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Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. Today we're gonna talk about how to strip your identity away from your job because it is a bigger problem than I think a lot of people even realize it is. I think some of you might realize that your identity is fully wrapped up in your job, but I don't think a lot of people understand how deeply it is. And so I wanna talk about one first, like what the problem is and what I want you to start doing in order to start separating that self-worth that so many of us are taught to put into our jobs and start being able to find it in other things so that if your job goes away, if you wanna change it, you don't have this really big psychological barrier that keeps a lot of people stuck.
So here's the thing. I don't think people understand how much of our self-worth is caught in our jobs. We are taught from a very young age that your entire self worth is based in how quote unquote successful you are. This is why so many of us have deep issues with failing, with trying things new because we see that success and failure. It's not just, oh, I tried something and it didn't work. It's I'm a failure, right? And so we have this, I'm a success or I'm a failure depending on what I do. And then obviously like I don't have to tell you, society has created random meanings, random connotations with certain professions. So certain professions are seen as more prestigious, they're seen as harder to get into, harder to attain, and so they become more lucrative. But with it comes also this character, I don't know, attachment, I don't know what the word is.
But basically you are conferred some beliefs by society about the type of person you must be because you are that, I'm sure you kind of understand this already, like when I say a teacher, what do you think? Right? Even though there's millions of teachers and they all have different personalities and they all show up likely differently in their different skill levels. Like when I say I'm a teacher, you likely are thinking like, oh, I'm a nurturing person. I'm caring, I like to give back. I love children. I must love children. I'm likely patient, right? Those traits are conferred onto that profession. And so for anybody that goes in that profession, whether you want those traits or not, you sort of by proxy get it. And so I think for a lot of us, we have these heuristics. The way that our brain is made is that it has to create shortcuts, right?
When I hear the word teacher, I can't reinvent it every time. Be like, what's a teacher? What does a teacher do? I would never get anything done if every time I heard a word it was the first time you start creating shortcuts. Like, oh, this means that, right? And everything I've learned growing up also gets kind of stereotyped in that I know like stereotypes have a bad connotation, but they actually just make life easier to live. 'cause if we didn't have it, we'd have to discover everything new for the first time. We create all these shortcuts, like, okay, if I have this, it's generally more likely than not that it is X, Y, and Z, that this is also a part of it, right? You start kind of creating these connotations meanings around words. We do this with everything obviously, right? But specifically with professions as well.
We have all learned what a certain profession means in our society. So we just talked about teachers. If I say I am a doctor, what comes to your mind? Like just think of the words, the adjectives and stuff that you might think. I guarantee you that a lot of them are very similar to other people's minds. You might think smart, like intelligent, hardworking, caring, right? It's another caring profession. Somebody that cares about people, wants to like heal people. There's certain traits that come along with being a doctor, being a lawyer. What comes to mind? Now you might have a lot of various thoughts. It might be smart, it might be disciplined, it might also be ruthless, it might be power hungry. I don't know. You might have other thoughts about that, but you get what I'm saying, that by labeling yourself as something you are not just conferring When someone says, what do you do?
And I say X, it's not just that thing, it's everything that comes with that, right? It's all of the connotations that come with that. And if that thing has been determined by society to be valuable, which by the way is completely made up, like why is being a lawyer prestigious? I don't know. We've made up our own language that, you know, excludes other people from doing their own contracts. But like when you think about it, somebody being able to read contracts or certain papers, like why is that in society? You know, why have we decided that somehow make somebody smart or something or prestigious? But we have, so we've made up these rules about what certain things mean. I mean, might be bad connotations like power hungry, whether bad or good. Like you might think with a teacher, you might consider that they aren't paid that much, right?
If someone says they're a teacher, the thoughts you might have about their income or their lifestyle is going to likely be stereotypical of what you think a teacher makes. Same thing with a lawyer, which is like so funny 'cause I think people think like lawyers make all this money and I think 80% of lawyers don't make more than a hundred thousand dollars. Like they make less than a hundred thousand dollars or something like that. Some like insane stat. So again, not that the stereotypes are right, but that they are there. And so I think for a lot of us, when we have grown up in this paradigm of success failure and you have to work towards, you know, whatever it is that you picked to work towards, you also picked it thinking of those traits, right? Maybe you wanted to do the job, but you understood what it inferred about you in order to, let's say if you were gonna be a vet or you were gonna be a nurse, or you're gonna be, you know, in the military or whatever, it means something.
