Speaker 1: When asked to describe yourself, is one of the first
Speaker 1: things you mention your job? Why does so many of
Speaker 1: us form such a strong connection between our identity and
Speaker 1: our work? And more importantly, is that actually healthy? To
Speaker 1: explore the complex relationship between self, identity and work, I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my very good friend Sabina Read for another
Speaker 1: thought provoking conversation. Sabina is a clinical psychologist who shares
Speaker 1: her expertise weekly on threeaw and through her popular podcast
Speaker 1: Human Cogs. Sabina is going to be returning occasionally to
Speaker 1: help me deep dive and answer these kinds of nuanced topics.
Speaker 1: So if you've got a question or something that you
Speaker 1: want answered by a couple of psychologists, send us a
Speaker 1: message using the email in the show notes. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we explore whether your work is taking up too much
Speaker 1: of your personal identity, a simple way to do if
Speaker 1: your job.
Speaker 2: Is consuming your sense of.
Speaker 1: Self, and how to separate your work from your identity.
Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
Speaker 1: and strategies for optimizing your dat I'm your host, doctor
Speaker 1: Amantha Imber. We can all agree that work can become
Speaker 1: a big part of our lives and our identity. But
Speaker 1: where does that come from and what drives it. To
Speaker 1: begin exploring this, Sabina wanted to explain the driving factor
Speaker 1: many of us experience, the need to find a job
Speaker 1: that perfectly aligns with who we are.
Speaker 3: I think for so many of us, we have this
Speaker 3: fanciful idea and a job that it's going to be
Speaker 3: perfectly aligned to who we are. And in so many ways,
Speaker 3: people also talk about partners and homes, have this idea
Speaker 3: that there's one soulmate for us, there's one perfect house
Speaker 3: to live in, there's one perfect partner, and this job
Speaker 3: that's going to be everything we need it to be.
Speaker 3: And we've got this idea now that that job will
Speaker 3: probably be the perfect job because it's so aligned to
Speaker 3: who we are at our very core. But of course
Speaker 3: with that alignment comes shadowside as well. So I'll give
Speaker 3: an example for me. I'm a psychologist. I feel like
Speaker 3: I've always been a psychologist before I was a psychologist.
Speaker 3: That's kind of what led me, led me to the
Speaker 3: work that I do. That I had these skills and
Speaker 3: these passions, and then that led me to train and
Speaker 3: decide to get paid for what I do so much
Speaker 3: so now that I don't know where Sabina starts and
Speaker 3: psychologists ends. And I use the term psychologists very broadly,
Speaker 3: not therapist, but in all the work that I do,
Speaker 3: so human behavior expert. Where that starts and where I
Speaker 3: don't know because when I sit down on a plane
Speaker 3: and I sit next to the person next to me,
Speaker 3: I'm off, you know, so tell me about that, and
Speaker 3: two minutes later I want to know about their relationship
Speaker 3: with their mother. You know, good luck to them if
Speaker 3: it's an international flight, because then I get the whole
Speaker 3: family truck.
Speaker 2: Didn't he befriend an air hostess?
Speaker 3: I did? I did, I did recently, and he was
Speaker 3: such a beautiful, beautiful man. We spent about three hours
Speaker 3: talking and he ended up talking to me about potentially
Speaker 3: him coming out as a gay man, but not being
Speaker 3: sure if that would be accepted with his family room.
Speaker 3: You know, it was a very personal, meaningful conversation. That's
Speaker 3: a good example exactly. And I could have just sat
Speaker 3: there and taken the chicken or fish like everyone else does,
Speaker 3: bear a good little person on the aeroplane. But no, no,
Speaker 3: he started by saying something around you know, you've got
Speaker 3: a good energy, or like the way you said hi
Speaker 3: or something, and then you know I don't need much
Speaker 3: and I'm I'm on and it's not pretend, it's not forced.
