What does my job mean to me? Where is my career path headed? What is a career, anyway?

What should my career bring to my life? What occupation is the best for me? What is the difference between a job and a career?  The push to have pointed career goals starts long before you enter an office or log into a Zoom meeting.

Your inadvertent career planning begins when a career counselor visits your school to tell you what you “should” be according to your talents—even though you’re only in third grade.  It’s the push to get the bachelor’s degree, then the graduate degree—and to be chasing your life’s work from day one. Every graduation is an invitation to keep it moving up, up, and up!

The overall message? Your life is spent chasing down the dream job. Once you get “there,” the feeling can be…less than fulfilling. But, if you want to keep climbing that career ladder, you need to work that full-time, plus overtime.

Here’s a Reminder

Pretty much any way you slice it, you will spend a significant amount of time at work or working, but that doesn’t mean work = life. In fact, your life goes on once you leave the office, once you log off for the day.  Career success can be achieved without completely burning yourself out. 

Yes, your job is important. Yes, your career is important. Yes, you should be empowered to go after that promotion, that leadership role, and that opportunity. However, keep in mind that your work is not everything. You are still in charge of your own future. 

Examples of What Your Career Can Be 

Let’s talk about what your job can (and should!) be. 

• A source of monetary benefits 
• A position that allows you to keep your own basic life values 
• Something that allows you to pursue your passions for the greater good (i.e., nonprofit work, social change, charity endeavors) 
• Somewhere that you find some fulfillment (but not all of it!) 
• A place where you work on your competencies and learn new skills
• Work and tasks that give you personal satisfaction; that make you feel proud of you
• Something that fits into whatever phase of life you’re currently navigating (i.e., recent college grad, new parent, late-career)
• Something that allows for risk-taking, but maybe isn’t inherently risky (unless that’s your thing!) 
• Something that can change over time, allowing you to open yourself to unexpected career transitions

Your Career Is Not Your Identity

We’re here as your friends to tell you that your career is not your identity. Wrapping your identity around a singular pillar is never a good idea. If your job dictates who you are, then who are you when “it” isn’t around anymore? 

Your career or your job is not your identity—it’s part of the routine of your life, right now. You existed before it, you exist now, and you will exist after any job. 

Your Career Is Not Your “Family”

The next time you are job searching, do a quick word search in each job description. If the word “family” is in the job description, run for the hills. 

In theory, it would be nice to think of your coworkers as a family, but think back to the last big fight you got into with your real sibling. The workplace doesn’t need that sort of energy—and there aren’t enough HR managers in the world to handle that sort of fight in the middle of a project. 

Your coworkers and your boss are important people in your life. Respect them and command respect from them. Communicate your values, maintain your boundaries, and share your creativity with them. If you’re lucky, you might pick up a few lifelong friends in the workplace. If not, respectful relationships at work are extremely valuable as they are. 

Your Career Is Not Your Entire Life

There’s a familiar trope in many 1990s television shows and movies where the father figure in a family becomes so wrapped up in “the job” that he forgets about everything else. Consequently, he either loses “it all” or has a reckoning where he figures out what’s important. Cue the sappy credits. 

Especially when you reach a goal or a position in your career, it can become a larger-than-life beast in your mind. Here’s the thing, though: your job or your career should never be your entire life. Make lifelong goals, but open yourself to the possibility of them morphing into something unexpected—and maybe even better.

The pursuit of a lifelong ambition is great, but when the goal becomes too singular, it cancels out everything beautiful growing around it. If you forgot how to speak without using your company-specific jargon, if you haven’t even opened your personal email in months, and if you’ve forgotten the sound of your mother’s voice, you are approaching mid-1990s Tim Allen in every movie status.  

Psychologists use the term “enmeshment” to describe the loss of self when boundaries cease to exist. When you become too enmeshed with your career, you lose your connection with virtually everything and everyone outside of work.  When you’re working toward a specific goal, pay grade, or position, you might not realize you are enmeshing yourself until it’s too late.

Your Career Is Not Your Worth Nor Your Confidence

Some of your confidence is always going to be tied to your work and that’s good! When you’re proud of your work, you tend to be better at it. When you feel confident and proud, you’re likely to make fewer mistakes, tap into more creativity, and find new ways of solving problems. 

If an individual at work—like your boss—is chipping away at your self-worth, try communicating that to your boss. While some bosses are jerks, you might be surprised to find out that you can communicate clearly to change your own outcome.  Finally, if your job is killing your self-worth, conduct an honest audit. Sure, the job looks awesome on paper. Your friends constantly tell you they would *kill* for your job, but—in reality—it’s slowly killing you. 

Don’t be afraid of letting go of the glossy-looking job in favor of the good-enough job that treats you well. 

Your Career Isn’t Your Happiness

Don’t tie your happiness to your job or to any one thing. Don’t tie your happiness to one thing—or even three things. In this noisy world, it is nearly impossible to separate what you want from what you think you should have. Career exploration is most exciting when it’s actually exploratory.

When you don’t have the time or energy to give yourself the space to determine what actually matters to you (not your parents, not your partner, not your oldest frenemy), you’ll get bogged down in what’s “supposed” to make you happy. 

Find your happiness offline. Look to your childhood, your closest friends, your favorite books, and everything you had before a career was even on the horizon. 

Finding happiness or meaning in your career is not a bad thing! However, putting too much of yourself into your job puts you at high risk of burnout, disappointment, or even identity crisis.  Career decision-making is not one decision that is cast in stone. Excitingly enough, it can be a ton of decisions, for long- and short-term. It can be taking different jobs that form into something that was once amorphous and undefined.

Take time to build your happiness, your meaning, and your self-worth upon your own values. By defining and remaining true to your values, your career will naturally progress in a healthy and balanced way.