#18: Your Job Title Is Not Your Identity

What happens when your identity is completely trapped inside your job title?

Most high achievers never see it coming. The assumption that your value equals your performance gets wired into your brain long before you have the tools to question it. By the time you notice, it has already dictated your entire life and career. 

This episode is a raw look at how this hidden script drives burnout, warps your leadership, and spreads through organizations.

In this episode I go over:

• The invisible trap of performance-based worth 
  
  
• Why you don't choose to tie your identity to your work, and why it is so incredibly difficult to untangle
  
  
• Why burnout is a belief problem, not a workload problem 
  
  
• The reason no amount of achievement will ever satisfy the core fear of not being enough
  
  
• Using work as an unhealthy coping mechanism 
  
  
• What happens when professional execution becomes your only tool to avoid facing personal pain.
  
  
• How leader trauma scales into corporate culture 
  
  
• Why organizational dysfunction is rarely a systems problem, but rather the unhealed wounds of its leaders.
  
  
• The absolute necessity of inside-out transformation 
  
  
• Why building new structures on top of a broken personal foundation guarantees eventual collapse.

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Transcript

Identity Tied To Performance

SPEAKER_00 0:00

One of the hardest things that I've had to deal with in regards to my burnout is fusing my identity and my sense of self-worth to my performance. And I'll never forget when I first realized that this happened to me. It was around 2019. I just moved to a district overseeing Rhode Island and New York and Massachusetts. And I was a pretty naive young leader still. I had about a year of multi-unit management underneath my belt. And I had moved into this, quite frankly, shit show of a district. And I didn't really have the tools or the chops to go in and be super strategic about making the changes that I needed to make to stabilize the culture of these stores. And so I was super in over my head. And what happened a few months into it was I was just having to replace people left and right. I didn't have any stable leadership. I was essentially trying to manage all the stores all at once. And I was super overwhelmed. And it was one of the first times in my career that I genuinely felt like quitting. And being the very extreme mindset that I was back then, because of the Marine Corps and my upbringing and this identity that I had to create to kind of survive these circumstances, I decided to do something very drastic in order to make sure that I didn't quit. Because at the time, quitting felt worse than dying. And that's kind of how it feels when you tie your identity to your job title or your performance. And this doesn't just happen consciously, meaning we don't just sit there and decide one day, yeah, my value comes from what I do. That's not how it happens. It happens unconsciously before we have the capacity to make a different decision about who we

The Tattoo That Locked Him In

SPEAKER_00 1:44

are. And so for me, in order for me to not quit, essentially to hold on to this identity, I literally got a tattoo of the company name I used to work for on my arm. And hope this doesn't get me into legal trouble, but here it is. This is a real tattoo. I'm getting it redone soon. That's how extreme I was. If that isn't an external manifestation of defining my worth through my job, I don't know what else is. And what happens was after I did that, in my mind, quitting was worse than dying. One of the things that you learn in the Marine Corps is that you have to sacrifice yourself for the sake of the mission. And that's exactly how I felt in this job. And so I spent the next year in that district rebuilding it from the ground up. And by the end of it, I had stabilized things. However, I was completely burned out. And I've talked about this before. I was exhausted and I felt like my life force had just been sucked out of me. And that was one of the first times where I had a real conversation with myself. And I told myself, I can't do this anymore. And for me, quitting felt like dying. So instead of quitting the organization, I had this thing tattooed on my arm after all. So I didn't feel like I could quit.

Demotion, Relief, And The Pattern

SPEAKER_00 3:05

I pleaded to my boss to demote myself. And they just so happened to be opening a store in Lafayette, Indiana. So thankfully, by the time that I was really burned out, I was able to move to Indiana. And I remember when I demoted myself, it was a huge ego hit because I took a lot of pride of being the youngest district manager in the company. And I took a lot of pride of the amount of responsibility that I had. And like a lot of people who are young and ambitious, or just ambitious in general, I wore burnout as a badge of honor. And because of that, admitting to myself that I couldn't handle the responsibility of being a district manager anymore was very much so an ego blow. But I did it anyway. I demoted myself. And while there was a lot of anger at myself, while there was a lot of sadness and uncomfortability with that, I'm not afraid to admit that part of me felt relieved. However, this didn't last long because when I moved to Lafayette, Indiana, I helped coordinate a record-breaking store opening. It was the first record-breaking store opening in the company in a long time, because it had been a while since they opened new stores. And I was ecstatic. I was on Cloud Nine.

