After a lifetime spent in the workforce, it’s often hard to separate your true identity from the work identity you have developed as you climbed the corporate ladder.
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This is hardly surprising as so much of our life is linked to our work.
As well as the money our job generates, it has a lot to do with our social life, our status in the community, our self- esteem and our lifestyle. It also provides an answer to that age old question, “And what do you do?”
Many people suffer a loss of identity when they leave work.
We find that often the higher up the management structure a person climbs, the more difficulty they have when they lose their job identity and find that no longer are their views considered very important.
It certainly helps if you are aware of this potential problem while you are still in the corporate world and can take some steps to start moving away from an identity largely defined by your job.
Some of the strategies you can try are –
- Look for things outside of work that give you joy and satisfaction and devote more time to them.
- Work at building some emotional detachment from your job. It’s not the most important thing in your life and the organisation will survive after you leave it.
- Start working on activities, projects or hobbies outside of work which will provide some challenges, interests and a foothold in areas where you’ll enjoy spending more time when you retire.
If you have already left full time work and are still troubled by your loss of identity, here are a few points to consider:
- Retirement gives you the opportunity to be the person that you always wanted to be.
- Defining yourself through the narrow prism of your job is short changing yourself. You are far more than that.
- It might take some time and effort to find your true identity but its well worth it and you will be a lot happier when you have a better understanding of who you really are.
