Have you ever heard of the professional self?

Have you ever heard the term professional self? If you asked me 3 weeks ago my answer was no.

Before diving in you need to understand 2 things about me:

1. My CliftonStrengths are ideation, strategic, learner, relator and maximiser (if Myers Briggs is more your thing I’m an INTJ); and
2. I’m always thinking of ideas and ways to do things better

How I ended up here

Now back to the professional self.

My psychologist explained everyone has 2 selves – a personal self and a professional self. Based on my research I’ve distinguished the 2 as follows:

• professional self: your job, career and anything that relates to it – i.e. colleagues or study
• personal self: everything else – i.e. family and friends; hobbies; volunteer work or sport

I found myself in a psychologist’s office after experiencing severe depression. My brain felt empty; I wasn’t enjoying anything I loved at work or outside and my motivation was at zero. At my lowest, I spent 2 weeks in bed watching 10 seasons of Bob’s Burgers and sleeping. When I did leave the house I wanted to crawl up in a ball and sleep. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

My homework was to completely remove my professional self so I could focus on rebuilding my personal self. Fortunately, I had access to a significant amount of leave so I made the hard decision to take the time I needed.

My homework has taught me 3 life changing lessons:

1. all my friends are linked to my professional self;
2. I don’t know who I am outside my professional self; and
3. most importantly, as a society, we place too much emphasis on our professional self.

Society and the professional self

When you aren’t working it becomes very clear how much society prioritises the professional self. At the time of writing, I’ve been on medical leave for 8 weeks and can’t count the number of times people have asked what I do for a living – from the guy fixing my floors to my physio and even my pharmacist. More importantly, this belief is so ingrained that even when we retire, what we did for work still defines who we are as a person. I learnt this lesson watching Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds. The ‘old people’ are identified by their name, age and occupation which left me asking 2 questions:

1. Why at the age of 86 do we care someone is a retired teacher? and
2. What about the rest of their life?

Since the show is an experiment exploring if pairing old people with 4 year olds will improve their physical and mental quality of life, I couldn’t help but wonder if reducing an entire life into what someone did for work might be a contributing factor as to why older people experience a lower quality of life. Consequently, I want us to stop obsessing about what we do for a living and focus on who we are as people.

With this purpose in mind, I will use this space to document my journey to discover my personal self and finding a new way to define who I am as a person.

Will you join me?