Speaker 3: It feels really in Asian, very natural. But I think
Speaker 3: why I was interested in this topic of how much
Speaker 3: is my identity my job and vice versa is because,
Speaker 3: of course, as psychologists, we know that we learn things
Speaker 3: along the way, and have we learned What kind of
Speaker 3: reward feedback have I got? I mean, of course I
Speaker 3: probably get some kind of dopamine hits when people share
Speaker 3: and confide and connect. My greatest value is connection. So
Speaker 3: I'm connecting with people. It feels good for me, it
Speaker 3: feels good for them. Then, also because I share things
Speaker 3: in the media and on socials, people will often say
Speaker 3: to me, oh, you're doing such fascinating work. I know
Speaker 3: they say this to you as well, and then I
Speaker 3: feel like you're saying that because I've put my work
Speaker 3: out there as a content creator, so many people are
Speaker 3: doing fascinating work. But because I'm sharing it, I'm now
Speaker 3: getting that positive feedback as well. The question is how
Speaker 3: much of the job that I do, the job title
Speaker 3: that I do is truly me And I believe there
Speaker 3: are strengths to being very aligned to my vocation or
Speaker 3: to a vocation, and there's a shadow side as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can relate to what a lot of what
Speaker 2: you're saying.
Speaker 3: And minus the air hostess. Yeah, they don't call them
Speaker 3: hostess as anyone. Flight attendant, flight attendant sorry, yes, flight attendant.
Speaker 1: Yes, although because I'm far more introveted than you, I
Speaker 1: will not strike up conversations with strangers ever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always felt very very closely aligned that what I
Speaker 1: do for work is a very big part of who
Speaker 1: I am as a person. And like you said, in
Speaker 1: some ways that is wonderful because spends so much of
Speaker 1: our adult waking hours doing work. But it's also I
Speaker 1: think puts you in quite a vulnerable position in that
Speaker 1: that like I don't have any form of like I
Speaker 1: feel like you know, if I stopped work tomorrow, I'd
Speaker 1: be very lost and my self esteem might crumble. So
Speaker 1: it's something I've thought a lot about, and I'm keen
Speaker 1: to know, like, what are strategies that we can use
Speaker 1: if perhaps you are someone that can relate to us
Speaker 1: where your self identity is very very wrapped up in
Speaker 1: what you do for work, not that we're saying that
Speaker 1: is a bad thing, but there is a shadow side.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, like in your own life, looking at
Speaker 1: the shadow side, have you done anything well?
Speaker 3: One of the questions I've asked myself if I wasn't,
Speaker 3: aside from being a psychologist, who am I? This is deeper,
Speaker 3: This is deeper question, but they have to be because
Speaker 3: you know, we can't just skip through the gillips on
Speaker 3: this one. Even if you ask anyone who am I,
Speaker 3: most people give you a response with regards to a
Speaker 3: role in their life. I'm a mother, I'm a wife,
Speaker 3: I'm a psychologist, I'm a daughter, I'm a neighbor, I'm
Speaker 3: a friend. There are all roles that we play. When
Speaker 3: we attach our identity to a role or a multitude
Speaker 3: of roles, then in the context of what you and
Speaker 3: I are talking about, if that role disappears, I disappear.
Speaker 3: And this is really relevant, whether it's as someone who
Speaker 3: aligns neatly with their work, but also in the space
Speaker 3: of grief. If I'm no longer a daughter, who am I?
Speaker 3: If that was a big role that I played, or
Speaker 3: whatever the other relational roles are. And so I think
Speaker 3: for people across the entire last band. I think this
Speaker 3: is important conversation to have with children as well. Actually
Speaker 3: is who are we separate to our roles and our achievements?
Speaker 3: And when we ask people that, when I've asked people
Speaker 3: that most people are quite stuck. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: don't even know what you mean by that question. I've
Speaker 3: been told before. So then I would be inviting us
Speaker 3: to think about the qualities that I am that are
Speaker 3: not beholden or attached to those roles in my life.
Speaker 3: So I like to think that I am compassionate, curious, fun, thoughtful, loyal,
Speaker 3: you know whatever. These traits can't be taken from me
Speaker 3: when a role is taken from me, or if I
Speaker 3: lose a role, because they're within me, they're not in
Speaker 3: response to things that I do.
Speaker 1: I want to pick up on what you said about
Speaker 1: self identity being linked to achievement because I feel like
Speaker 1: I can very.
Speaker 2: Much relate to that. And I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of people that are successful.
Speaker 1: In their career or have you risen to the top
Speaker 1: of their field, that they probably received a lot of
Speaker 1: positive reinforcement for achieving things when they are a child.
