What if professional identity becomes the only way to describe us?
Confucius said: Choose the job you love and you will never work a day in your life.
Far be it from me to contradict Confucius, but it's a good rip-off. For many, their work will also be a life mission, perhaps a passion which, however, will end up absorbing 99% of the time.The risk is that our work will end up permeating all aspects of our lives, erasing the boundaries between work and private life: not only our time, but it will drain all our energies, monopolizing our thoughts.
But how important is work for people?Just try to think about when you know someone: after asking for the name (a name that we tend to forget immediately), what do we ask or are we asked? Exactly! What job do you do?Answer: "I am" followed by the name of the profession.It is more difficult for us to answer with "I do" or "I take care of".
Here, with a single word, we define ourselves: our work becomes our essence, our identity.
Then, depending on the professional field indicated by our interlocutor, we will have a different reaction, it all depends on the scale of values we use and the society in which we are immersed, of course: "I am a doctor", "Wow, you save lives!",it does not matter whether it is a heart surgeon or a coroner, in the common imagination the doctor is not only a prestigious profession but a bearer of profound and altruistic values.
Then there are some figures that we fill with expectations: when we meet a psychologist, for example, we ask him to "read" our character, pouring on him the story of our misfortunes, imagining him halfway between a Zen monk and a gypsy who readscards.
With others workers, on the other hand, we tend to generalize and label them with rigid ways of thinking: for example engineers, all square and not very flexible, computer systems engineers, the classic nerds, community educators, all alternative types with colored trousers, etc. The way we describe a certain category really shapes the thinking and character of those in that category.
Let all this load of meanings linked to our professional identity define us as people in general and guide our choices. We end up, therefore, through our working identity, the prejudices and stereotypes that accompany it, to attribute a certain value to ourselves.
Not true for everyone, of course. It doesn't happen with all professions, but it's a risk we run when the boundaries between professional life and private life are not clear-cut.
After all we spend most of our daily life working. Many people are proud of this mix, they recognize themselves in those values, they have chosen work precisely because the working identity supports and coincides with the personal one. But what happens when professional identity becomes the only way to describe us? What happens if those values are broken, we meet someone who makes us hate what we have chosen as our definition of ourselves? or do we retire or leave that job for a thousand possible reasons?
In the article cited among the sources, they talk about "enmeshment", i.e. the enmeshment between work and personal identities and the consequences of this phenomenon: if we fail at work we become "failed" and we can say goodbye to our self-esteem, with psychological repercussions.
Another consequence is the lack of space and time for other things: we do not give ourselves the possibility of having other interests, playing sports, making friends, living other adventures.
Futher, we end up always and only describing ourselves in a certain way: I'm an electrician, I'm an administrator, etc. and nothing tells us about our working days or our character. Thus, when we present ourselves for a job interview, we are at a loss for words and we struggle to answer the interviews.
Maybe we find ourselves doing a job that has nothing to do with who we are. Our working identity is "confused", not well defined, without purpose, in short"I pay the rent with it".The risk, in this case, is that this leads us to change it often, or to keep it and feel frustrated and stressed. I follow a blogger who goes around with her minivan and works in smart working and, then, where she arrives, she finds some jobs to supplement her income.Even the things she posts are part of her job. In short, she has found a way to integrate work with her lifestyle. The main work does not define it but supports it in achieving other goals.
We'll come back to this rather complicated issue, meanwhile, let's play a game.
Try to think about your job (present or past, if you are not working) and list 5 aspects that characterize it or that are important.
For exemple:
what does it mean to you?and for the others?
Are your values, beliefs and those of the company or the people you work with shared?
What impact does your activity create?
how do you change when you are at work?Try to observe how your body changes when you are working out. Maybe you are more serious, or change the tone of voice, your posture.
what would you NOT do working and do, instead, in everyday life?
Have fun!
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