Avoid the Identity Crisis

Our understanding of the intangible concepts of personal identity and self-esteem are often low, yet they play a critical role in helping us to navigate our lives in a happy, health and fulfilled way.

Your personal identity is the unique way that you define yourself, while your self-esteem is how you value yourself. In turbulent times of shifting social trends and opinions, it has never been more important to have a strong sense of who you are, your strengths and where you’re heading.

In an era when social comparison is the norm, the second question people usually ask at a networking function or party is ‘what do you do?’ Even as you deliver your response, they’ve probably already forgotten your name, because it's by profession that we tend to categorise the people we meet.

This can make admitting to being out of work feel like a confession, because so much of ‘who we are’ is made up by ‘what we do’. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in elite sport.

To reach the top, athletes and their coaches must show total dedication and a huge amount of passion. It’s therefore not hard to see how, after being immersed in a sport for a long period of time, that your sporting identity can saturate every pore. The reflex response for many who are no longer employed in their sport will often remain ‘I’m a footballer’ or 'I'm a manager' many years after that has ceased to be the reality. 

All work, no play

It's when your notion of what defines you becomes ingrained and inflexible that it can become a problem. One sport psychologist said that professional athletes are the only people to die twice, once with the traumatic loss of their athletic identity on retirement and again in later life. Reinvention can take years and is often a painful process as you learn to be comfortable giving the response ‘I used to be a….’

The psychological trap that many of us fall into is letting our jobs define who we are. For most people, it is only at work that we get measured, scored and valued in a tangible way through salaries and other rewards. Our human need for acceptance and to feel good enough also makes us overplay the importance of our work.

As a result, most people attach around 80 per cent of their self worth to their professional lives, leaving only a fifth for their roles as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mentors, charity ambassadors, and so on. Thinking in this way, it wouldn’t matter too much if you failed in that 20 per cent, so long as your performance at work wasn’t affected. It's an easy, but dangerous, mistake to make.

Pinning so much on your job is also like investing most of your life savings into a volatile fund. Any investment expert would advise a more rational and diversified approach, perhaps putting half your funds in stable bonds and a smaller proportion exposed to risk. This would provide stability and security in the event of a financial crisis.

Spreading the investment

Can we then use this metaphor to help avoid an identity crisis? The investment trap is to push all of your worth into a volatile trade, like football. The risks that exist, such as serious injury or losing your job, are the equivalent of the stock market crash.

To have more control you need to invest a greater proportion of your identity and worth in more stable assets, such as your effort, relationships, personal strengths and passions outside of your job. In these, you are judged by yourself rather than being subjected to shifting market opinions. The aim should be to become the CEO of your own performance company, with each choice affecting your share price.

Another helpful approach is what psychologists call 'meta-cognitions', which is really just becoming more aware of what you think and say to yourself so that you can make more productive choices. Someone with a healthy self image and self esteem will speak to themselves as they would their best friend rather than an enemy that they dislike. That silent, hidden self talk lays down networks and connections in the brain that become tomorrow's instinct. If you say constantly that you ‘can’t do’ something or that you’re ‘rubbish’ then this will become your reality.

If your identity is a personal judgement of yourself, then the power to choose, responsibly, what you think and say to yourself is the most powerful tool you have for creating a happier life. 

Eight steps to a healthier identity

Taking back control and building up your own confidence bank account gives you security in times of criticism and setbacks.

1. Ask five people close to you to describe you in three words. Do the same yourself. Do your words match or conflict with theirs? Think how you'd like people to describe you and how you can make that happen.
2. Write a list of the roles you play in life and score their relative contributions to your identity. What non-work roles could be dialled up?
3. Avoid comparing your current state with everyone else’s best. We often assume others are living a happier, wealthier, sunnier, more fulfilled life than us, but the chances are they aren’t.
4. Resist the urge to boast about what you have. Instead, show quiet confidence and be comfortable in your own skin.
5. When you’re feeling low or performing poorly, offer support and advice to others. You're more than your results, and will gain self-worth for doing the right thing in adversity.
6. Look after yourself, making small goals and commitments around healthy eating, sleep and exercise.
7. Stay connected to the people who give you most confidence and energy.
8. Be strong and consistent around your core values and interests. When you achieve your goals your way, you’ll remember why you’re unique and what you can achieve for yourself and those around you.

To find out more about how our interviews with Sporting Champions can help you to develop a Winning Mindset at work here