Speaker 2: And that's definitely something I can relate.
Speaker 1: To and you know, it's kind of chasing, I guess
Speaker 1: the eternal sense of parental approval, which.
Speaker 2: I do feel like I have, but clearly I mean,
Speaker 2: you've got that.
Speaker 1: Now, I've got that, Like I mean, I feel unconditional
Speaker 1: love for my parents.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'm sure that there's a part.
Speaker 1: Of me that's like, well, I need to keep achieving
Speaker 1: to maintain that love, which is which is irrational.
Speaker 3: It's probably not irrational because it's how you learn to
Speaker 3: be in the world, and we're all the same, we
Speaker 3: just we learn different. So I think it's better not
Speaker 3: to skate over that and say yeah, I know that,
Speaker 3: to cut it doesn't make sense anymore. It's how we
Speaker 3: learn to survive. If you're not an only child, the
Speaker 3: dynamics you have with siblings plays a big part too.
Speaker 3: But if you are an only child that plays its
Speaker 3: own role around not having that comparison peace and there's
Speaker 3: no one else to you better step up because they
Speaker 3: don't have a know other child is going to bring
Speaker 3: home the gold medal.
Speaker 2: It's you.
Speaker 3: And when you've got siblings, I think once one role
Speaker 3: has been taken by one sibling, subsequent children sort of
Speaker 3: say that gig's been taken, I'll choose another persona to
Speaker 3: play out in this. So we needed these behaviors to
Speaker 3: survive in our own families, and then we tend to
Speaker 3: carry these behaviors with us into adulthood. And that bit
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense. We don't need them in the same
Speaker 3: way now. But I think we need to honor with
Speaker 3: gratitude why these behaviors came to be in the first place.
Speaker 3: The need to achieve served us well. Then the question
Speaker 3: is do I need to continue repeating that now?
Speaker 1: I think something else that maybe confuses me sometimes is
Speaker 1: I think about how much time goes into my work,
Speaker 1: a lot of time, and then I think about what
Speaker 1: are my values? What are the things that matter most
Speaker 1: to me? And my family is at the top of
Speaker 1: that list.
Speaker 2: It's not work.
Speaker 1: And I'll make choices where I put work in front
Speaker 1: of my family. Like if I'm I don't know, accepting
Speaker 1: a keynote speaking gig, which means I have to be
Speaker 1: away from my partner and daughter for a night for
Speaker 1: like as a really simple example, and I find that
Speaker 1: really challenging.
Speaker 2: And I think.
Speaker 1: Also, and I mean, you know, this has been said
Speaker 1: by so many parents and particularly mothers in the past,
Speaker 1: it's like work gives me a clear sense of progress,
Speaker 1: but I do not have that as a parent. And
Speaker 1: I think how I've started to think about that is
Speaker 1: I think I'm trying to tune more into the special moments,
Speaker 1: particularly with Frankie, like in my role as her mum.
Speaker 1: Like I had this moment on the weekend where we
Speaker 1: went on a mother daughter movie date and we don't
Speaker 1: go on those all that often, so it was quite special,
Speaker 1: just the two of us, you know, no friends of
Speaker 1: hers brought along, and she's at this great age, is
Speaker 1: nearly a life and yeah, she's just like parroting some
Speaker 1: of the dialogue to me to try to be funny
Speaker 1: and just you know, just like mucking around. And I
Speaker 1: just had this thought, It's like, ah, this isn't gonna
Speaker 1: last forever. She's going to be a teenager, so I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna think that I'm really embarrassing and that it's
Speaker 1: not cool to like, you know, muck around with your
Speaker 1: mum and be funny together. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: just sort of overcome with this emotion and this sentimentality
Speaker 1: and just going this is a precious moment right now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to treasure it, and I feel like it's
Speaker 1: like that is the closest equivalent I can get to
Speaker 1: the sense of achievement that I get at work when
Speaker 1: you know, I look at quantitative data, whether that's feedback
Speaker 1: scores or financials or whatever it might be, to go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've done a good job. I've like, you know, got
Speaker 1: this award, I've got this external externale validation. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what I'm trying to think about to have
Speaker 1: some sort of equivalence in the nonwork domains.
