Expand your Identity: Avoid the Sneaky Trap of Successful Careers

Imagine this.

You spent your whole childhood and young adulthood preparing to become a doctor.

Everything chugged along nicely.

Until one day…

Three quarters through your residency, a thought smacks you in the face. “I don’t want to be a doctor anymore.”

For years you spent entire days stuffing as much medical information as you could into your skull space. You told everyone your dreams since preschool. Being a future doctor wasn’t just what you did. It was who you were.

Your identity shatters.

A similar painful identity crisis befalls millions of people, including highly successful people with the jobs society considers most prestigious. They made their whole life about their career, but no longer want to do it. Other people lose their job, retire, or realise they sacrificed more than they wanted to.

Now they have no clue what to do. Whether consciously or subconsciously, they saw their value as nothing more than their profession. They no longer know who they are.

Work takes up such a large portion of our week.“What do you do?” is usually the first question people ask us. Which makes over-investing your entire identity in your career an easy trap.

This trap harms your physical health, happiness, and career. You’re more likely to work too many hours, push yourself too far, and neglect your needs.

You stop taking care of yourself

Overwork causes chronic stress. When you equate yourself with your career, you put so much pressure on yourself your body lives in “fight or flight mode.” High levels of continuous stress hurts your immune system, which makes you more prone to illness. Chronic stress raises your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and gastrointestinal problems. You can even become more vulnerable to alcoholism. 

Exercise and diet are usually the first things to go. Adults need at least 150 minutes of vigorous exercise every week, and lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed whole foods. It reduces stress hormones. Lack of exercise and healthy foods increase the risk of obesity and, therefore, the risks of other health conditions. 

Work concerns invade your nights, which compounds the effects of chronic stress. You struggle to stop thoughts around work. You’re too worried about an upcoming meeting or deadline to fall asleep. Or you stay up late with a heavy workload, so you don’t even try to sleep. This impairs your memory and keeps you exhausted. 

Your happiness nosedives

If you don’t diversify your identity, your mood becomes an extreme roller coaster. Every high and low of your career hits harder. When things go well you feel amazing and invincible. At the same time, any criticism feels like a personal attack. Every setback or mistake feels like a sign you’re a failure.

Humans are social creatures. Working too many hours leaves little time or energy for maintaining current relationships or forming new ones. Many people don’t like talking about only one thing all the time. If you reduce your entire identity to your career there’s nothing else for you to talk about. Even if you ignore loneliness, your brain knows something’s wrong. Your chances for developing depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem increase.

You’re also more likely to ignore burnout. Signs include a negative outlook, cynicism, procrastination, lack of creativity or purpose, irritability, and loss of motivation. Even if deep down you know you’ll be happier doing something else, the thought of a career change paralyzes you. How can you tear down your whole identity?

Your career suffers

Most jobs no longer produce tangible concrete results. It becomes difficult to know when you’ve done enough. And makes it easy to work too much. At the same time, the human brain can only concentrate between 4-6 hours per day. Productivity declines sharply after 50 hours. It plummets so much that working more than 55 hours becomes pointless. But you’re still using energy on this pointless time, instead of reserving it for the next day when you can return to peak productivity.

Focusing on your work as your identity also impairs creativity. You won’t come up with the great insights that propel careers forward. Your brain needs time to rest, daydream, and think about other things. Mind wandering lets your subconscious brain work on problems and incubate ideas behind the scenes. It’s why so many people say they get their best ideas in the shower (and probably why Archimedes famously shouted “eureka!” from his bathtub).

Your career is still an important part of your identity

Your career says a lot about you. It tells people what you value. Your choice reflects your personality. Most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work. So, it still plays an important role in your identity. Your job shouldn’t be an afterthought or disregarded; it should be another way you express yourself.

Balance your career with other aspects of your life

You escape the “you are your job” trap by investing in other areas of your life.

Think about the classic small talk advice:

• F - Family

• O - Occupation

• R - Recreation

• D - Dream

Don’t neglect other relationships. The workaholic father who misses his kids’ childhoods is a sadly common character both in real life and in the media. So is the absent spouse blindsided by divorce papers.

And make some friends outside of your professional circle. Meet people with different occupations (don’t keep only friends with the same or directly related career) and life experiences.

Indulge in hobbies. Most people don’t find careers that fit all their passions. If you don’t have any, try them out first with low risk and low cost. Go to beginner classes for anything that sounds even remotely interesting. Or buy cheap equipment you could sell or pass on if you don’t like an activity. Volunteer or become an activist.

Think about your dreams beyond your career ladder. What do you want for yourself, your family, friends, community, country, the world? Can you do anything to move closer to these dreams? Share causes you believe in.

Make some space. Schedule time where you don’t think about work if you need to. Time to read unrelated books, spend time with family, and work on your hobbies. Even if you’re not religious, you can set aside a day without work.

Add to your identity over time instead of trying to change everything immediately. Try one hobby at a time. Make a few friends at a time.

A job can be fulfilling. Meaningful, a source of passion and happiness. But it should fit into your life, not be your life.