Is Your Career Your Indentity?
As self-employed clinicians we take on the roles of both doctor and business owner. Practicing medicine is a calling that required a lot of study and financial investment to become the clinician you are today. And creating a business is an achievement to be proud of that required a lot of sacrifice and hardship. The amount of focus and work you have put in your career sets the stage for it to become your identity.
We have all seen license plates that signify someone’s profession like MD, DC, CPA, AR (for Architect). These plates are purely vanity plates meant to signify the driver’s career and to make sure everyone knows of it. It has become a cultural norm when asked “What do you do?” to answer back with what you do for work. While we may just pass this off as a social nicety, it’s actually quite telling of the culture at large and can point to one of the reasons why so many people struggle with burnout, self-worth issues, and finding meaning in their lives.
If you love your career and it really lights you up, this is a wonderful thing! Few people can really say that. As the saying goes: “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” But, there is a difference between doing what you love and making your work who you are. That’s actually a dangerous place to be.
What happens if your career goes away? Whether it’s because you were laid off/fired, your business fails, you retire, you sustain a permanent injury, or I don’t know… a viral pandemic sweeps the globe? Who are you then? What lights you up? Where’s the meaning in your life?
When you rely on external factors to provide you with who you are and what brings you happiness you are giving away your power. You are allowing something that is beyond your control to be the driver of your happiness. This is the reason why when some people retire from a lifetime career they feel the need to keep busy all the time. Without work, they feel like they have no worth or purpose.
It’s also a major contributor to clinician burnout. When you have a run of patients who aren’t showing progress you take it as a personal failure. Or if you lose the spark for practicing for whatever reason and can’t fathom scaling back or a career change because this is who you have always been and you are invested in the identity you have created. So you push through.
Identity and meaning come from within. They are present regardless of external circumstances. Having the ability to be happy and content regardless of what’s going on around you is not easy, but it is the key to a life of balance and ease.
So the next time someone asks you “What do you do?”, try responding with something other than what your profession is. See what comes up and how that makes you feel.