Speaker 3: Of my life. And I relate to a lot of
Speaker 3: what you just said. My kids, as you know, twenty
Speaker 3: two and twenty four, so we've moved through deenage years.
Speaker 3: They're back now and I'm still embarrassing, but they embrace it.
Speaker 3: But the bit that you said then that landed kind
Speaker 3: of hard for me is that sometimes I choose work.
Speaker 3: I choose work first, and I'm not as interested in
Speaker 3: the metrics as you are. I think we know that
Speaker 3: I'm interested in the connection and the growth and the
Speaker 3: shared experience that I have in my work with corporate
Speaker 3: clients and media settings and keynotes and workshops and things.
Speaker 3: And I've got a level of shame saying that out loud,
Speaker 3: But because you shared it, I'm sharing it too. Look,
Speaker 3: I could throw around some metrics for what you just
Speaker 3: described with Frankie. The metric for me would be the
Speaker 3: way she was looking at you and engaging you and
Speaker 3: perroshing as you said, whatever was in the mood she
Speaker 3: was saying, be with me, I'm here with you. That's
Speaker 3: the metric, and it don't fit in a spreadsheet. And
Speaker 3: I know if I had a dollar for every time
Speaker 3: an older woman said to me when my kids were
Speaker 3: at all, it goes so fast, make the most of it,
Speaker 3: enjoy it, make you know it's precious time. And all
Speaker 3: of the times as a parent you're thinking not feeling
Speaker 3: so freaking precious at the moment, feeling like it's got
Speaker 3: another nine hours to go into a better those moments
Speaker 3: that were hard. And yet now I'm one of those
Speaker 3: middle aged women saying it goes so quickly. So the
Speaker 3: metrics are different. And we got onto this cheat We've
Speaker 3: gone everywhere. We got onto this because we're talking about
Speaker 3: how aligned we are to our work and how our
Speaker 3: work feels like an extension of who we are. The
Speaker 3: foundation of that is the reward system. That we get
Speaker 3: from it, and not just in metrics, but in those
Speaker 3: things that I said, For me, connection and knowing that
Speaker 3: you're impacting another's life, it's important, it's meaningful, but it
Speaker 3: also comes with high reward. You know, it's a dopamine hit.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Savina soon, and when we return,
Speaker 1: we'll explore whether we should all be searching for the
Speaker 1: perfect identity aligned job, how to tell if your work
Speaker 1: is consuming your sense of self, and a simple step
Speaker 1: to make sure your job doesn't define you entirely. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for more tips to improve the way you
Speaker 1: work can live, I write a short weekly newsletter that
Speaker 1: contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You
Speaker 1: can sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's
Speaker 1: Amantha dot com. I would love to talk about just
Speaker 1: some different ways that perhaps we can start to pull
Speaker 1: apart our self identity from our work that I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about, and I'd love to get your feedback on these.
Speaker 1: So one thing I've been thinking about is this idea
Speaker 1: of identity diversification. Like just like if you see a
Speaker 1: financial advisor, they're like, well, diversification, that's the smartest strategy.
Speaker 1: I think about the risks of putting all your self
Speaker 1: identity eggs in one basket, and what happens if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong in that realm Like that is probably not
Speaker 1: a good recipe for you know, building resilience.
Speaker 3: Well, you and I both have so called portfolio careers.
Speaker 3: Well I describe Do you describe your work like that?
Speaker 2: I don't, but I relate to that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I do. Maybe because you're under the inventing umbrella
Speaker 3: you don't. But for me, I think all of these
Speaker 3: things that I do are quite separate. So if I
Speaker 3: lost my capacity to speak on stage, let's say, maybe
Speaker 3: I can still speak into a microphone, or if.
Speaker 2: I look at strange injuries. This I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't think. But you said if
Speaker 3: I lost the capacity, Okay, I'm not quite sure how
Speaker 3: to tap into this for the work that you and
Speaker 3: I do. But if you're, for instance, a surgeon, and
Speaker 3: somehow you lose your dexterity, of your finger dexterity, you
Speaker 3: can't actually perform surgery anymore, then you really are having to.
Speaker 2: More than diversify.
Speaker 3: You're going to have to think how am I going
Speaker 3: to use my knowledge and my skills. I've not thought
Speaker 3: about this before, but let's just say that happens to
Speaker 3: a surgeon. They then could choose to teach other people.
