Being your job

I think a year from now the world might be better off having experienced the economic turmoil of today. I certainly don’t want to see businesses fail; people lose their jobs/ homes and families fall into bankruptcy. What I’m talking about is a potential shift in values and re-examination of self-worth that could be a possible output of these times.

One of the reasons I started this blog months ago is I see so many people, (and I did it myself for years) define themselves by their job. I feel passionate about the conversation that work and life needed to be balanced because the perception is they are 2 different things – work and the rest of your life. And what I have found is work is part of life, not a separate segmentation or subset of who you are.

As we see people get laid off and companies dissolve many people will experience a crisis of self – who am I if I’m not a banker, mortgage broker, real estate agent? The answer is simple – you are the same person you were the day before you your job went away. Only your perception of who that is has changed.

That is the essence of my passion on this topic, why I blog and talk about work life balance – to help people discover that work and life are not separate – you have one life, one self and being honest with yourself about what you want in all areas of your life closes the gap between feeling torn between the two.

So what does this have to do with the economy? It is simple, hopefully people struggling will find they are the same person and that what they value and how they treat people doesn’t change because of how they earn a living or what zip code they call home.

With any luck, because of this experience people might choose to live with less in order to close the gap between work and “the rest of life” to have more in other areas, areas that maybe until now didn’t seem as important.