your place in the world, but there’s a lot or problems when it becomes too interwoven. Of course, what you do for a job is an important aspect of who you are, but it should never become your most defining feature. The first is to identity the core values that make you you. I prefer to call these anchors to separate them from corporate values, and they are the attributes that underpin how you view the world.You might change professions, spend time travelling or take time out of the workforce but your anchors will stay the same. One simple exercise to help you find these is to think of a mentor, or someone you admire, and try to define what it is about them that you most want to emulate.
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