Speaker 3: They could bring their years of knowledge of sitting with
Speaker 3: patients and share insights about that patient journey, so they
Speaker 3: could be working with the patient or other surgeons without
Speaker 3: using their fingers. And I think for all of us,
Speaker 3: there are ways that we could continue to use our
Speaker 3: skill set and our passion. But then, actually, as I'm
Speaker 3: saying this, it loops me back to what I already feel,
Speaker 3: which is this targe alignment with human behavior psychological expertise.
Speaker 3: I think it will follow me if I'm carrioaking off
Speaker 3: flying on a plane. I'm still bringing this to the table.
Speaker 3: And so the other question is, and what's wrong with that?
Speaker 3: I wanted to play out the pros and the constant
Speaker 3: strengths and the shadow side in this. If you know
Speaker 3: so many people, I've worked with people around that. I
Speaker 3: worked as the ambassador at SEAK for seven years, so
Speaker 3: I did a lot. I had a lot of conversations
Speaker 3: in a lot of forums with people around their career trajectories,
Speaker 3: and so many people talk about wanting to find work
Speaker 3: that's meaningful, that reflects their values, that's an extension of
Speaker 3: who they are, that they feel motivated to get up
Speaker 3: in the morning and do that they're not doing to
Speaker 3: play someone else. These are all things that I feel
Speaker 3: in my work. So I'm asking the universe and you
Speaker 3: and myself, why do I need to dial that down?
Speaker 2: Okay? I think there are couple of reasons. Why.
Speaker 1: Firstly, does it lead to a lack of balance? Like,
Speaker 1: can it lead to workaholism?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I feel like in twenty twenty four I worked more
Speaker 1: hours than I would care to admit, and I was
Speaker 1: very unbalanced, and I was most of the time not
Speaker 1: happy about that, but I felt like I.
Speaker 2: Had to do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So where we get our energy from? If you're
Speaker 3: doing that kind of work and your energy feels depleted,
Speaker 3: and we did a prior app on burnout, so we
Speaker 3: know that story. I don't know if I call that
Speaker 3: identity alignment with your job. I called that workaholic, and
Speaker 3: that's what you called it. So I think it also
Speaker 3: depends on how we feel, how energized we feel doing
Speaker 3: the work that we do. But if I'm being really honest,
Speaker 3: it also depends on the people who love us most
Speaker 3: and how they feel about the work that we do too.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 1: I just feel like there's a huge vulnerability that comes
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Like I look at close.
Speaker 1: Friends of mine who have been through job loss or
Speaker 1: retrenchment or you know, any number of those things, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think most people in their lives have
Speaker 1: been through something like that. And you know, the ones
Speaker 1: that I've seen struggle the most are the ones that
Speaker 1: most closely have their self identity aligned to their work.
Speaker 1: You know, I think, you know, we talked about in
Speaker 1: an earlier episode on Burnout just around you know, one
Speaker 1: of my fears last year, you know, going to worst
Speaker 1: case scenarios, like what if Inventium doesn't exist? Who am
Speaker 1: I without inventingum? And like, yes, I could get to
Speaker 1: the answers, but it wasn't easy.
Speaker 3: Why does it have to be I like that, you're.
Speaker 1: Challenging me, But yeah, I can only think of shoulds,
Speaker 1: like it should be like this, or it should be
Speaker 1: like that, or I.
Speaker 2: Should do That's my biggest swear word.
Speaker 3: You're like, I got nothing.
Speaker 2: I got nothing there, I got nothing.
Speaker 1: It's like I should I should have more diversification in
Speaker 1: my identity.
Speaker 3: I think it's worth really exploring where that should come
Speaker 3: from and if it comes from fear based thinking, which
Speaker 3: we've talked about before, because I think I'll be caught out.
Speaker 3: You know, I tend to think with an abundant mindset.
Speaker 3: I'm not tapping into some area of research in positive psychology.
Speaker 3: It's just how I think. So my belief is that
Speaker 3: if one door closes, another one will open. I genuinely
Speaker 3: believe that, so I don't think as much through that
Speaker 3: fear lens. So for now, I feel very aligned to
Speaker 3: psychological work. And if at some point I can do that,
Speaker 3: I'll explore that then, but I won't live in the
Speaker 3: wadifs now around that issue.
