True or false: your human worth is synonymous with your profession? The more worthy the career, the more worthy the person. Correct? When jobs determine human value, workplace status spills over into your personal world. If you’re seeking a precise recipe for disaster, that is it!
The Danger Zone
It is perfectly healthy to be proud of your occupation. What’s not so healthy is when you associate your humanness with your career and job title. In fact, it can be self-destructive. If you equate human worth to the value of your occupation, then you have an emotional attachment, or an emotional dependency, on your job. This is a surefire way to set your life up for disappointment.
An emotional attachment means your personal feelings fluctuate with the ebbs and flows of your career. In other words, you rely on your career to meet your emotional needs (see Post #13). When the career is good, life is good. When the career isn’t so hot, your personal life suffers and it can be a treacherous, downward spiral. Sound familiar?
Human Worth
The biggest takeaway I will offer: your profession is simply a portion of your human experience. There’s what you DO, and there’s who you ARE. You do things like eat, work, play, and create experiences. Who you are is a human being that is 100% worthy, because all humans possess inherent, boundless value. Not one human is better or more worthy than another.
Thus, your career and job titles are in no way proportional to your human worthiness. It is true your chosen career is a reflection of your personal characteristics; however, it does not define you as a person. Your career is simply an experience on earth. This is critical information because the moment your job disappears, you’re left with you. If you believe jobs determine human value, then in theory, every person without a job would be a worthless human.
Learn how to be emotionally dependent on YOU, not your job. Titles come and go; professions are merely choices we make. The intrinsic value of a human does not compare to any amount of occupational experience.
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