And for a lot of us, we work really hard to get to where we are and we, you know, get that quote unquote success and it becomes reinforced every time we tell people what we do. And in our culture, what's the first question people ask you? What is the first question that anybody says is, what do you do? Hi, I am soso, what do you do? I'm a lawyer. What do you do? Uh, and so you have practiced saying that and I think when you have never not had to say it, I don't know if this makes sense, but when you've only, like obviously you're in school and whatnot, like when you're a student, you say you're a student. But if you've only ever had an answer ready, like you've worked all the time, you've never really had it, you know times where you haven't worked or you don't know what you're doing, you don't realize how uncomfortable that question is jarring.
It could be to ask people what they do when they are trying to figure it out, when they are doing something where it's sort of maybe even looked down upon or you know, I'll give you my example in a minute, but how uncomfortable that question can be. I think when you have never had that, you think it's just like a very innocuous, like kind of just getting to know someone like oh, what do you do? But it conjures up so many thoughts. And so for a lot of us, when we have been able to say like, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor, I'm a teacher, I'm an engineer, I'm a software UX designer, whatnot. Each time it solidifies these neural pathways that you have that confer what you think that other things person thinks about you. And so when you have to leave that, a lot of it becomes really hard for a lot of us because it's like, well what?
Who am I if I'm not this person? This has now become a part of my identity. And obviously the longer you work in that field, the more that connection becomes strong and so many people end up feeling stuck, not because of money. Oftentimes it is, you know, let's say you have to stay in the job, but so many people could leave, but they just can't get around this identity of who am I if I'm not this? What am I going to tell people if I'm not this? And I don't think people realize how strong of a motivator that is to stay. How much that keeps people stuck. More than figuring out what I wanna do next. What is the finances? Can I leave? Especially if you are in a profession that is seen by the public as extremely like prestigious or successful, like it becomes even stronger, right?
When I was a lawyer and not for nothing, like my whole life had been really focused around this goal of becoming a lawyer. I had had spent so many years trying to become a lawyer, going to law school, being a lawyer. So a lot of my identity felt like this is all I've thought about for the last 15 years. You know, if I leave this, then who am I? But it wasn't just that I would be lying if I said that I didn't get a dopamine hit every time someone asked me what I did and I said lawyer and I saw the surprise on their face a lot of time that was even more satisfying because at the time I was young, you know, I was like 27, 28, I was a woman. I looked younger than I was. I think like in my late twenties I still looked like I was in my early twenties.
And so I would get a lot of times like a shocking like what? You're a lawyer. And I can't even describe that level of like kind of a dopamine, like feeling successful, feeling accomplished, feeling like, huh, I did this thing that people are impressed with. Instantly I got that validation of like, now they know I'm smart, now they know I'm a hard worker, now they know I'm a badass or whatever else. Silly thing I thought it was. And I remember saying to my husband when I was thinking about leaving, if I'm not a lawyer, then what am I? Which is wild to think about, right? It's wild to think about as if my identity had anything to do with the thing that I did every day. But I truly felt that way. Like I don't know how to answer this question now when people ask me what I do and I remember how panicked I felt of like how am I gonna get them to understand that I'm smart, that I'm still, you know, I don't know, impressive or whatnot.
Like I so desperately wanted people to think that about me, that I was willing to stay in a profession that I hated, that I was very miserable in so that other people had a diff like a, you know, positive impression of what I was doing. Now add on to that. Like, I mean this was a couple of years between that, but like I remember when I wanted to become a coach, my God, like think about the mental hurdles I had to jump because my brain was like, wait, we're gonna tell people we're a coach now because there's a different connotation with that and it's not that great, right? And I had to really sit with what does this mean about my identity? If I tell people I'm a life coach, I still struggle with this by the way. I like people's reaction with life coach.
You don't get the instant dopamine hit of oh you're so smart or whatnot. You get much different reactions. I mean to your face. People are lovely usually, but you know, I know what people think. I know what I thought. And so I was definitely had a lot of thoughts about that. And so I know that a lot of people that I coach also struggle with this, right? People that have been doctors for a lot of years that have been professors that have worked their way up through academia that have been engineers. And it's like there is a lot of status that is conferred onto you because of that title. And we mistakenly think that is who we are. And it's not to say that you don't have those traits you do, whether you are in that profession or not. If you're smart enough to be a doctor, you are smart whether you are a doctor or not, right?
That's just like your intellectual ability. If you were a hard worker and you could work insane hours to become a surgeon, you are still a hard worker whether you're a surgeon or not. But we don't have this shortcut of everybody kind of being on board and understanding that. And when I was a lawyer and I was quitting, I was gonna take a year off. And I'm embarrassed to say this, by the way. I feel like we should talk about it 'cause people don't talk about it enough in society. But I was really terrified to tell people that I was staying at home with my kids because there was this connotation not just about being a stay at home mom, but about being a woman that had been in this really prestigious field that was really hard for women to kind of climb. And then leaving that to quote unquote just be a stay-at-home mom.