Speaker 1: So are you saying then that there is no issue
Speaker 1: having your work? I'm just.
Speaker 3: I think the bit that's the greatest vulnerability or potential
Speaker 3: pain point is losing sense of self, letting your vocation,
Speaker 3: your job, your title, your role swallow you whole.
Speaker 2: How would you know if that's happening, Well.
Speaker 3: I think you would lose connection with other people, meaningful
Speaker 3: people in your life, which is a cousin of workoholism
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 3: And to understand what is the driver here? Is the
Speaker 3: driver another hit of dopamine, or is the driver to
Speaker 3: learn and grow to understand what drives us and then
Speaker 3: to think about where else I can honor those drivers.
Speaker 1: So this is something else I think about, like in
Speaker 1: terms of the idea of mastery. And we can obviously
Speaker 1: get a lot of satisfaction from our work if we're
Speaker 1: mastering new things. But then back to this idea of diversification,
Speaker 1: like I've deliberately in the last six or so months
Speaker 1: tried to pick up a newish hobby or as it
Speaker 1: was a hobby when I was a child, you a
Speaker 1: lot of sewing, and I was quite inspired when I
Speaker 1: went over to Vietnam and all the places that are
Speaker 1: set up to make these garments that I want to
Speaker 1: get back into sewing I want to do. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, and so that's become, I guess,
Speaker 1: an area of mastery outside of work, which I've really
Speaker 1: liked for a couple of reasons. Firstly because it's not
Speaker 1: just all about work, but secondly, as someone that works
Speaker 1: with ideas and intangibles, it's been really rewarding to just
Speaker 1: do something with my hands and feel and physically see
Speaker 1: a sense of progress with this new skill. So I
Speaker 1: found that very useful, and that's been a really deliberate
Speaker 1: choice to go. I want to get some mastery outside
Speaker 1: of my work, because most of the things that I
Speaker 1: do to learn and grow their work oriented. I'm literally
Speaker 1: just doing it so that I can create things and
Speaker 1: so that I'm good enough. So I'm relearning skills because
Speaker 1: you can't sew and not like know how to I
Speaker 1: don't know do a seme or you know, put a
Speaker 1: pattern together, and so it's relearning a lot of those
Speaker 1: things and trying to go a little bit deeper.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like the idea of diversification of skill and experiences,
Speaker 3: that we try new things not to be the master
Speaker 3: at them, but just to see how they feel.
Speaker 1: Something I think about is with the like important relationships
Speaker 1: and friendships in our life is I think about where
Speaker 1: if they come from, and I think if too many
Speaker 1: of those are work related, then it kind of sets
Speaker 1: off an alarm bell in my head to go, hmm,
Speaker 1: am I if it's about me or if it's about
Speaker 1: someone else, you know, is it about too myopic a
Speaker 1: focus on work? If I look across all my friendships
Speaker 1: and hang on, they're all work friendships? And they all
Speaker 1: do the same job that I do, or they're all
Speaker 1: in the same industry. And so I think that's also
Speaker 1: something that I've deliberately tried to cultivate, where I look
Speaker 1: at my friends and there they're really quite different in
Speaker 1: what they do. Like, yes, there's a cluster of say,
Speaker 1: female business owners, who you know, I dearly love, and
Speaker 1: I've got a little community of them. And yes, you know,
Speaker 1: I probably over index on psychologists that of friends, but
Speaker 1: different like an org psych is really different to a
Speaker 1: clinical psyche, for example. But then otherwise there's quite a
Speaker 1: bit of diversity, and I feel like I've deliberately tried
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 2: Is this something you think about in your life.
