Build your identity on the unchanging.
So, it’s like this. If you meet someone new, the first question you’re often asked is “what do you do?”. Based on your answer, you have opened up the doors for them to complete a 360 degree “accurate” evaluation and conclusion on who you are. If you work as an entrepreneur, you are a free-spirited individualistic optimist that listens to no one and takes huge risks. If you work as an accountant, you, my friend, are as rigid as they come. You are a planner, logical-thinker, and spread-sheet enthusiast, rarely being the “life of the party”. I’m sorry, but it's giving boring.
In a society filled with obsession around doing, we forget that what we do can be tied to who we are, but it isn’t the full assumption of our being. Our skills and strengths are expressed in different ways in our occupations, but it is not our identity. What we do is not who we are, what we do is our way of expressing the skills and talents that we have. It’s the difference between “being” and “possessing”. We possess careers, talents, ideas, and businesses – you aren’t designed to become those things. And if we put our identity in the things we possess, we’ll never feel rooted in something stable. Because possessions are ever-changing due to factors within and outside of your control. This instability causes anxiety, fear, and unrest, even when things are going well, because we know after the peak comes the valley. But if we root ourselves in something unchanging. Something that is constant, unwavering, real, and from within, we experience a grander and more realistic view of ourselves. One that will show you truths you can always stand on. That is what brings peace. Not a degree, a promotion, a larger salary, or any external circumstance that you can think of.
Let’s say you’re building a home. You watch it being constructed from the ground up. The concrete slab, the drywall, the red bricks - it’s everything you’ve wanted. It’s pretty easy to understand that the house is not you, it’s yours. When you think about who you are, drywall doesn't come top of mind. You can clearly separate your physical being from this material building and recognize that it is something you decided to build, maintain, have, and one day, sell for a profit (you see where I’m going?).
Now the house analogy may be easier to comprehend because it’s a tangible object, and most know we are not an object. Careers, jobs, skills, talents, are harder to separate from our identity because they are intangible in nature, but they are possessions as well. Possessions that we build, maintain, have, and quite honestly, sell for a profit. And as we begin to separate who we are with what we do, we can enter this journey of career exploration feeling more confident, valuable, and stable.
Don’t get me wrong. You are more than capable of walking into the vision God gave you! And through proper preparation, I believe that you will achieve any goal your heart desires. But if you can understand this important revelation now of possession vs. identity, I promise your journey of becoming will be filled with so much more joy along the way.
Go through these series of questions this week and answer them honestly:
If someone asks you, “who are you?”, does occupation come to mind? Why?
What are some ideas, thoughts, and/or habits that you will have to unlearn to not completely identify with your career?
What activities make you feel present and forget about work? Who is around you? How often do you do this activity? Should you do this activity more?
“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” - Genesis 1:27
