I like work – I probably work too much…

I really do believe that work is a very important part of life. When you’re not happy with your career, it can impact all other areas of life. Your mental, physical and emotional health can suffer. Your relationships and financial security can suffer. Your whole world can become more difficult and painful. I know because I’ve personally experienced it. But I also believe that we have to keep perspective. For many years, I placed too much importance on my career. I was and still sometimes overly invested. That meant, when things were going right, I was on top of the world. When things were going wrong, I was in the absolute pits of despair. I let my career happiness dictate my life happiness. Yes, your career is an important part of your life. But it’s not the only important thing. It’s not even the most important thing though it might feel that way at times.

When things aren’t great at work, we do have to pay attention. We need to figure out what the problem is and make efforts to fix it. After all, we spend most of our time during a day at work. Anything that absorbs that much of our time and energy is worth that much of investment. Plus, for most of us, this is our livelihood we’re talking about. You can’t exactly ignore the problems and still sleep at night. But we don’t have to completely tie our well-being to work. Emotional investment is only healthy to a degree. When it goes overboard, we’re abdicating our happiness to something that is outside of our control. I firmly believe that we have a lot of power in the situation, but ultimately many things are determined by outside forces. I believe it’s important to care about your career and the work you do. That’s part of what makes for a nourishing professional life. But we have to remember the other aspects of life that are also important. We can’t let this one area rule all others. It requires a delicate balance, one that is difficult to truly quantify. A little emotional investment is natural and helpful. But too much and you run the risk of losing perspective. If you slip into the realm of being too emotionally invested in your professional identity, there comes a point when it brings you down more than it lifts you up. Work becomes the source of your happiness or lack of it. That’s a lot of pressure to put on your career. Before this happens to you, look for these signs that may signal it’s time to pull back and gain some perspective.

You Internalize Criticism. Do you feel crippled and crushed when your supervisor or co-workers give you constructive but hard-to-hear feedback? Sometimes, we hear feedback as criticism. Criticism isn’t indicative of failure; rather, it’s often a sign you’re pushing yourself and taking on new challenges. Instead of reacting defensively, learn to accept feedback for what it is: an opportunity to learn and perform better the next time. In fact, many managers value employees who can respond swiftly and professionally to constructive criticism over those who never make mistakes in the first place.

You Flip Out in High-Pressure Situations. In today’s fast-moving workplace, plans change, companies pivot, and your team’s priorities may readjust daily. If you feel overwhelmed, paralyzed, or completely thrown for a loop when those changes happen at the office, take pause. In situations like this, take a step back and accept that there are many things in work and in life that you simply can’t control.

Your Identity Is Your Job Title. We all value career success and our professional identities. However, hinging your self-worth solely on being good at your job can become a problematic. This can subconsciously manifest itself. But by tying your identity too closely to your job title, your perspective becomes narrow, focused on getting ahead in this one particular area of your life while neglecting the larger whole. If this sounds familiar, get a healthy dose of perspective by considering what really matters to you aside from your career. What are your talents? How do like to spend your free time? What causes do you care about? Your self-worth is comprised of so much more than what you do for a living.

Your immediate response to a problem is to overreact. Everyone gets spurts of sudden rage every now and then; it’s uncontrollable sometimes. If something has gone suddenly wrong it’s instinct to find yourself frustrated. However, if you’re constantly being the loose cannon in the workplace because someone has upset you or you haven’t got your way, you need to re-evaluate your issues. Is this really the end of the world? Think of the last time you were this angry or frustrated. Did your emotions help you get out of the situation? Chances are the situation sorted itself out and your emotions did nothing but stress you and others around you out.

You can’t sleep or function properly. Lots of people fall asleep thinking about what the next day is going to bring. It’s common to think about your priorities for the following workday. If you’re finding that you’re struggling to sleep because thoughts about work are invading your mind, try writing down your work related thoughts before going to sleep. They won’t go anywhere and hopefully they’ll be out of your head so you can go to sleep. Even if they’re ridiculous, write them down. You may find when you read them the next morning they seem quite trivial.

Your Relationships Are Rocky. It’s possible that you could be projecting work stress onto your relationships.  While jobs will come and go, your relationships are the lifelines that can buoy you through rough patches. Keep in mind that the people you care most about are usually on your side and will support you—you can’t always say the same about your job. While caring about your job is an enviable quality, being too emotionally invested in your career can be detrimental to both your professional and personal goals. By noticing these signs and taking steps to prevent burnout before it starts, you can keep your level of emotional investment in your job in check so that you can thrive on a holistic level and not just in your career.

Remember that you are more than your job. There is a concept called self-complexity. It suggests there are many facets to your identity, and research shows that exploring them can help you cope better with experiences like failure, stress, or depression. It’s important to embrace and derive value from other roles in your life, including your relationships and your hobbies. The ability to detach emotionally from your work can make you better at both living and what you do for a living.