Picture this: You are speed dating and you are allowed to talk about anything except your job, would you find yourself intriguing?
What if you couldn't say what you did for a living/ job title, would the rest of your life still be interesting?
A lot of us identify ourselves to our jobs, to our careers. We spend a good 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on the role we are given. We work hard to provide for our families.
Whenever strangers meet us, our first instinct is to shake their hand and introduce ourselves with:
"Hi, my name is X."
Pause. Awkward silence. A presumed question hangs in the air.
And almost automatically, like closing our eyes when we sneeze, we say:
"I'm a JOB TITLE."
Now, imagine for a sec if you couldn't describe yourself with your job title, do you think you will still come across as an interesting person?
This exercise isn't to bash those who deem their work to be everything - I admit that I find myself to be my work (marketing and writing) more than anything else.
If you take that away from me, I don't know who I am.
This exercise is to give people a reminder that it is way too easy to wrap your identity and self-worth just around what you do for a living and forget to live an equally exciting life outside of work.
This isn't to promote the work-life divide. It's to have a net to catch you when you feel that your sense of importance (that is tied to work) isn't going as smoothly. You may fail miserably, you may let others down. It's a gentle reminder that we are who are we are and we shouldn't let anything define us that makes us fragile.
The people we often admire are the ones who work hard and play hard. The ones who are active at sports, travels often, has a loving partner or a creative hobby that they proudly display and work on. They are invested in their work but unphased if it doesn't go their way because they know it doesn't define who they are. They move on. They are a lover of life and not just a lover of work.
Why not you? Why. Not. You?
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I write longer and more detailed articles on behavioral psychology and performance improvement at BenSimBlog.com