Speaker 3: I don't have many psych friends. It's really interesting you
Speaker 3: talk about diversity and friendship. I'm drawn to people for
Speaker 3: a myriad of reasons, and it's not their sav or
Speaker 3: the qualifications that they have. I've probably got to know
Speaker 3: more people, probably more in sort of the I would
Speaker 3: say more org psych space because it's what I'm in now,
Speaker 3: but I wouldn't even call them org psychs. They're people
Speaker 3: who have an interest in human behavior and well being,
Speaker 3: in stress, in relationships, in our working lives. But I've
Speaker 3: also got a whole bunch of friends that do you
Speaker 3: name a job, and they do it. So I feel
Speaker 3: conflicted in this conversation because I feel extremely aligned to
Speaker 3: my identity as a psychologist, of broadly speaking, but I
Speaker 3: also experience a lot of diversity in my work and
Speaker 3: in my friendships and in my day to day even
Speaker 3: in my data. Every day is different, no days the same,
Speaker 3: So I feel like I've got a lot of breadth
Speaker 3: and variability. Even though I feel I tightly hold on
Speaker 3: or I think others would say I tightly hold on
Speaker 3: to the psychological knowledge, I think there's something interesting as psychologists.
Speaker 3: Psychology is just the study of human behavior, the way
Speaker 3: we think, feel, and behave. That's it, full stop. And
Speaker 3: for me, that's such a winner, and it's so fascinating
Speaker 3: because you can hang it on any part of your life,
Speaker 3: on anyone's life. Now, if you're a chef, you talk
Speaker 3: about food, and you could talk about what the meaning
Speaker 3: of food is and what kind of foods you grew
Speaker 3: up on and ways to cook different dishes and things,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't apply to every part of life. In
Speaker 3: the same way, if you're a police person, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of elements, a lot of layers, but there's something
Speaker 3: about psychology more broadly speaking, that touches every part of
Speaker 3: our no disrespect to police or shit, but that touches
Speaker 3: very part of our lives. So it's endlessly fascinating to
Speaker 3: me of the all of the parts of life that
Speaker 3: it touches. So it doesn't feel linear like that. But
Speaker 3: I might just be trying to talk myself out of it,
Speaker 3: and I'm open to you and.
Speaker 2: Talk me back off, back off.
Speaker 3: The cych shelf. What I know.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering because there are probably people listening that do
Speaker 1: not feel a connection to their work, do not feel
Speaker 1: it's their calling, do not feel it is the be
Speaker 1: all and end all.
Speaker 2: Is that a problem? Should they be searching for?
Speaker 1: You know, the affinity that you have with psychology for example.
Speaker 3: No, not necessarily, but I think I think, you know,
Speaker 3: we work a third of our lives. We want to
Speaker 3: do something that brings us some level of learnings. I
Speaker 3: don't want to sound evangelical about it or too much
Speaker 3: like swallowed the pop psychology cool aid, but I do
Speaker 3: think there's something around enjoyment, meaning, purpose, connection, impact that
Speaker 3: are pretty core universal human drivers and for me, that's
Speaker 3: kind of a mindset we bring to their work that
Speaker 3: we do. I was having my nails done recently, which,
Speaker 3: as you know, is something that I have done since
Speaker 3: I was fifteen. Just it's sort of just a thing
Speaker 3: that I do that gives me a moment to myself
Speaker 3: and makes me feel good. It's so simple, it's ridiculous. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the woman that was panning the aile, she said, these
Speaker 3: look really good. I'm really proud of myself. She was
Speaker 3: really rating her polish work. And I'm just a normal
Speaker 3: nail polish, no fancy, no nothing, just polish in a bottle.
Speaker 3: And I was so struck with how much pride. And
Speaker 3: she shared that with me, and I thought, that's it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if she, you know, he feels highly
Speaker 3: overly aligned with herself as a manicurist. But I think
Speaker 3: that's what we're probably all needing. Some part of is, yeah,
Speaker 3: I did good today and I've impacted another person in
Speaker 3: some way. And she nailed that.
Speaker 2: They'll be see. She knows it physically, she nailed it.
Speaker 3: But as I said at the outset, if we talk
Speaker 3: too much, if we have this idea that we must
Speaker 3: find a job that is totally aligned with who we
Speaker 3: are and makes our souls sing every day. And you know,
Speaker 3: I sometimes joke and prasos that I give that wouldn't
Speaker 3: it be great if it gets to Friday night and
Speaker 3: we're all like, no, no, it's Friday. It's Friday night,
Speaker 3: And I don't want it to be Friday because that
Speaker 3: means the weekend I have to until Monday. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: probably not in either. It's something around learning and impacting
Speaker 3: others full stop.
