Your work can become your identity, especially when high performance and external validation shape how you see yourself.
Over time it becomes harder to separate who you are from what you do…especially when your line of work was never truly right for you, but you stayed in it and made yourself fit the roles.
In this episode, we explore this identity trap, how it forms, and how you can begin to reclaim yourself beyond your work.
Hello and welcome back. Do you remember the real you?
When you take away the pressure, the performance, the mask that gets you through each day. Who is beneath the weight of your work?
When you become the version of you that you think is needed…the one who fits the role, the culture, the people…and now believe that persona is all of you, these questions can feel heavy.
You may find yourself in a line of work that doesn’t fit, yet feel trapped by it. Believing you have no choice but to keep meeting expectations and perform.
This is the psychological identity trap: where you overidentify with your job, making it difficult to separate from it, let alone walk away.
Today, we’ll explore the pressure to stay where you know isn’t right for you and how to begin reclaiming yourself by unlearning one key habit that keeps you disconnected from your true self.
The full transcript is available at theactionwithin.com/7.
When This No Longer Works for You
Falling into a line of work and running with it is not unusual. You are definitely not alone in experiencing this.
But that fact doesn’t take away from how you feel. This inner conflict, the mismatch between you and your work, is personal to you.
It’s now consuming your thoughts when you could be resting. Leaving you drained, and making it harder to show up emotionally with family and friends.
You may also be experiencing physical symptoms linked to your stress.
The truth is you don’t want to give more precious years to work that doesn’t align with who you are. But why does it feel impossible to make the change you want?
Why it’s so Hard to Change
Sometimes, it’s because you aren’t clear on what change you want. And without that clarity, it’s easier to keep going as you are.
Often, it’s the result of unconscious behaviour patterns that keep you in this work. In Episode 5, I spoke about how there is satisfaction in your work, even when you don’t want to be doing it.
These are key drivers of your behaviour and they are important to identify if you want to create real change.
Episode 5 is worth a listen if you haven’t already.
But there’s also a strong chance it’s not only your perception of your work that matters to you.
As humans we are hard wired for validation. We seek it as a means to signal safety and security to confirm what we’re doing is right.
Validation in itself is not a bad thing. It’s a natural part of human nature and plays an important role in work and life.
But validation becomes a problem when it starts to matter more than your own sense of what is right for you, and your ability to trust yourself enough to align with that.
How often have you stood in front of the mirror and asked yourself, “What am I doing? How has it come to this?”
Often, the answer lies in how you talk about yourself. And what you believe that means to others.
When Your Job Becomes Your Identity
When you meet someone new, one of the first things either of you will ask is “What do you do?”
And you reply with “I’m a…” adding your profession or your job title.
From that moment, the position you hold professionally, and what that means in both of your minds, defines the entire interaction. Maintaining that position becomes important.
But you are not just what you do. And yet, it feels like, what you do precedes you.
There may be aspects of prestige, credibility and the recognition that comes with your work that make it feel valuable to stay aligned with it.
And when you have been in this line of work for many years, sometimes decades, it becomes harder to separate from, because it has become your identity.
If you are not in this job, then how would people see you?
The Cost of Losing Yourself in Your Work
But what if you don’t need to be anything, but yourself? How would that look?
If what comes up when I say this is, “…but I can’t not have a job,” then, this episode is certainly for you.
Because being yourself and having a job and career can co-exist.
It’s when you and your work merge, with no visible boundaries between the two, that challenges begin to show in how you view yourself and how you value yourself.
This slowly erodes your sense of identity and place in the world.
Couple this with a career in roles that don’t fit you, and you can find yourself in a complex contradiction. One that requires more conscious effort to shift, and to build new habits that replace the old ones.
When you are driven, hold high standards in your delivery, and like to get things done, you can often find yourself sidelined in your career.
It is here that you can lose your sense of self.
Work comes first and validation from work is prioritised above all else. And you are left with little energy for anything outside of it.
I too lost myself.
I overworked to prove I was capable. I gave up my free time because I believed work mattered more than rest, and more than connection with family and friends.
I put myself into positions I didn’t actually want because I thought it would be well received.
I wasn’t living. The pressure I felt became tied to the credibility of the roles I held.
Working in health felt incredibly important and certainly more important than what I had done before. It met a deep drive in me to serve.
I made myself believe this work was right for me. And in doing so, I gave up on myself to make it work.
Now your circumstances will be unique, and your experience of this will be true to you.
But if there is a void where you should stand because of your work, then it’s time to start reclaiming yourself within the pressures of what you do.
Turning Back Towards Yourself
Walking away from your work outright is unlikely to help you, unless you’ve already planned financially for an exit.
And even if you could walk away you right now, you would still need to do the work to free your mind from the hold your career has on your identity.
What works well as a first step in these circumstances is to begin turning your focus back toward yourself, and away from external validation.
That ingrained practice of constantly looking outward for validation needs to be retrained, so that internal validation comes first.
When you start showing up for yourself, even in small ways, it helps you reconnect with your true self, separate from your work identity, and begin to build trust in yourself again.
How you speak about yourself is one way that you signal to yourself, and to others, that there is more to you than your work.
That separation is important in rebuilding a stronger sense of self.
Oscar Wilde’s famous quote “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” rings true here.
It’s easy to forget that you can be yourself, and that who you are is already enough.
This is where you start to see yourself more clearly.
Reclaim Who You Are
To start with there is a simple practice to help bring your attention back to what brings you joy.
Ask yourself, “What do you love to do?”
Take your time with this. Let it become a stream of thoughts rather than a quick answer.
Keep going deeper by asking yourself “What is it about that, that I love?”
Explore and notice what comes up. You’ve likely spent a long time engaging in activities you don’t actually love. It takes time to remember what you do love.
Once you start to identify specific, tangible things you love to do, allow yourself to pause with it. Notice it.
There is something powerful in remembering a part of you long forgotten.
To take this one step further, and to allow more of these parts of you to show up in your life, we return to something I mentioned earlier.
It’s a practice that helps reinforce, personally, that there are things you love outside of your paid work. That you are more than your role.
So when someone asks you “What do you do?” notice the automatic response to lead with your job title.
Instead, try experimenting with a different approach. Share something you love to do first, something that reflects you: a hobby, a creative interest, a collection, an ambition, whatever feels true.
This doesn’t mean avoiding the question. You can still share your profession, just share it later in the conversation, as part of the picture rather than making it the whole of you.
By opening this way, you begin to give yourself permission to be seen beyond your role. And gently loosen the automatic identity you’ve attached to your work.
And as a side effect, it often creates more interesting, human conversations.
You may also want to give the opportunity to share with others by asking them “What do you love to do?”
Starting to Lead with Yourself
With this deep dive exercise and simple reframing, you can start to lead with you first.
It’s a small step, but one that starts to build the habit of internal validation coming first.
I outline four more practices that can help you uncover the real you in my free guide 4 Secrets to Know Yourself and Own Your True Ambition available at TheActionWithin.com. Grab a copy if you haven’t done so already.
Enjoy your rediscovery.