What we do for a living has a huge influence on how we see ourselves and on how others regard us. It is one of the first things people ask about when meeting someone new and something people usually use to jump to all sorts of presumptuous conclusions.

People typically choose their careers for the money, the prestige and the sense of self they anticipate developing from them. They choose without knowing themselves. Once they start working, the resulting gap between the image and the person is huge, drawing the poor soul away from authenticity until the person snaps and makes a career change. Working out who they are and what they want to do at that point can be a thrilling journey of awakening, or a severe challenge.
 
A few people choose their careers by doing what they love until it works, trying out their talents or combining these with entrepreneurial acumen. It’s still rare to see past social conditioning and pressure, risk ridicule and rejection, and follow your truth. Even when you do, you can’t get away from having a work identity.
 
When I was in the corporate world, it was defined by qualifications, job grade, office size, height of chair, number of pictures on the wall and the like. Childish? Nah! Being an entrepreneur comes with an image, too, and telling someone you are a writer, speaker, publisher, counsellor, musician or whatever all has an effect. It’s important, though, to be aware of the identity in yourself and in the minds of others, and to keep it in perspective.
 
If you see yourself as a doctor, you are likely to be full of yourself, attached to the role and using it to cover up your inadequacy as a person. Lawyers can be self-important, too, and inclined to carrying an air about with them and resorting to attitude when threatened. Accountants have their audited approach and psychologists, well, they have a neurosis all their own! Work identities with lesser status might be attached to low self-esteem in a more direct instead of inverted way.
 
The point is that your work is not you. It can be a thriving or thwarting extension of you, but you are consciousness. You are presence witnessing the fascinating fragments of form, not the form itself. When you can stay in touch with that, your presence will fill whatever work you do, and the work you do will evolve to fit your presence.
 
Identifying with work is something to be aware of.

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