How Do I Separate My Identity From My Work?
Start by separating what you can do from the value you have simply because you exist. Your performance matters, but it does not set your worth. Notice the belief that makes a slow month feel like a verdict on you, replace that belief with truth, and practice living from security rather than trying to earn it.
An excerpt from the book
From Welcome to Yourself, Chapter 10: How Do I Separate My Identity From My Work?
There are two things that make up how you see yourself, and most high achievers have them hopelessly tangled.
Self-efficacy is the value you find in what you can do. Your skills. Your performance. Your results.
Self-worth is the value you have simply because you exist. Who you are, not what you do. Both matter. Both are part of your identity. But when your worth gets fused to your work, something dangerous happens. Every failure becomes a verdict on who you are. Every slow quarter becomes an identity crisis. And every success becomes a temporary high you have to keep chasing.
This is what I see in so many of my clients. On the outside, their self-efficacy is a 9 or a 10. They're brilliant at what they do. But their self-worth is sitting somewhere under a 5. Other people see them as confident. Inside, there's a quiet insecurity.
And here's how that connects to the lie at the center of this book. If your worth comes from your work, then of course success has to cost you everything. You can't stop striving, because stopping would mean finding out what you're worth without it. Peace feels dangerous. Rest feels like falling behind. The striving isn't really about success. It's about survival.
Let me give you a picture.
Imagine I hand you a crisp dollar bill. What's it worth? A dollar.
Now I fold it in half. What's it worth? Still a dollar.
I fold it again. And again. I crumple it into a ball. I step on it. I spit on it. What's it worth?
Still one dollar. Some of us have been folded up ten times, crumpled, stepped on. Some of us did the crumpling ourselves. But nothing that has happened to you, and nothing you've done or failed to do, changes your value. Your worth was set before you ever accomplished anything, by the one who made you.
When your worth is secure, your work gets free. You can take risks, because failure isn't fatal to your identity. You can rest, because rest doesn't threaten who you are. You can succeed without it consuming you, because success isn't what's holding you together.
Security in who you are. Purpose in what you do. That's the order.
What to take with you
- Self-efficacy concerns what you can do; self-worth concerns who you are.
- A setback at work is not a measurement of your human value.
- Notice the belief beneath the reaction, then remove it and replace it with truth.
- Practice awareness, acceptance, action, and accountability with someone safe.
Start with the chapter that speaks to you.
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