Does My Job Define Me?

Does your job make you who you are or give you that feeling of self worth? We all have at one point or at one moment in time had something we wanted to achieve to make us feel we were really something in life? OK, maybe if we don’t feel that way right now, because of something tragic happening in our lives that took away that hope or a hurtful event that delayed this feeling in our lives for a long while, you maybe one who has given up on that dream. But, I believe we all have had this desire to be someone special or do something in our lives to achieve self-worth.

Let’s say as a child when you were 3 or 4 years old you saw a cartoon on TV you liked called, “Captain Adventure” for example. You probably wanted to be “Captain Adventure.” So I would guess you probably ran around the house with that blue or white towel tied around your neck, and your bright red rain boots on your feet, your arms stretched straight out in front of you sailing from room to room all the while picturing yourself as “Captain Adventure.” You saw yourself flying in the air over your house and your friend’s house making those “swooshing” noises to simulate wind beneath your cape. You truly were feeling like you were going to save the day on another job as “Captain Adventure.” You loved it! It made you feel great! It was a feeling of importance to you, an achievement. You finally did it! You felt that weight of UN-fulfillment fall away and your desire of wanting to be someone important was created by doing this job that needed to be done. Unfortunately, by the end of the day, reality hit you like a ton of bricks. You realized this wasn’t going to really happen the way you planned. You had other responsibilities like school and homework and those dreaded chores, which for some reason these things didn’t make you feel as important, or give you that sense of accomplishment as being “Captain Adventure.”

By the time you got older and experienced life, you came to realize you weren’t going to be “Captain Adventure.” So you let your dream go. You moved onward to other jobs and dreams, some were great and some not so great, and the ones that were not so great you expressed it in your attitude and your self-worth. Instead of being “Captain Adventure,” you might be instead Captain Financial Creator, the bill payer and self-made organizer of your household finances, which required you to get a job, any job, maybe a job you don’t like just to pay the bills. Perhaps you’re even Captain Mom the creator of the children in your family, that defining woman of multi-tasking technology, running everything from buying more “Fruit Loops” to making those beds just right so they’re comfortable for your family members to sleep in after a long day. Or maybe your even Captain Doctor, Captain Teacher, or Captain Walmart Cashier. Whatever it is you do, does it define who you are?