Simon Sinek argues that tying your identity to your job title creates a crisis when you retire or change roles. Instead, anchor yourself in lasting personal traits. He calls himself an optimist and author, labels he'll keep for life regardless of what work he does.
If you look at most people's bios, and let's be honest, we write our own bios, right? You can see how people define themselves. They will say the title, you know, owner-operator, it'll say CEO, it'll say Oscar-nominated actor, whatever it is. And so we're talking about ourselves based on the position we hold or something we did 20 years ago. But that's not who we are. And I see this happen to a lot of people, usually more successful people, believe it or on, which is they completely intertwine their identities with their jobs. And if they stop doing their jobs, they retire, they move on, whatever it is, they have crazy identity crises. And so I realized this years ago that I wanted to feel about myself who I was. So whenever you see me blurb a book or if you see my bio, it says optimist and author. And so I will be an optimist till the day I die, but the stuff I do will change throughout my life. So I want to be defined by who I am, not what I do.
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