The Call That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 4:14

And I'll never forget the next day after the opening, I was coming into the store and I get this phone call from my dad. And at this point in time, we weren't on a lot of really speaking terms. So I knew in my gut that there was something wrong. And so he called me, I answered the phone, and he was in tears. And he said, Brennan, I need you to come home. And I asked him why. What's going on? And he didn't look at me. He told me with his very somber voice, he said, Your mom died. And I just remember sitting there for a second, pausing, and I remember being like, Okay, I'll come home. And uh I'd spent a lot of years before that using work as a way to run away from home. I grew up in really chaotic circumstances. And when I said my mom, I met my stepmom because I had known her since I was four. And so when I learned she passed away, I had a lot of mixed emotions. Emotion number one was anger because she treated me like shit when I was younger. It's it's she had this weird Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality, meaning you didn't really know what version of her you'd get when you woke up. And so I had anger. I had anger at myself because I didn't really spend any time or energy trying to maintain a relationship with her because of the anger that I had. I felt grief, of course, because the woman that I'd consider my mother, the woman I'd considered my mother from the time I was four years old, all of a sudden was gone. And I also felt confused. I didn't really know what to do. And in my heart, I was like, all right, I'm gonna go home for for a few days and and just try to be there for my family. So I went home, and to give you some perspective of the kind of culture that this company carried, and I'm not saying this is a representation of the whole company, I'm just saying this is my experience. One

Grief Meets Grind Culture

SPEAKER_00 6:24

of the people that helped me open the store, his commission check was based off of how much revenue they made in the first 30 days of the store opening. And so he texted me when I was home asking me when I was gonna get back to work. And this was only day two of me being home after finding out that my mom died. And the reason why he texted me, he even said in the text message, we got to make sure we hit this certain amount so I can get my commission check. And I just remember feeling so fucking angry and just so disgusted that somebody would even one have the balls to say that to somebody whose mom just died, and two, who has that amount of selfishness to think that that's okay to do. And I remember at that point essentially telling him to go fuck himself. And I was really mad at him for a while. And this was the person who originally really helped develop me in the organization. So it was kind of a weird thing for that to happen to me because I really respected this person that did this. And that's when I started to realize, man, I have a real problem with tying my identity to my work.

Work As Avoidance And Stimulants

SPEAKER_00 7:44

After my mom died, though, I didn't really know how to cope or deal with it. The only way I knew how to cope with things in my life up to that point was to double down on my work and grind. And I spent three or four days at home and I was like, all right, well, I gotta go work harder now. I gotta make sure that her death is not in vain. And so I used her death as an excuse to, in a way, start slowly killing myself. And that's really hard to admit because the story that I told myself back then was I'm doing this for her. I'm doing it to make her proud. And the reality was that I was using work as a form of avoidance. But part of this identity and performance merge is that we are reinforced for the external things that we accomplished, and we are abandoned for the things that we experience internally. The things that we're experiencing on the inside are not valued nearly as much as the things that are able to be seen on the outside. And because of that, it's easy for us to continue to hustle and grind our way into the grounds and get away with it. And for me, because that was the only way I knew how to cope with the death of my mom, and also with all these other things that I had built up. I mean, I had my surgeries that I never fully processed. I had the addiction gene that manifested in different forms throughout my life that I never really got to the root to. I had anxiety, I had low and low self-worth, I had insecurity, I had all these things that I used work as a mask to avoid. Yeah, I was just like, okay, well, I got to keep going. And because I was burned out still, especially from my experience with the other district that I demoted myself from, I had to figure out a way to keep going. Because for me, quitting was worth worse than death. Because when you tie your identity and your worth to something outside of you, it feels like death if you lose it. That's what addiction feels like when you stop using. That's what a job title feels like when you stop using. That's why veterans, after getting out of the military, have such a hard time because they've tied their whole identity to committing their life and purpose to serving the country. And then all of a sudden, they just get thrown to the wayside. And so that's how it felt. It felt like my life would have been meaningless if I was not continuing to thrive in the company. So if that's your mindset and that's what you believe, you're gonna do whatever means necessary in order to keep going. And what that was for me was lying to a doctor and getting him to prescribe meants. And oh boy, when I did that, it felt like I had reborn, it's like I rebirthed myself. I remember the first time I took Vivance, and I, by the way, I don't have ADHD, I don't have ADD. I remember the first time taking that, and I felt like life was being breathed into me for the first time because I had spent years just being tired and exhausted and just doing so many things that were terrible for my body. And for the first time, I found something that was able to fully cover all that up. And as you can imagine, I rode that high and I went from being a general manager to back to being a district manager within a year of demoting myself. And so I kept repeating the same old patterns over and over and over again, and it was a result of something unconscious. And that unconscious thing was a belief that I had that I had learned from the Marine Corps, from my family, from my circumstances, before I had the faculties and the awareness to decide differently. And that belief was I am not good enough. My value comes from what I do. And so you can imagine if you believe that unconsciously to be true, and knowing that our belief system shapes our perception of the world and ourselves, and then that perception drives our thought patterns, and those thought patterns drive our behavior, maybe it makes more sense as to why I was willing to pursue success at the detriment of myself.

