Bringing Your Full Self To Work Without Losing Your Full Self At Work

Repeat after me: 

• “I am not my job.”
• “All jobs are temporary.”
• “There’s something better for me after this job.”

I think it was the millennial generation (yes, I’m adding to the millennial pile on, but I’m a proud millennial too, so stick with me) who first started to dangerously link their personal identities to their jobs. The reason why it’s a bit dangerous is that we’re also the first generation to really embrace more frequent job (and sometimes full career) changes – I mean, we’re nicknamed the “job hopping generation” for crying out loud. 

Think about it, Gen X and Boomers would pick a lane, and oftentimes a company, and stay there for 30, 40, even 50 years until retirement. There was more of a mutual loyalty in place, and a higher societal acceptance for longevity in a job than the generations to follow. The idea of “pensions” or “company financed retirement parties” are a thing for that generation of people, and neither construct is even in the vocabulary of millennials. 

My mom, who is part of the Boomer generation, has been a flight attendant for Delta Airlines for almost 40 years. She loves her job, and is objectively one of the best employees that airline has ever seen (this isn’t a bias, she literally has an overflowing file of passenger testimonies). She gets a pin with a precious stone affixed to it for every decade of “service”, and that stone gets more premium with each 10 year milestone. She often says “I’m staying until I get my diamond pin” – the one awarded at 50 years – because that’s a career benchmark for her in such a meaningful way. That sort of relationship between employee and employer is rare, and will frankly die when that generation retires from the workforce because Millennials and beyond simply do not value that exchange. 

What’s changed? Well, the motivation has changed. Boomers are motivated by stability, where Millennials are motivated by growth and advancement – and we all know that especially in today’s corporate streets, you are rarely advanced to the heights that you aspire to within one organization alone. 

Boomers take pride in the companies they work for and the duration with which they stayed at the company. A large part of their identity is based on how companies value their work. And to stay on the subject of my mom for just a little longer, what’s interesting about her is, even though she’s spent the majority of her life working for this company and doing this job – she bucked this Boomer trend and does not identify in an unhealthy or dangerous way to it. Sure, she’ll include that nugget of information within an intro if it gets to that, but she always consciously decoupled herself from that being her defining factor. A true innovator, and a lesson that always stuck with me, but admittedly was really tough to actualize throughout my career. 

I’ve always let my personal interests and passions guide my chosen career path. Not because of some divine ideal or because I read it in a book about living your best life, but because I know that if I don’t actually care about something, I either won’t do it or won’t do it well. It’s a character flaw for sure, but (1) at least I have self awareness of it so that’s helpful and (2) the positive inverse of this character flaw is that when I do care about something – I do incredible, impactful, legacy-building work. So let’s focus on the positive, shall we?

When I started my career in the agency world, I was very public about my personal passions and interests because I noticed that in that environment, it helped guide the types of accounts that I got to work on and pitch for. I was really into cars (still am), so found my way working on automotive brands. I got really into CrossFit (okay, but who didn’t?) so that guided my first job transition from Ketchum to M&C Saatchi where I led a lot of the Reebok work, as they were the main sponsor of The CrossFit Games at that time. I love both extreme and endurance sports, so at my final agency stint with Golin, I was able to lead work on Mountain Dew, Adidas, CLIF Bar, and many others in that space. 

Maybe it was my outward energy that attracted that work, or maybe it was me subconsciously targeting it, but either way, it’s always been most enjoyable when I’m doing work that I love and working on brands that I actually use.

Within that span of agency life, I had always done multicultural work and added strategic layers of targeting underrepresented groups on top of just about everything I did. But, it wasn’t until I found my way to Netflix where I eventually made that a full time focus that I found myself too closely identifying with the work, and had to consciously shake myself out of it for my own mental health. 

As many of y’all know, I was hired at Netflix for a more general job, but because the focus on specific audiences didn’t exist when I landed there, I slowly but surely started to move myself in that direction until it became a full time job – first on PR, then in Marketing. There’s always been this powerful attraction that I’ve had to this space. To me it’s twofold: (1) I’ve always loved the art of creating that connective tissue around culture – both my own culture and cultures of others that have been traditionally uncentered. It’s rewarding on so many different levels. (2) Throughout many organizations, I’ve been able to shift mindsets around the values that these audiences bring to the table, and the outsized business impact of specificity, and that is such a total game changer. And honestly, I get a high off of pushing for that change. 

I learned the hard way that there’s a tangible difference between working in spaces that align with your interests, and working in spaces that intersect with your identity. Let that sentence marinade for a minute. 

Interests are usually temporary and fluid; they can be there one year and gone the next. Identity can be just as fluid, but generally doesn’t shift at the same tempo as interests, and even as your identity evolves as you grow – there are pieces of it that are fixed parts of you for life. Identity is just so much deeper than interests. You care about it more because it’s so central to your being. Not only do you care deeply about your identity, but you care deeply about others who identify similarly to you, and that shared identity-based community is powerful beyond measure. Sure, there’s community in other interest-based spaces (i.e. Star Trek fans), but until you feel that there are outside forces trying to control, quiet, stop, hurt, or frankly even kill you because of how you look or identify – they will never be on the same playing field. 

I didn’t write that last line for shock factor, but until you come to work emotionally and physically distraught because of how your community is being treated (on a good day) or being massacred (like this past weekend), and not only come to work, but have to create work for and about said community, you’ll never really know what your multicultural teammates (and/or agencies) are going through, and how hard it is to remove one's identity from the work when frankly it’s what’s driving it. 

There’s a real danger to your mental health when pouring your identity so freely into a job, because that pour is never mutual. That company will happily exist without you, so you have to be able to happily exist without it. 

I caught myself feeling way too intrinsically attached to the company I worked for, and the job I was doing there, and it wasn’t until late 2020 when I quite honestly had to shake myself out of it. It’s tough when not only the work itself is connected to your cultural identity, but when you built it all from the ground up and hired everyone yourself and created the infrastructure for its success – you fool yourself into thinking that there’s this deeper bond.

You sometimes even tell yourself things that are even more troubling, like "How could I ever leave this place?" or "Who even am I if I'm not working here?" If you ever find yourself having those thoughts, it's time to recalibrate and reprioritize your energy IMMEDIATELY. Companies are designed to continue regardless of who is working there, they cannot be dependent on a specific person or persons for success because that's just bad business. If you're an employee, you must keep that top of mind and also have that energy in return. YOU will continue regardless of where you're working and YOU cannot be dependent on a specific company or companies for success -- that's just bad business.

When I was shaking myself out of that stupor two years ago, I had to remind myself that every job is temporary, that I’m not going to retire here by any stretch of the imagination, so I needed to think about myself and how I’m building my future beyond it early and often. That doesn’t mean I showed up any less passionate for my team or any less impactful for my company after that epiphany, but I did so in a way that was safer for me, and kept some of my own energy in reserves. 

I chose to be in identity and culture based marketing, and choose every day to stay in it. But I choose to stay in the work itself, knowing that the job and the companies I work for will be fluid. And, I choose to invest in my own singular identity, both the one tied to my professional life, and especially the one tied to my personal life (confession: I still am into CrossFit). Life is about choices, so if you wake up and realize you’re no longer in the driver’s seat, slide back into it immediately and repeat (again) after me: 

• “I am not my job.”
• “All jobs are temporary.”
• “There’s something better for me after this job.”