Hello,
My name is Noah Elkrief and today I want to tell you that you are not your career.
You're not your career,
You're not your job,
You're not your chosen profession,
You're not your life purpose work.
It's not who you are.
Maybe you already knew that,
Maybe you didn't,
Maybe you know it intellectually but not in your body,
Not on a feeling level.
So I'm going to share a little bit about it and give you an exercise or two to help you to discover that within yourself.
And the reason why I'm making this video,
The reason why this feels important for me is I know what it's like to feel really tense about work.
So when we look for our identity,
When we define ourselves,
When we look for our self-worth through our work,
It creates a lot of problems.
So even if we're succeeding,
Even if we're doing great in our careers,
So you're making a lot of money,
You've made it to the top,
You're a CEO,
You keep getting promotions or good reviews at work,
That's great,
Wonderful.
But if you're looking for your self-worth,
If you're defining yourself through your career performance,
Then when you do well it means I am good.
So if my work is going well,
It means I'm doing well.
If I'm doing good at work,
It means I'm good.
But that means if your work is going badly,
If you're performing poorly,
If you're making less money,
If you're not rising as fast as you want to be,
That means I'm not doing well,
I'm no good,
Or I'm bad.
And that's a huge threat.
It's a huge threat for us on an emotional level.
We're all living our life trying to view ourselves positively.
We want to view ourselves as good.
I'm successful.
I'm great.
I'm amazing.
I'm special.
I'm wonderful.
We want to view ourselves positively.
And when we define ourselves through our work,
Then good work means I'm good.
Bad work means I'm bad.
You can't get away from that.
As long as performing well gives you this self-worth boost,
Then performing poorly is going to hurt your self-worth.
It's going to take you from when we think I am great,
I'm smart,
I'm successful,
We can sometimes call that confidence,
A positive self-image.
And when we think I'm doing bad,
I'm no good,
I'm an idiot,
I'm a failure,
We call that low self-worth or a negative self-image,
Lack of confidence,
Insecure,
Self-doubt.
And so so much of the time in Western society,
Now even in Eastern society,
We're taught to seek our self-worth through our careers.
We're taught that our career performance is the way to find self-worth and confidence.
But what they don't tell you is that no matter how much success you have,
You can never actually relax.
It's never enough to have security.
Because even if you have a tremendous amount of success,
You can lose it.
And you can lose it meaning you can lose your company,
You can lose your income,
You could lose your positive reviews,
You could lose your clients,
You can lose so much of it.
Even if you achieved a lot and you can't lose your old successes,
If you don't get any more future success,
Then you're gonna feel like a failure,
Like I was good but I lost it.
Like if you're a performing artist and you win a Grammy,
Then yay I did great.
But if you put out another album and another album and they don't do so well and the fans don't like it,
You're not gonna consider yourself to be great anymore.
If success means I'm good,
Then failure means I'm bad.
So what society doesn't teach us is that seeking self-worth through our career performance is a recipe for endless anxiety and insecurity and brief moments of highs.
When we succeed,
Yay I'm so great,
I'm so amazing,
This is so wonderful.
And then insecurity starts creeping in with every day,
Week,
Month,
Year from our last success.
And with that comes anxiety about failure,
Anxiety about not achieving as much as we want.
So what if you are not your career?
What if you're not your career?
What does that even mean?
Well let's let's go into maybe a little exercise so you can feel it rather than think it.
So if you close your eyes and I want you to imagine yourself doing some random activity.
Let's say bowling,
Drawing,
Making a puzzle.
Now if you perform really badly at this random task,
What does that mean about you?
Nothing.
It means absolutely nothing about you,
Right?
That's obvious.
It means nothing about you.
How good you are at bowling,
How good you are at taekwondo,
How good you are at speaking German,
How good you are at making puzzles,
Playing chess,
Drawing,
Whatever it is.
If it's a random ability,
You know it doesn't mean anything about you how good you are at it,
Probably.
Why?
Why?
Why doesn't it mean anything about you?
Well because it's just a task,
Right?
It's just something you're doing.
It's not who you are.
If I clap,
That doesn't make me a clapper,
Right?
I may be good at clapping or bad at clapping,
But it doesn't make me a clapper.
That's obvious,
Which is why when you're doing these random activities you can enjoy it.
You can take it lightly.
When you go bowling,
It's just maybe fun.
Who cares?
When you,
You know,
Go canoeing,
How good you canoe doesn't mean anything about you.
So you can just take it lightly and have fun.
When you're playing a game with your friends,
Pictionary,
Uno,
Whatever it is,
You can,
How good you are at cards doesn't mean anything,
So you can take it lightly,
Yeah?
But as soon as you look for your identity from this task,
From this performance,
That if I do good,
It means I'm good,
Then all of a sudden it gets heavy.
The activity gets heavy,
It gets tense,
It gets contracted.
You understand what I mean?
So now if we go to your career,
If we go to what you do for a living,
Close your eyes and imagine yourself doing your work,
Whatever your work is.
