Hey Reader! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

Welcome to spring! While it may officially be spring, here in Ottawa, it isn’t feeling like it. Brrr. 🥶

On the plus side, with the shift to Daylight Savings Time, it now feels like there’s a ‘bonus’ hour in the day, with it staying light out much later.

I’ve met a lot of people whose identity is so wrapped up in work, it’s like work is the entire reason for them to get out of bed in the morning.

That’s dangerous.

Let’s briefly explore why that is and how you might change it.

Let’s dive in!

Tim

What You Do Isn’t Who You Are: How To Change Your Identity

Who are you?

Do you talk about what you do for a living when you answer that question? When most people introduce themselves to someone they don’t know, they often use their job to express who they are. Work is that fundamental for many people, playing a massive role in defining who they are.

But attaching too much value to your work can be dangerous.

For one thing, if you intertwine an excessive proportion of your identity with your professional life, it exposes you to risk. What if something goes wrong at work, like if you were to lose your job? Or even something less catastrophic, but still important, like leading a project that doesn’t go well? If your identity is too tightly bound up in your work, a setback at work can be devastating to your sense of self-worth. Failures at work can completely upend your perspective on who you are.

Also, it is easy to become so attached to the identity that you’ve built in your career that it becomes difficult to imagine yourself in a different role, doing something completely different. This limits you and can keep you stuck.

Here’s the key takeaway for today; your identity is not fixed. You can (and should!) intentionally change it. Dr. Benjamin Hardy talks about this idea extensively in his book Personality is Permanent, which I highly recommend reading if you’re seeking to transform yourself.

It is natural that your identity changes over time, as your interests, values, and life circumstances change.

This feels counter-intuitive. Chances are that you believe that in 10 years’ time, you’ll be a very similar person to who you are today. This is a known bias called the ‘End of History Illusion’. This cognitive bias leads you to believe that while you’ve changed a lot in the past, you will not change much in the future. Essentially, because of this cognitive bias, people radically underestimate how much their tastes, values, and personalities will evolve. But in looking back at your lived experience, you’ll notice that you certainly aren’t the same person you were in the past.

It’s important to understand that changing your identity is not about becoming someone else. Rather, it’s about allowing yourself to become more fully who you are. It’s about letting go of the aspects of your identity that no longer serve you and embracing those that align with your true self.

If you aren’t sure of what aspects of yourself you’d like to change, a great place to start is to identify as someone that values self-reflection and introspection. Once you reflect on what you’re thinking and feeling, you’ll get clarity on what aspects of your life are working well for you, and which aren’t.

Here’s an exercise you can do to help with this:

🤔 A Moment for Reflection: Five Years Forward

Imagine it’s five years from today. You’ve successfully grown and transformed in ways that are deeply satisfying to you. Now, take a moment to reflect and jot down your thoughts on the following questions:

Who are you in five years? Consider not just your career, but also your personal life, interests, and how you interact with the world.
What values are you living by? Identify the core values that guide your decisions and behaviours in this future.
What are you most proud of having achieved? Think beyond traditional success metrics to what truly brings you joy and fulfillment.
How do others describe you? Consider the impressions and impacts you have on the people around you.

This exercise is not about setting in stone who you will become, but opening your mind to the possibilities of your growth and evolution. By visualizing a future version of yourself, you create a space to explore the changes you could embrace now to make that vision a reality.

Once you’ve determined the general direction of what you want your new identity to be, you need to solidify it. It’s not enough to tell yourself a story about who you are; you need to act in alignment with that new identity, rather than acting in alignment with your former self. Psychologists call this ‘self-signalling’, meaning that your actions signal back to you who you are. You judge and measure yourself by your actions. If you change your behaviour, your identity will follow suit.

Your change in behaviour needs to be consistent for the shift in identity to work, which is why it is important to start small. You can imagine an identity that is radically different from who you are today, but the specific action you decide to take to move you towards that new identity should be something that you can commit to taking action on every day.

Dream big, but take small, consistent steps towards it.

Changing your identity is one of the first steps to making any meaningful change in your career or life.

Who will you decide to become?

Reply to let me know what you decide.

Quotation that I have been pondering

I love this idea from Ryan Holiday.

“Dreams are great. They are also burdens, crucibles that can feel at times like nightmares.”

Ryan challenges the notion that dreams are nothing but inspiration and motivation, pointing to the fact that they come with demands on us.

The term “crucibles” implies intense and often painful testing or trials. When dreams are pursued, they can lead to unexpected difficulties and challenges, sometimes feeling like “nightmares.” Yet, it’s through these challenges that we grow and learn.

It’s a great reminder that there is no easy path, just the path you chose to walk.

Journal Prompt

I heard a saying that resonated with me: “Success leaves clues.” While what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another, there is some truth to this saying. You’ll need to experiment and find what works for you, but you can figure out how to get started by examining what others have done.

That idea leads to a useful prompt for reflection:

“Who can I learn from?”

It can be someone that you know “in real life”, but it can also be someone you’ve read about or whose content you follow. By paying attention to how others have succeeded in a domain you’re interested in, you’ll uncover clues about how you might approach something similar.

Stand on the shoulders of those who’ve gone before you.

Call to Adventure

Let’s be honest – it can be a real challenge to navigate the complexities of the modern work environment. Whether you’re feeling stuck in a job that no longer fulfills you or yearning to explore new horizons but unsure where to begin, you’re not alone.

I specialize in empowering people just like you to redefine your relationship with work and craft your job in a way that makes work something that works for you.

Imagine waking up excited for what the day holds, knowing your work is an extension of the life you want to be living, rather than something you need to force yourself to do. In our personal 1-on-1 strategy session, we’ll uncover the first steps toward making this vision a reality.

Don’t let another day pass feeling handcuffed to a job that doesn’t work for you anymore.

Book 1-on-1 strategy call