You are not your job

I’m The Urban Spaceman

Are you over identifying with your job? Or have you in the past?

I’m certainly guilty of the latter.

(Maybe even a bit of the former, although I decide what my ‘job’ is these days and a big part of it is writing this every week. However, the thought of retiring, of stopping and doing other things, is one that fills me with dread. That may or may not be good news to you!).

It’s a common trap. Our social status is often tied to our job. One of the first things someone will ask is ‘what do you do?’. It’s the means by which we survive and also create our life-style, which may involve buying possessions that also signal our social status.

It’s something organisations reinforce because they want you to be as committed as possible to furthering their aims. They judge you negatively if you have other interests, if you are passionate about other aspects of life, especially if you prioritise those aspects over the job (even when that passion is your family).

This has led us to ‘greedy jobs’ becoming more common. Once the preserve of the high-fliers, these are jobs that consume most of your time and energy, which they willingly submitted to in order to achieve their ambitions and gain high status. Today, people have ‘greedy jobs’ at all levels of the organisation, driven by technology and poor management.

You are expected to be available at all hours and respond to messages in an instant (not often explicit but frequently implied). You may be working across time zones and be expected to have part of your working day in the early morning or the evening but still be available during the normal working day. You may need to travel or work weekends. You are expected to handle a huge amount of incoming messages and information, a ceaseless fire-hose of work. If you are a middle manager, you are expected to manage your staff and carry a demanding workload.

Jobs have become all-consuming, at all levels.So if all you do is work, your identity soon becomes your job.

Then your self-worth is tied to it too, which is very dangerous because you have very little control over how your job goes. No matter how hard you work and how good you are at it, you cannot avoid setbacks. These can be due to external factors, from a supplier going bust or pulling out of a deal at the last minute to natural events like a pandemic or economic shocks like Brexit. Internal events can be disastrous for you too, like shifts in strategy, reorganisations or changes in the leadership team.

And, of course, the biggest one - losing your job through no fault of your own. Redundancy becomes much more than just a setback, it becomes an existential crisis, for without your job, who are you?

That was certainly the question I asked myself when I left CorporateLand. I didn’t have an answer because I had lost sight of who I was amongst the hurly-burly of my career.

I saw my mission as getting back to who I used to be, before I got bent out of shape by my experiences in my corporate career.

What I didn’t appreciate is that I also had to heal from the wounds I had received at the same time. These are two aspects of the same process, the process of recovery.

My advice is to avoid over-identifying with your job because it makes you much more vulnerable to harm and makes recovery a more difficult and longer journey.

Like much advice, however, it’s easier said than done.

You Really Got A Hold On Me

One reason is because it against the mood music of our times. We’re supposed to love our jobs, aren’t we? We’re bombarded with memes telling is that ‘If you do what you love, you’ll never work another day in your life”. ‘Finding your passions and loving your job’ is presented as the gateway to health and happiness.

This article by Tessa West, “The big idea: why it’s OK not to love your job”, explains why this is actually a bad idea (and was the inspiration for this week’s missive).

Essentially, she present three reasons why this narrative is so harmful.

Firstly, many of us will never find a job that we love but we will get resentful because we think everyone else has. Secondly, it suggests we will fall in love with our job instantly when, in reality, it takes time and experience to truly appreciate a job. Even then, it will contain some crappy bits and low moments. And thirdly, if you do ‘love your job’ it can consume you and put you at risk of chronic stress and burnout.

What we really need to have is multiple contingencies of self-worth, things you can turn to to feel good about yourself when things are not going so well in your job.

That means maintaining all your hobbies and interests, your social networks, your other ‘passions’ (a much over-used word today, IMHO) in life.

It’s very easy just to let them fall away because of the pressure of ‘the job’, to convince yourself ‘the job’ must come first. Because if it’s your identity, that’s putting you first too, isn’t it? No. This is something you need to resist for your long-term preservation.

I ended up splitting my time between ‘the job’ and my family, something that is pretty common amongst men of my generation. When ‘the job’ disappeared, I still had my family, which I was hugely grateful for. However, it’s not enough. I lacked enough ‘contingencies of self-worth’, sources that I could draw upon to rebuild my self-esteem.

That’s not a trap you want to fall into.

We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place

So how do you avoid it?

As I said before, it’s easier said than done. There’s no simple solution, no one-size-fits-all approach, it’s not a ‘one and done’. It’s multi-faceted and it’s a constant struggle against the forces that are pushing against you.

The first part of any solution is to admit you have a problem. That’s what I’m trying to draw to your attention here. Yes, it’s just sort of happened that way and yes, most other people you know are in the same boat but that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. It most certainly is. ‘Normalised’ is not the same thing as ‘normal’. In the past, smoking was normalised but that didn’t stop it killing you.

So awareness is a key piece of this. Awareness of what is actually happening, and what impacts it can have on you and how it is affecting you right now.

Then you need to decide to do something about it, with the intention of changing the situation. Making that decision is an act of rebellion, of resisting the status quo. Without it, you won’t do the work necessary and you’ll remain stuck, your job slowly sucking the life out of you.

How you change your situation, how you disentangle yourself from your job and create the space for your other ‘contingencies of self-worth’, is something you will have to work our for yourself. It’s a process of trying things out, seeing what happens, learning the lessons and going again. You need to put some boundaries around ‘the job’ and align your life with your values and priorities. That might lead you to some unexpected and surprising conclusions. It may lead to dramatic changes, or it may be more subtle shifts that enable you to be more comfortable in your situation and happier in your life. You really won’t know until you get there.

Developing awareness of yourself is also important here. Some of us are more disposed to over-identifying with our job, more likely to overcommit to an unhealthy degree. It important to understand what our triggers are, what the ‘organisational catnip’ is that draws us into these unhealthy situations. We also need to know what strengths and resources we can use to get us out or that we need to develop to keep us safe.

One thing we absolutely all need to community, people around us who will help and support us or are sharing the journey with us. It’s really hard to do this on your own, whilst helping others is a great way of helping ourselves.

I’m currently thinking of ways to create that community, a place where people can share their stories and their challenges, get help and learn from others. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, drop me a DM or email me (details below).

Walkin’ Back To Happiness

We saw during COVID lockdowns that a lot of people reassessed their relationship with their job. It gave a bit of space and distance for them to look at their life as a whole and they decided that they had been over-identifying with ‘the job’ and allowing it to eat too much of their life.

They had time to pick up their hobbies again, or try new ones. They spent more time with family, friends and community and once again recognise the value in those relationships. They developed their other sources of self-worth and bolstered their self-esteem outside of ‘the job’.

This led some to make drastic changes, moving out of cities, moving back to family, changing career, swapping working days for caring days, pursuing new life goals.

Others made smaller changes, made possible by the adoption of hybrid working. They created boundaries, they decided where ‘the job’ fitted into their life and where it didn’t. They created distance and a little bit of disconnection that reduced their dependence on and identification with ‘the job’.

Across the spectrum, they changed their relationship with the job so that it aligned with their values and served their life goals and priorities, which they had also reappraised and amended (or possibly considered and articulated for the very first time).

They showed that change is not just possible, it’s desirable. They got ‘the job’ into perspective and they have been healthier and happier for it.

Remember, your job won’t love you back. Your company is not your family. You are not your job.

You’re much more powerful and worthy than that.