72. Career identity

Our work can sometimes assume our identity but there’s a bit of a problem with that.

Have you ever been

At a party, family gathering, or social event,

And the inevitable question of ‘what do you do for work?’ has been thrown onto you.

Yes of course it has.

Especially in Western culture, we tend to lean towards easy surface-level questions and ultimately, for most people, work takes up the entirety of their lives. We can get very engrossed in the idea that our job is more important than it is. Justifications for sacrifices we make because we make it our identity.

We believe we have to subscribe to a certain set of kind of rules and boundaries over our life.

You’re in a high-end accounting role, you must work 70 hours a week or you are made to feel useless- why?

You’re a minimum wage worker, you must just put your head down and not speak- why?

You're creative, so you must always have lots of ideas- why?

When we acknowledge our jobs, their blueprints, and, parameters they put on us, and yet still accept them- we become clones.

There is another way though.

We must know that we can shift our mindset from career identity to understand that jobs are just a small aspect of who we are as people.

Even even though they provide us with money, take up a lot of our time, and stress us out; they don’t make up our being.

As individuals, we are brilliantly unique; with hobbies, passions and the capacity for lots of ambition (both in work and out)- that is rare to be commonplace in its entirety in a career setting. We mustn’t allow for work to be all we do- or be.

When we accept this truth we can actually do work better, we are no longer a slave to its regime.

This doesn’t give us the excuse to do what we like and get mad at our boss, rather the opposite.

As work does not make up who we are we shouldn't feel the pressure when inevitable stress does arrive. Additionally, we can bring our unique, callings and giftings that have been developed with the rest of our time into work and help the people we do work with.

We are not subscribing to a certain way of living just because our work calls us to. We are putting a new flair to it.

The calling is to be confident in our identity, unshakeable when inevitable issues arise, to bring our best in all areas of life and not just 9-5.