Keeping Life in Perspective

“Your endeavors sound exciting....something that really makes a lot of sense. I have to keep telling myself that I am not a project manager, but a person who has a job doing managing a project. There's so many more important things going on right now that I need to focus on without thinking my whole life revolves around work.” – Stated by a Good Friend

You are not your job; your job is a mechanism for you to express who you are. Many people lose their “self identity” in their work life. They dedicate more time on getting their work done only to become so involve in their work life that they neglect their personal life development. There are many factors which have created the loss of “self identity”; downsizing, fear of job loss, only mechanism for feedback in life, avoidance of developing their personal circle of friends or the necessity to maintain a certain lifestyle.

Our work becomes the nucleus of all other aspects of our lives. Our personal life activities revolve around our work life. Decisions such as whether we can take a vacation, whether we can attend a play for our child, or whether we can enjoy a dinner with our family at home. All these decision pivot on our job as the nucleus. We need to discern between our perceived requirements at work and the actual requirements. We do need to negotiate between our work requirements and our personal life requirements to develop other areas of our life.

If you were to lose your job today, what would you do? With the constant changes in the corporate world, our job is always vulnerable. The day of the 30 year employment with one employer is very rare. By not keeping their work life in perspective, an individual can become devastated when faced with a lay off or job change. Their work has become their identity. With the disappearance of the job, the identity associated with the job is lost as well. It is like losing a person in your life to death. You proceed through the grieving process; Denial & Shock, Anger, Bargaining, Guilt, Depression, etc; Only to waste critical time to move on to the next phase in life. They bumble around not knowing what to do when given the opportunity to look for a new position and utilize their new found availability of time.

Until we realize our work life is only part of who we are and not our entire identity, we are headed for an imbalance in our Total Life Balance. Our work or job position easily becomes our identity within our societal norms. “I’m a Director of Marketing.” “I’m a Computer Engineer.” When in fact, we are individual doing the job of Marketing Director or Computer Engineering. Instead we should say, “I am doing the job of ____, the job is part of who I am and not me in my entirety”

Our true “Self Identity” incorporates your work performance as well as your personal achievement and your overall health and wellbeing. Your “Self Identity” is an individual multi-talented in the area of Marketing, parenting, community involvement, runner/athlete and supportive friend or sibling. An overall balanced approach where one is not the dominant over the other.