I was a workaholic

On where we get our sense of worth

I’ve been a workaholic most of my life. I told myself I just loved my work.

What a load of crap.

Yes, I’ve always gravitated to work that interests me, and I’ve been able to work on some pretty cool stuff.

So that part is true.

But that’s not why I’ve been a workaholic.

I remember my early career days when I ran a global program for Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley. I had two weeks of holiday a year. They often went unused.

I was in my early twenties back then. Just starting out. I could say I was young and had to prove myself. Or I was immersing myself in the dot-com hype, which was the thing back then.

But I don’t think that’s what it was either.

One of my managers at the time told me I had to learn how to say no. I heard the words. But they never made it past my ears.

Someone asked for something. I delivered, and I did it well. Even if I had to work crazy hours to get it done, because I had too much on my plate.

No matter how often my manager told me, and he wasn’t the only one over the years, I didn’t change. I may have nodded along like one of those bobblehead figurines on the dashboard of a car. But nothing changed.

Saying no wasn’t even a potential option in my mind. I think on some level, I wanted to please people and not let them down. But there was an even bigger reason.

My self-worth was defined by achieving.

It started at a young age. Throughout my school years, I’d work my ass off to get good grades. And only then did I feel good about myself.

That carried over into my career.

We’re bombarded by messages about what’s considered worthy. Often, it’s about how we look, what we have, and what we do. Rarely is it about who we are.

When we meet someone new, one of the first questions we tend to be asked is: “What do you do?” We sometimes judge ourselves and others by the answer.

When the dot-com bubble burst, I took a package and left Hewlett-Packard. I moved to Denmark to be with a guy (that’s a different story). I wasn’t working, so to fill my time, I joined various expat groups to meet new people.

I was always asked the inevitable question. And I always answered: “I used to be the global mobile program manager for Hewlett-Packard.”

It’s not that I couldn’t let go of that identity. It’s that I didn’t consider myself worthy without it.

But it bothered me.

I started questioning who I was without the job title. It was a tough question to answer.

It reminded me of that scene in Runaway Bride where Julia Roberts’s character spends time after all her failed engagements just trying different kinds of eggs, figuring out which ones she actually liked. Not which ones her partner liked.

I had to figure out what I liked and who I was outside of work.

I started focusing my time on things that made me happy. Exercising more. Exploring my new surroundings. Learning to cook. Working on creative projects. Connecting with friends and being an ear for people who needed one, because expat life isn’t always easy.

Something shifted. I got to a place where my answer to the “What do you do?” question became: “I do absolutely nothing, and I love it.”

Look, I didn’t end up doing ‘absolutely nothing’ forever. I like the challenge and contribution that come with work. But when I re-entered the workplace, I did it with more awareness and a different sense of self.

I won’t lie, that workaholic part of me is a deep-rooted pattern. It still seems to pop up out of nowhere like the bloody weeds in my garden after the rain.

But now I notice it before it takes over. I feel tension and angst when it starts to get too big, because it no longer fits who I am or how I want to live.

The weeds still come. I just don’t let them take over the garden.

What are you allowing to define your sense of self-worth?