“My Work Is My Raison d’être”: Beware Of An Imbalance!

An investment that can be dangerous

We can all become workaholics. Yes, even me, who doesn’t like working 🤐! In fact, it’s quite simple, if you have a job you love, you don’t even realize you’re working. So, little by little, work takes over, and we give it our all. That’s what’s happening with my friend. She’s embarked on a career that she really enjoys and that offers her lots of challenges. She’s delighted, but the problem is that her body’s showing major signs of fatigue...

Just recently, she collapsed and had to undergo an emergency scan...

As psychologist Bryan Robin explains, when you become a workaholic, you develop an obsession that can lead to serious health problems. It’s a real burn-out, allowing stress and exhaustion to take hold, even leading to mental illness and physical problems (particularly heart disease 😱).

Don’t make your work your identity

To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen my friend face-to-face for a while now, she’s so busy at work. We write messages to each other on WhatsApp (hello team who are afraid of phone calls 😅), but we rarely see each other. Her family and other friends also moan about the situation, because you really do feel like you’re taking a back seat. In short, her work takes over and all the other areas of her life get pushed aside...

The problem is that she’s turned her work into something that defines her. I’m not blaming her, because in our capitalist society, the professional sphere is very central. One of the first questions you ask someone you’ve just met is, “What do you do for a living?”

We have to be productive, we have to contribute to society, we’re pushed to invest a lot, so I understand it too. This is what work and organizational psychologist Edgar Schein explains: “Professional identity is an essential component of personal identity, which gives meaning to our lives.”

Nevertheless, we must be careful that work doesn’t become our identity, otherwise what do we become the rest of the time 🤔? In any case, the psychologist Robert J. Wicks urges us to question this. We need to be able to find other sources of satisfaction and personal fulfillment, otherwise, we’re out of balance!

How can we decentralize work?

We work to live, but we don’t live to work. We need to remember this saying to avoid professional absolutism. To go further, here’s some advice I’d like to give my friend:

• 👉 Set boundaries: Don’t blur things, and define the hours you work clearly (so you don’t read your work emails on your sofa in the evening!).
• 👉 Cultivate interests outside of work: Think about the activities you used to do before working, or go out and explore new ones! It could be reading, sport, cooking, art, music or anything else that brings you pleasure.
• 👉 Take care of your health: Exercise regularly, eat healthily, get enough sleep.
• 👉 Spend time with your loved ones: Your loved ones miss you, so spend precious moments with them.
• 👉 Seek support: If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your work, don’t hesitate to seek support. This could be a psychologist, a life coach or even a trusted friend.
• 👉 Take a break: It’s important to take a break now and again, and it’s a good way of fully disconnecting from the “productivity” aspect and taking stock.

Even though work is important and can bring us a great deal of satisfaction, we must remember that it shouldn’t be our only raison d’être. As Wicks says: “We’re much more than our work. We have other roles, other passions and other relationships that contribute to our sense of self and our happiness.”

Be sure to check out these articles too;

• I can't work in a team, what does that say about me?
• How do I get a meaningful job?
• 6 Signs you are in a toxic work environment