I had so much messaging in law school in the legal community about how terrible it was for so many women to leave. I had somebody say during law school that like if you planned on staying home with your kids, then you were wasting a space because it was a prestigious law school that someone else could take. There's so much messaging behind it, right? There was so much of, am I just this quote unquote person? What does this make me? What does my identity, am I just this mother now? Am I just this whatever? And I really struggled hard when people would ask me after I left what I did for a living, I would go into this like diatribe, I would go into this long-winded explanation of everything that I've ever done in my life. Just so they had an understanding that like, no, I used to be a lawyer because like I wanted them to see me in a certain way.
And that's what a lot of this identity is around. I want you to get really clear on that. It's not about what you feel, it's our fear of what are other people gonna think about us, right? What are other people gonna think that I couldn't hack it? Are other people gonna think I'm not smart enough? Are other people gonna think I'm not good enough? Are other people gonna think that I'm a failure? It's wild to me how many people stay in professions that they're miserable in that they're on like antidepressants, anti-anxiety, having, you know, panic attacks, suicidal. Like we have a very high suicide rate in both law in the, in the medical industry and a lot of these industries. And it's not to say that's the only reason people stay, but I do think that for so many of us, we have worked so hard to be that quote unquote success and we think that success is us. And if I don't have that, then who am I? Then I'm not successful. And I can't explain to you how important it is to do this work, regardless of if you feel super strong about that identity or not. We all have these identities around things that are not who we are at our core.
And one easy way for you to think about it is who are you if it is not in relation to anybody else. So I am a mother, that is not my entire identity. It cannot be right. God forbid if something happens to my children or if I didn't have children, I wouldn't cease to exist as a person. It is just a role that I have. I am a wife that is not my identity. And if I classify myself in how I can serve other people, whether that's in my job and how I serve people as a lawyer or as a coach, or as an entrepreneur, or as I serve people, as a daughter, as a friend, as a, a wife, a mother, right? It's always in relation to other people. I'm not saying that our community ties are not important. They are. And it's not to say that does not help you kind of figure out what your identity is, what your values are. It's not to say that it has nothing to do with it. I'm just saying conceptually think about it. If these ties did not exist, if I didn't have to work, who do I become? It's not that I no longer exist, it's not that I don't have traits anymore. Who am I if I'm not working in relation to somebody else? And you have to get really clear on that. And that is one of the hardest questions to answer because most of us never sit with it for even a second.
Most of us are never taught to even ask ourselves that. Who am I if it is not in relation to other people, if I'm not serving other people, especially for women, by the way, because women have been taught by the patriarchy from when we are born that our only value, our only worth comes in how we can serve other people. Our only worth is in, you know, men that find us desirable or the work we can put in as mothers, the work we can put in as wives or you know, whatever it might be. And so you have to do the work to separate that. And part of the way that is interesting is to really think about the people that love you. What do they love about you?
I'm not saying that they don't love anything that you can do for them. So like this is a tricky one, but it isn't what you're doing for them. Most of your friends, your family, yes, part of it might be that you're caring, right? And that might be part of your quality that people love about you. But there are things that within each of our personalities that people are drawn to. Whether you, maybe you're funny, maybe you're creative, maybe you make everyday kind of feel really spontaneous and unique. Maybe you have an infectious amount of energy and you make people happy around you. Um, maybe you're really thoughtful and you really take time to kind of learn things and dissect them and come up with really interesting kind of observations about the world. Maybe you're an incredible listener and you help people really feel seen. Maybe you are a great talker and you entertain people or whatnot.
Like you get it. Like we all have these personality traits that is the essence of who you are. And it's fascinating as a mother now like to look at my children and observe this because obviously like I love my children, irrespective of what they can do for me. It's not that they do something that makes me love them, right? It's simply for who they are. And what's fascinating is I don't love them because they are successful at something. I don't love them because they are good at sports or, or you know, whatever. I will love them regardless of what they do or what they accomplish. And what is really fascinating is that, and I think if you know have children or even are around children, you kind of see they have very distinct personalities from when they are born. They have very distinct personalities of who they are, of how they interact with the world and how they see the world and how they move through the world.
And it's so fascinating for me to watch and there's so much to love about it, right? In their approach to things, in their demeanor, in the, their reactions, in the way they see the world and what excites them and how they show that excitement. All of those things make me love them more. Make me love like that unique personality. Like my daughter is so different from my son and I know as they grow, those parts of their personalities are gonna grow. That is their identity. It is not a clean box where you can say, this person is X and that person is Y. That's not how identity works. That's not how your worth works. You are a hundred percent worthy simply by being born. It doesn't change all of a sudden as you get older, it doesn't change to say, well, if you have a better job, then all of a sudden you're more worthy, right?