Speaker 1: How much of it do you think is the job
Speaker 1: versus the organization that you're in, Like, let's just say
Speaker 1: your job is not calling, but you have, you know,
Speaker 1: a deep connection to the company and the team and
Speaker 1: the people that you work with.
Speaker 2: Is that good enough? Do you think?
Speaker 3: Well? I like the phrase good enough. It's a phrase
Speaker 3: I use often because, you know, instead of saying, is
Speaker 3: that what we're striving for? Is that the gold gold
Speaker 3: star of jobs. I don't think there's a one size
Speaker 3: fits all response to that question. I think it depends
Speaker 3: on what matters most to us. So it goes back
Speaker 3: to this story of values. If your values are around what.
Speaker 1: Did you say, like you feel a deep connection to
Speaker 1: the culture and the people that you work with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if your top values are around connection and
Speaker 3: so just feeling like you're part of a team, you're
Speaker 3: all on the same page, you're moving towards the same goals,
Speaker 3: that might be what floats your boat more than anything.
Speaker 3: If your top values around innovation and you're just kind
Speaker 3: of moving with the gang, that could be very frustrating.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think the culture of where we work
Speaker 3: makes it a very big difference. I mean, we know
Speaker 3: one of the raisins people they've worked most often is
Speaker 3: a boss that's not aligned to how they work.
Speaker 1: Like, you must get so many people coming up to
Speaker 1: you after presentations or workshops and going, I'm just not
Speaker 1: happy in my job or I'm not happy in this company.
Speaker 1: What questions do you ask them and what advice do
Speaker 1: you find yourself giving.
Speaker 3: Well, that often does happen, and it usually happens in
Speaker 3: a toilet cubicle, So they kind of follow you into
Speaker 3: the toilet and then that guy loved what you said
Speaker 3: and they're like, can I just ask you a question?
Speaker 3: And it's the closest sort of safe room that they found,
Speaker 3: or maybe it's just because that's where I go after
Speaker 3: I present. I'm not sure, I've never done a study
Speaker 3: on that. I would invite people to come back to
Speaker 3: self and it sounds so simple and almost try it.
Speaker 3: What's not working for you? What's the pain point? And
Speaker 3: what are the barriers that are stopping you exploring and
Speaker 3: actioning change? And I don't expect that I'd get a
Speaker 3: short answer and cubicle to those questions. I don't know
Speaker 3: another way except to explore or you know, these things
Speaker 3: that drive us and motivate us, and then these things
Speaker 3: that create barriers. It's kind of the simplest way I
Speaker 3: know to think about the choices we make and the
Speaker 3: changes that elude us, and then to revisit you and
Speaker 3: I've talked about before, this sense of agency and accountability
Speaker 3: in our own lives. No one else is at this
Speaker 3: steering wheel but us, and it's very easy to point
Speaker 3: the finger out when really we might do better to
Speaker 3: point the finger at ourselves with compassion and curiosity, not blame.
Speaker 3: We're in charge, not a dress rehearsal.
Speaker 2: I love that as advice.
Speaker 3: Step into the cubicle anytime I got more.
Speaker 2: So good to chat to you about all things self,
Speaker 2: identity and work.
Speaker 3: It's really great to sit here and hear, and you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things I love about our friendship and
Speaker 3: our connection. We have different ideas, we challenge each other,
Speaker 3: and I need that in my life. I know that
Speaker 3: in my friendships, and I think it's good pod chat
Speaker 3: as well. So thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I hope you loved this discussion with Sabina as much
Speaker 1: as I did, and I know it's given me a
Speaker 1: fresh perspective on my own identity. And if you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this chat, I can definitely recommend that you check out
Speaker 1: our earlier discussion on burnout where Sabina asked me all
Speaker 1: about my burnout experience.
Speaker 2: You can find a.
Speaker 1: Link to that in the show notes, and I'll be
Speaker 1: getting Sabina back throughout the year to help me answer
Speaker 1: your questions. So if you have a question or something
Speaker 1: you'd like us to cover, send us a message.
Speaker 2: Using the email address in the show notes.
Speaker 1: If you like today's show, make sure you get follow
Speaker 1: on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
Speaker 2: How I Work was recorded
Speaker 1: On the traditional land of the Warrangery People, part of
Speaker 1: the Cooler Nation