Is your identity wrapped around your job?

Rethinking how you self-identify and introduce yourself

When someone asks you “tell me about yourself” or “what do you do?”, the most common answer you hear is their job title or what they do for work. How many of us have identified ourselves solely based on our careers? How would you identify yourself if you didn’t answer that question with your job title? What labels or details would you share instead? Who would you be?

… And to get you thinking some more: Who would you want to be?

That’s not something I’m suggesting you do, but knowing myself, I had to separate and distance myself from what I’ve completely wrapped my life around in order to discover who I truly am and who I actually wanted to be.

During those first few months after I shed my previous role, company, and industry all at once, it was challenging to answer that question when I would meet someone new. So who was I then? I had to come up with a whole explanation of why I left my job and what I’m doing instead at that time. Some people were excited for me, cheered me on, and wanted to hear more about my adventures. Some people gave me quizzical looks, grilled me, and then I had to justify why I’m not searching for another job. I even had someone try to “fix” my life in a 15-min conversation because he thought he had all the answers I needed. (I cut the conversation short... Thanks but no thanks.)

Ultimately, the problem was that I had my whole identity wrapped around my job, and my self worth tied closely to what I did in my career. When I stepped away from that, I had to shift how I saw myself. First, I had some guilt, shame, doubts, and fears come up. I felt like I didn’t live up to societal or cultural expectations, because I was different and took a less taken path. Then I went into confusion and justification mode trying to figure out what to say about myself, so I could still sound like a good contributing member of society. I was worried about what people thought of…

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