Imagine if you did this with children. You're like, you're in a preschool class and that kid draws a little better so they're a little more worthy of love than the other kids. It's so absurd, right? Obviously all the kids are equal amounts of worth. Same thing with adults. Just not, oh, once you turn 13, this is the cutoff. 15, maybe. Now you are only worthy if you are successful in sports or you get good grades. You got into that college, or you got into that grad school. Now all that is made up. And again, you may understand this intellectually, like when I say this, you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Of course we're all worthy. But there's one thing to intellectually understand something and there's another thing to emotionally understand it within yourself, and society's not gonna do it for you, okay?
Other people are gonna think, oh, that CEO that makes all this money is rich. I don't know they're gonna confer something onto that person. Maybe they'll think he is more worthy in some way, or maybe we look at movie stars and they have all the money and the fame and the looks and we think they're better in some way. These are just made up things that we've put onto it and people are gonna do that. But you have to work on stripping that from yourself. You have to work on understanding that like what happens in your job is not a reflection of the worth that you have. It's tasks that you're doing in a day. It's a made up profession that you chose that gets you money that can help you kind of pay your bills. Great. Congratulations, right? It has nothing to do with your worth.
And you have to like sort of learn to remind yourself of that. And I think that it's really important to do this work so that if you wanna change it so that if your profession goes away, so if you get fired so that if you want to try something else, you understand that you leaving a profession does not in any way change who you are, it simply means you are now gonna do different tasks. That's it. But you can only do that if you start stripping away that identity that you have based on that profession. Now again, you can look at those qualities and understand that you still have those qualities. I'm not saying that you have to not think well, you know, even though I'm a lawyer, it doesn't mean that I'm smart. No, I'm not saying that. It means that like regardless of whether you're a lawyer, you're not, you're smart.
Like the values that you think are so important to being a lawyer has nothing to do with being a lawyer. It's just the character traits that you have. You're smart and you're hardworking, and you're persistent, and you're really analytical and you pay attention to details and you think in a way that other people don't think all of that is gonna come with you wherever you go. All of that is still your identity. Now, it's not packaged up in a cute way that you can say it like a cocktail party when someone asks you what you do. Sure. But that doesn't in any way change who you are and how worthy you are and what you can accomplish. And I think that the more you get solid, the more you get grounded in your own self identity, in your own worth as a person outside of the job, the easier it becomes for you to see so much possibility in your life or to see so many different paths because none of them are threatening to your self, worth to your self identity.
None. I'm is saying if you go from being a doctor to a coach or a lawyer to a coach that doesn't in any way make you less worthy, it's simply something that you've chosen to do because it seems more interesting now or it's, you know, being a doctor served something for some part of your life and now you're trying to try something else, try something. I feel like it's one of the core pieces that allows you to try new things that allows you to change your careers and change your identity as you grow. And let yourself evolve because you know that at your core you're not changing who you are, you're just changing the things that you're experimenting with. And so I want you to just spend some time, like I said, like one of the things that you can do is go to the people that you love the most, that you have a safe relationship with, that you feel comfortable asking, and just ask them what they love about you. I promise you they're not gonna say, I love that you're a lawyer. They're going to say the qualities that they love about you. That is who you are.
And start like reminding yourself, even if that's within your profession, that's the thing that you do. I want you to start reminding of yourself of those qualities. Like I want you to see it every day. Yes, I am someone that is thoughtful, I am someone that is genuine. I am someone that cares about other people. I am somebody that is funny, that makes people laugh, that doesn't change with what I'm doing. The more you can see that, the more you can understand that, the easier it becomes to let go of these like random labels, these outside things that we think we need in order to feel good about ourselves. You don't. You get to feel good about yourself just for being the person that you are. I promise you there's so much value in that has nothing to do with your job. I just heard a question that I think is so much better than what do you do?
Somebody was saying like, what are you excited about right now? Or, you know, what are you working on that you love right now? And it might be like outside of work, right? Like it might give people an opportunity to talk about something that is so much more interesting than what they do on the day to day, but that's, you know, for another day, we're not gonna change all of society. So you have to change how you think about it. And the more you do that work, the easier it will become for you to start shifting your identity. And if you want help shifting your identity, I love doing this work and I love helping people to see how much more they are than their job so that they can start figuring out what it is they want to try and that they wanna experiment and not be handcuffed to something because they think that somehow that makes them better or more successful or acceptable to people. So if you want help with that, you can join the Quitter Club, which is my membership, where we do this work day in and day out. We have weekly coaching calls and you'll get the help that you need to kind of change these beliefs that you have about yourself. You can go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club to get on the wait list. We're opening doors soon and I would love it to have you in there. Until then, I'll see you next week for another episode.

Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life, and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.