I am not my job.

Last Friday night at bedtime, I was reading a chapter book about Eva the owl with my seven year old daughter, Avery.

Eva’s owl class was having a show and tell about their hobbies, and each student brought in something to share about what they like to do for fun. After all the owls shared, they talked about their parents’ hobbies. But while other kids could easily say what their parent enjoyed doing, Eva wasn’t quite so sure.

I turned to Avery before flipping the page and asked: “What do you think Daddy and my hobbies are?” She thought for a quiet moment and then said: “Ummm…lying down and working??”

This hit me in the gut—because she’s not wrong. Nightly, she sees us either wrapped up on the couch watching Netflix or at our computers, my husband sending emails to his students’ parents and me doing whatever needs doing in my business.

In American culture, we often center our identities on our jobs. It’s notoriously the first get-to-know-you question we’re asked: “What do you do?”

I preach that each of us should take ownership of our own professional identity—that instead of blurting out your job title and company, you can craft an answer that is based on who you are, what you stand for, and what you bring to the table. That way, your answer will feel authentic, exciting, and true to you, no matter your job status.

When I stepped off of the career ladder, I did more than define my own professional identity—I built a business around it. And while the work that I do is in alignment with my mission, vision, and values—the work is not me.

This conversation with my daughter was the reminder I needed that my work isn’t the center of my identity. I am.

Your job is not who you are. You are who you are.

Instead of your job being the center of your world and everything else fitting in around it, YOU are the center of your world, and your work (along with everything you do) is an expression of who you are.

I help the leaders I work with shift how they think about their work, but I need to remind myself of this regularly, and perhaps you need the reminder, too?

After Avery and I flipped the page, little Eva the Owl went to her grandparents’ house, where she asked about them what her parents like to do (she didn’t want to ask them directly because she thought asking might seem like she was calling them boring!). She learned that her parents used to be…ballroom dancers! But they had stopped because now “their hobby was raising their three children.”

Lately, I’ve felt like I am my work and I am motherhood and that’s it.

And clearly, I don’t just feel this way. My daughter is seeing it, too.

There is no time for more. I love my work, and I love being a mom—both are creative expressions of who I am. But I’ve gotten into a place where I’ve allowed them to consume me and my identity. It seems like they’re all there is.

Work and motherhood are not enough for me. I want to be a whole expression of who I am. So I’ve started asking myself about what I genuinely enjoy, things that I used to do when I was younger, things that I say I love but never actually make time for.

• I’ve started sewing again.

• I’m taking a tap dancing class.

• I’m baking pies when the spirit moves me.

• I’m researching season tickets to the Providence Performing Arts Center because for the first 18 years of my life I lived and breathed musical theater.

• And I’m looking up local adult choirs to join because somehow 15 years have flashed by since I sang as part of a group (any tips in RI/southern MA?)

I'm curious: Would the people around you say that your hobbies are laying down and working?

Perhaps it’s time to reclaim yourself as the center of your world, and to define how work can be an expression of you rather than who you are.