Why You're a Different Person at Work Than You Are at Home

Most successful people run two versions of themselves — one for work, one for everyone else. In this episode, Afzal Patni breaks down why that gap forms, why it quietly exhausts you, and what it actually takes to become one integrated person instead of constantly switching between selves.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want to start with a question that tends to make successful people shift in their seats. If I separately ask people you work with and the people you live with to describe you, would they describe the same person? For a lot of high performers, the honest answer is no, not even close. There is a work self and there is a home self, and they are different enough that the people in each world would barely recognize the description from the other. Today I want to talk about why that gap forms, what it is quietly costing you, and what it actually takes to close it. Because most people think running two versions of themselves is just normal adult life, and I want to offer a different way of seeing it. Let me start with how this happens because nobody chooses it deliberately that much. Early on, you learn that certain version of you gets rewarded in certain places. At work, maybe it was decisiveness, composure, always having an answer, never showing uncertainty. So you built that version, sharpened it, and it worked. It got you promoted, respected, trusted with bigger things. But that version came with a cost. To be that composed, that certain that in control all day, you had to put other parts of yourself away. The uncertainty, the tiredness, the softness, the parts that did not serve the performance. Those parts did not disappear, they are just kept under a LUD. They wait and they come out where the performance is not required anymore at home. Which is why the home version often looks like the leftover version depleted, short, checked out. Because home gets whatever is left after the work self has used up the day's energy. Simple as that, which makes sense as well. For some people, it runs the other way. Home is where they are soft, pleasant, loving. And how work is where they become someone harder that they like. Someone who makes decisions, the home version would be uncomfortable with. Either way, mechanism is the same. You build different selves for different environments because different selves gets rewarded in each, and over time the gap between them widened until they become almost two different people. Then here is what most people do not realize about running two different versions of themselves. It is exhausting, not in an obvious way, in a way that runs underneath everything. Holding two shelves apart is keeping the work version and the home version separate. Switching between them, making sure the wrong one does the not show up in the wrong place, takes constant low level energy within you. It runs in the background all day, every day, and you have been doing it so long you do not even feel it as effort anymore. It just feels like being tired all the time for no clear reason. There is a second cost, the wider the gap, the less either version feels like the DLU. The work version knows is performing, and that version is performing well. The home version knows it is only part of that picture, and somewhere underneath both there is a quiet question that a lot of successful people carry but rarely say out loud, which is one is actually me performing well, and it happens underneath. Am I the composed leader or the depleted person or the coach or what is happening? Am I the warm partner or the hard operator? The answer that haunts is maybe neither, maybe both are performance and the real me got lost somewhere between them. That the work culture takes this part element on them pretty in a harsh manner. What I mean by that is when they are at work they have to put up an level where they are able to constantly do the work, be decisive, have to take all the calls, be have the answer for everything. And when they are at home, depending on their home culture, they either have to work and do the family work or they switch on that mode and they go into that feminine energy and let the husband take the charge at home because they don't want to be decisive anymore, they just want to sit and relax after a long hectic day. And I've personally seen so many of this ladies that they become too tired of this routine. Not because they are doing it in the wrong fashion, not because it is taxing or it's wrong, because when they shift the energy flow, the masculinity of decision making to a feminine to where they just want to sit and relax, that shift consumes a lot of energy of them. They are taxing in a different road. But someone you know personally, maybe a girlfriend, maybe your wife, you must have noticed with them, and even the women who are listening to this podcast, they must have felt that that switch which is there. At times they are when they leave the office and when they are with their loved ones, they feel the most blessed because they can let go of that that version in total. Now what happens is this that's the deeper caution this not just exhaustion, a slow disconnection from yourself happens. You become very good at being who each situation requires and gradually lose contact with who you actually are underneath all the requirements, and this is exactly what I mean when I talk about people who look fine on the paper and feel disconnected inside. The disconnection is often this too well-built version of a person, and no clear sense of the person underneath them. So, what is the alternative? Because isn't that if you're telling this makes sense, if I'm telling that, that it makes sense at times, and if I'm telling it's taxing, also, then what is the alternative? Because I am not saying you should be identical in board meetings and on your living room floor, the context matters. You speak differently to investor than to your kids. That is not the gap I am talking about. The gap I am talking about is between two selves that feel fundamentally different, different values, different temperament, different level of presence and honesty and warmth. Integration does not mean behaving identically everywhere, it means being the same person everywhere, even as your behavior adapts to the context. Now, here is the difference that will help you understand it deeper. An integrated person in a tough negotiation is still recognizable themselves, they have just brought their focus and firmness forward. An integrated person read reading their kid at bedtime story is still the same person, they have brought their warmth and presence forward, same person, different facet, not different people. How do we build that? It starts with noticing the gap honestly. Most people have never actually looked at it. So the first step is simply to ask, where am I most myself? Most people have a place, a situation, a person, an activity where they feel most like the real them. Start there. Notice what that version feels like, what is present. Is it that disappears in the other environments or it stays with you? Then the work is bringing that core self into the place where it usually gets left behind, not all at once, in small ways, letting a little more of you, real self, show up at work, bringing a little more of you, your present, engage self-home instead of just the leftovers, and underneath all of that, looking at why the split formed in the first place, what makes us unsafe to the whole world, you in certain places, especially, because that is usually an old pattern. When you understand that in the route, the split stops needing to be maintained, the two versions starts to merge back into the man, and that one is the real you, and the exhaustion of holding them apart finally stops. Something to carry into your week is notice the switch. The moment you walk out of work mode and into the home mode or the reverse, there is a transition point of in the commute, the front door, the change of clothes, and in that transition, you can feel one version powering down and another powering up. Just notice it this week. You do not have to change anything yet, just become aware that the switch is happening, that that two of you, and the moment where one hands off to the other, that awareness is the beginning because you cannot integrate two things you have never consciously seen as separate. If you want to understand, you specifically split where it came from and what it would take to become one person again. That is exactly the kind of thing that conversation after the free video is for. Watch it and see if it resonates. Link is in the description. I will see you Thursday.