It's just a task you're doing.
Just because you're doing it often doesn't mean it's who you are.
Just because you do it every day doesn't mean it's who you are.
If you never do this task again,
You are still you.
If you leave this job,
You are still you.
You are still Kevin,
You are still Anna,
You are still Michael,
Yeah?
You are still you,
Even if you leave this job.
You were you before this success.
You were you before this failure.
You were you when you were five.
You were you when you were ten.
There is a you in there that is not dependent on a particular job or career.
You're not an accountant.
You're not a lawyer.
You're not a light worker.
You're not a healer.
You're not a therapist.
You're a person who does therapy.
You're a person who does accounting.
You're a person who does entrepreneurship,
But it doesn't define you.
It's not who you are.
We need to separate you from what you do.
Yeah,
So I want you to imagine yourself before you started this work,
Before you started this career,
And look at yourself like you're looking in the mirror.
Look at yourself.
You're there.
You're you.
You didn't become you.
You were always you,
Yeah?
You were always you.
This job doesn't mean anything about you.
As soon as you look for this job,
This career,
To define you,
Then you have to perform well for you to be considered good.
But how well you perform in this career means nothing about you.
It means nothing about you.
How well you perform in your career means no more about you than how well you perform at bowling or playing cards with your friends.
Maybe you're looking for your career performance to prove you're smart,
To prove you're worthy,
To prove there you deserve love from your society or your family.
You deserve love as you are,
No matter how you are,
No matter how much success you have.
If you believe that success makes you lovable,
Makes you worthy in your chosen profession,
It's just gonna be endless insecurity and anxiety.
Because no matter how much you have,
You can lose it.
And no matter how much you have,
It's never enough to feel good enough.
So even if you get approval and respect from others,
It's not about you.
So if you perform really great this year,
You have a big success,
You make a lot of money,
You help a lot of people,
Whatever the metric is for success in your chosen career,
And then people start loving you and treating you nicely,
If they're giving you respect,
Approval,
Love,
Or attention because of your career performance,
They're not loving you.
They're not seeing you.
They're not respecting you.
They're loving your performance,
Which means if you lose that performance,
You lose the love.
And that's not genuine love.
It's not genuine respect.
It's not nourishing.
So therefore it never feels secure because it's not secure.
It never feels like enough.
It's never enough for us to feel fulfilled and have true confidence.
True confidence doesn't come from performance because performance is conditional confidence.
If I only feel good about myself when I perform well,
That's conditional,
Which means it's unsecure,
Insecure.
To feel truly confident,
To feel truly worthy,
Means I know who I am.
I know what I am.
And I know I'm worthy of love and I am enough no matter how well I perform at anything.
It's a really empowering place to be.
And then of course you can give your all towards whatever it is you're doing,
Your career,
Because you want to succeed,
Because you want to have an impact,
Because you want to do your best,
Because you want to grow,
Because you like it,
For what you're passionate about,
Whatever the reason is.
But you don't need to seek your self-worth from your career in order to give your all towards it.
You don't need to lie to yourself that your career performance means something about who you are.
You are you.
So maybe close your eyes again if they're open.
And I want you to imagine,
Close your eyes and draw a circle.
Imagine yourself drawing a circle that represents you.
Like you're just drawing a circle in pencil on a blank piece of white paper.
And this circle represents who you are.
Now within that circle,
Draw another circle that represents your career.
And perhaps that new circle that represents your career takes up the whole circle of you,
Which means you're looking for your entire identity from your career.
Or perhaps it's small.
Or perhaps the circle is outside of the other circle.
That the career doesn't feel like it's a part of you.
It's just something you're doing.
Yeah,
So intuitively you draw that second career circle.
Intuitively how big it feels like it is for you.
How much it represents who you are.
And there's no right answer.
It's just using this to assess and explore how much we're looking for our career to define who we are.
And use that as a reference point for maybe this feels like too much.
Oh this is why I have so much tension.
Or this is why I feel so much pressure at work.
And give yourself permission to make it smaller.
Or to even take it out of the circle of you if you feel that's what you want to do.
It's totally up to you.
And imagine making it smaller.
Or imagine taking it out of you so you can see and just be you.
Be the circle.
The bigger one.
The you.
It's enough.
You don't have to be the career.
You are enough as you are.
No matter how you are.
No matter what career you're in.
And no matter how successful you are at your career.
Whether you fail or succeed in playing bowling,
Playing golf,
Playing anything.
Means nothing about you.
It's just a random ability you happen to be performing.
Whether you do it one hour a month or ten hours a day.
It doesn't mean anything about you.
Just because you do your work often doesn't mean it represents who you are.
You are enough as you are.
You are welcome all of you.
And you are not your career.
So I think that's all I'm gonna say here.
I hope that this content serves you.
And please feel free to comment and let me know what your experience is.
Okay.
Wishing you all the best.
Bye.
