Find out 6 practical ways to separate your self-worth from your career and stop deriving your value solely from your work.
Raise your hand if you can relate: you always introduce yourself to new people with your job title or company, that slightly off interaction with your manager from weeks ago is still nagging at you and you spend your non-working time thinking about your job.
If you’re three for three, you might need to take a long look at whether you’re relying on your work for your self-worth. Aligning your intrinsic value with your job isn’t just a risk to your resume – it’s a risk to your health too.by the University of Stockholm found that high involvement in terms of performance-based self-esteem is linked to poor health and found that it is the strongest predictor of burnout over time. The study also revealed that: “women experienced more work stress than did men. Men had stronger associations between work stressors and burnout, while women had stronger associations between performance-based self-esteem and burnout.” To find out how to separate your self-worth from your career and stop deriving your value solely from your work, I spoke to expert Stefanie Sword-Williams, founder of global training consultancy F*ck Being Humble and author of the new book “The link between self-worth and work is huge,” said Sword-Williams. “Often, people feel the need to earn their value through effort or achievement. At work, this can show up as overworking, taking on too much, or saying ‘yes’ to everything because they feel they have to prove they’re competent or deserving. “For a lot of us, work quietly becomes the place where we top up our self-worth. We chase the little hits of dopamine that make us feel worthy and can get hooked on the high of it. Hitting milestones, getting promotions, receiving praise, and hyper-productivity all keep us chasing validation, instead of feeling secure in our own value,” she said.that disproportionately impacts women in the workplace. What we’re seeing now is the manifestation of those phenomena – many women are giving everything they have to their work in order to seem and feel worthy, to the extent that their sense of self-worth is mostly reliant on their jobs. I interviewed a few working women to understand how this happens. “For as long as I can remember, my self-worth has been closely tied to academic and professional achievement,” said Mahnoor Hussain-Pavlovskaya, a strategic account manager working in tech. “I immigrated to the UK as a child, and I often felt like someone who had to prove their right to belong. Over time, work stopped being just something I did and became the primary lens through which I measured my value as a person,” she said. For Mahnoor, working in a high pressure company without support to help her succeed quickly began to erode her sense of self-worth – and self. “There was a constant stream of critique, often delivered in a demeaning or dismissive way. Positive reinforcement was rare, and feedback was rarely felt constructive. Instead, the bar kept moving without ever being defined. Over time, I internalized the belief that nothing I produced was good enough. “I began to believe that the problem was fundamentally me. My sense of identity narrowed until it was almost entirely consumed by my performance and my fear of failing. There was no separation between who I was and how I was perceived at work. What began as ambition and a desire to do well slowly turned into a complete loss of self, driven by fear, exhaustion, and a workplace culture that had no safeguards for people who were quietly breaking under the weight of it,” she shared with me. Eventually, Mahnoor left her role to protect her mental and physical health. And unfortunately, her story is not unique. Meena Alexander, a freelance writer and editor and former associate editor of a women’s magazine also told me about her experience. “I was very much the ‘good girl’, always striving to get the best grades and be a delight to the adults around me, and that was the start of tying my self-worth to my academic or professional output,” she said. “Being in a job I had dreamed about forever only added to the pressure. I felt really lucky to be there, and that made me work twice as hard to prove I deserved it. But when you’re thinking about work for 90% of the day, it doesn't leave room for anything else. I felt I was losing sight of what else made me; my friendships, my relationship, the things I used to get excited about that weren't work-related were all taking a backseat. I got to 30 and felt like I wasn't the balanced, well-rounded woman I wanted to be. “I knew the only way to come back to myself was to step off the treadmill completely. After a lot of agonizing, I left the job I loved and decided to spend a year rediscovering who I was and what I was actually interested in, away from the environment that had become my whole world,” she said.If you’re someone who derives your value primarily from your work, it’s important to reevaluate before it becomes your entire identity, in order to avoid burnout, harm to your health and having to leave your job altogether. “Now more than ever, people need to be more flexible with their work identities because the security we were once promised has gone,” said Sword-Williams. “Mass layoffs continue to roll out across the globe and ongoing technological advancements are going to affect people’s career trajectories. The safest thing we can do is stop making our careers our full identity,” she said.Trying to give 110% at work is exhausting and frankly, impossible. Just like a glass can’t hold more than 100% without spilling, you can’t give more than you have without burning out. Instead, Trinh Mai, director of mindfulness programs at the University of Utah Health, advises that we look for areas where you can give 20% less without causing harm. This creates space and reminds you and your nervous system that you don’t always need to be operating at maximum output.shows that employees who disconnect from work during non-working hours experience better mental health and even higher job performance. Work-life expert Nancy Rothbard distinguishes between ‘integrators’ who blend work and life, and ‘segmentors’ who keep them separate. Segmentors actively create rituals or boundaries to leave work at work, like changing clothes before entering home or keeping work and personal spaces distinct. When you adopt some segmenting practices, you’re reminding yourself that your value isn’t only in what you do at work.The people we surround ourselves with have a huge impact on how we show up and how we define our worth. If your circle is made up of like-minded coworkers who also tie their identity to work, it’s easy to constantly be celebrated for doing the same, reinforcing the idea that busyness equals value. You need those who can say, “I’m not impressed by your busyness, I want to know who you are” and connect with you on a human, individual level.In a culture that prizes constant output, it’s easy to equate doing with being valuable. But taking time to simply exist, going for a walk without tracking steps, enjoying hobbies without documenting them, or relaxing without sharing it online reminds you that your worth isn’t measured by productivity. Engaging in activities purely for joy, curiosity, or connection helps shift your focus away from performance and reinforces that you are more than your work.Many of us over-identify with our value at work because we’re constantly the one breaking the ice, leading meetings, or carrying conversations. This creates the sense that our worth is tied to how much we contribute. By intentionally letting others take the lead sometimes, you’re shifting the source of validation away from your work output. It allows you to see that your value doesn’t depend solely on being the loudest, fastest, or most visible contributor.Many of us tie our self-worth to the idea that our career must define us or be our ‘life’s work.’ This creates pressure to prove that our professional achievements are meaningful enough to justify our value. By stepping back and recognizing that your life’s work can exist outside of your career, whether it’s caring for others, creating art, volunteering, or simply living fully, you shift the source of validation away from work alone. It allows you to see that your worth isn’t dependent on titles, promotions, or accolades, and gives you space to invest in other meaningful parts of your life. Sword-Williams shares even more techniques and strategies to untangle your work from your sense of self-worth in her new book
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