When A Company Runs On Lack

SPEAKER_00 11:59

And now I want to talk about the bigger issue with this because that's what happened on an individual level. Now imagine if you have multiple people in an organization that also have that identity fusion with their performance. Imagine if you have a ton of people who all believe collectively that they're not enough. And so the way that the company is built is from a culture of lack, from a culture of hustle and grind, from a culture of burnout. And I see this a lot with service-based organizations, commission-based organizations. I see this a lot with people who have not dealt with the shit in their life that they needed to deal with. And then all of a sudden, because they've achieved some sort of professional success, they now feel like that they rule the world. And I don't, again, I don't think that people in an organization sit down together at this at this collective table and say, we're gonna make people believe that their value comes from their worth so we can extract them from money. That's not what I what I think happens. I think it's a lot sneakier than that. I think that because our society is set up the way it is, it's easy for us to get away with living in the hustle and grind paradigm. Meaning it's easy for us to get away with thinking and believing that our value comes from our work. And companies that rely on a ton of manpower and willpower to perform their services and serve their customers will take advantage of that. And so for me, I came into this organization when I was 19 years old, fresh from the Marine Corps, primed to be taken advantage of. And part of what my struggle also was was even though I had a lot of times where I intuitively knew I was being taken advantage of, I was so scared to say no and so scared to stand up for myself because I believe deep down that if I lost my job, I lost my life. And maybe to some of you that sounds extreme. And maybe to some of you, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And what happens when you have a ton of those people in an organization, you have a culture that burns bright and then burns out fast. And that's the cycle I see a ton, especially with fast-growing organizations. You start out and the heart of the organization is really strong. Everybody's motivated and they're willing to work long hours. It's this startup mentality. Then all of a sudden you get to a certain amount of employees and revenue. And the same thing that got you to the same thing that promoted that initial growth is not the same thing that's going to help you have sustainable growth. But what

Systems Without Heart Create Burnout

SPEAKER_00 14:36

happens is people try to change the outside, meaning they try to change their systems, their processes, and their structure without changing their inside. And what that does is we replace one thing for the other. So we replace the heart of the organization, which is its people, and it's the thing that powers the vehicle, which is the organization. And we replace it with just the vehicle itself. It's like having a vehicle without any gas in it. And so what happens is the structure and the systems and processes become the thing that overcompensates for a lack of the humanity within the organization. And how that feels is like the soul of the organization is being extracted. How it feels is burnout. How it feels is people just going through the motions, how it feels is disengagement. So it's a lot deeper than we think. When companies, especially if they're fast-growing organizations, start to feel like they're hollow, it's because collectively the people within the organization have not made the humanness of it a priority. And no matter how much money you make, how many systems you put in place, how much structure that you build, nothing long term can make up for a lack of heart. Nothing can make up for a lack of humanity. And so what happens is at some point, shit hits the fan, just like burnout. For me, when I was, I believe, at this point 25 years old, I hit my breaking point and I collapsed because my identity was not based off of a solid foundation. I had built myself from a place of not believing that I was enough. I had built myself from this place of not being good enough. And when you go from that place, you have to use corrosive fuel to get there. You have to use anger at yourself, fear, guilt, shame. You have to use all this toxic fuel. And at some point, that fuel runs out and it destroys you from the inside out. And so at one point, you can bullshit your way to the top, but you can't stay there. So success that is built from a lack of humanity is unsustainable. And it may look really good at first, which makes it easy to cover up, but then at some point it collapses onto itself. And that's exactly what I see happen to organizations too. They start out understanding the why and the purpose and the soul. And then the bigger they grow, they lose sight of the soul, and then the head overpowers the heart. And then now everybody feels like a machine. Nobody likes being there. And then turnover happens. But by the time your people disengage, and by the time turnover happens, that shit's been going on for years. And nobody knew. And I saw this happen and experienced this happen within the organization that was fast growing.

Rebuilding Humanity At Work

SPEAKER_00 17:28

And if you're somebody listening to this and you're probably one of two people, you're either the person who is burning right now, or sorry, you are you're the person who is burning out right now within the organization, or you're the person who is watching other people in your organization burn out. I'm begging you, take this episode and realize that what is happening at some level is that you have lost sight of the people, or you have lost sight of yourself. And if that's happened, you better start really addressing the heart of the organization. Because if you don't, then it's gonna eventually collapse onto itself. A building is only as strong as its foundation. It doesn't matter how good a car looks, how pimped out the accessories are, if there's no engine and there's no gas, our people and the organizations that we are a part of are the gas to the car. They are the life force that fuels the vessel. And without the life force, the vessel is meaningless and worthless. So if you are working at a job right now that you feel is meaningless, check yourself. If you are a leader of an organization and you notice your people are burning out, check yourself. If you are the leader who is feeling like things are meaningless, check yourself. It is time for us to stop trying to force ourselves to cover up the lack of humanity within these corporations through these fancy accolades and external accomplishments that actually don't mean anything. I'm all about profit, I'm all about making money, I'm all about the fancy shit. That's great. But if we're using it as a way to overcompensate for the things that make us human and for the things that truly matter, then it's just a matter of time before that shit blows up. So those are the consequences of fusing your identity with your performance on a personal level and a professional level. And

Mission, Resources, And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 19:21

it is my mission to help establish organizations develop their people beyond their title. Meaning, it is my job and my duty with my business to bring the heart back into organizations. And that's why I do talks, that's why I do workshops, that's why I do group coaching. Because I don't want anybody to have to experience what I experienced. So if you're listening to this right now, I hope it resonated with you. Share this with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe if you're watching on YouTube, leave a review. And I love you guys.