It’s a big question: How can we feel invested in our work and leave everything on the table, but not take it personally when a project fails, critique comes our way or we’re overlooked?

When I started my career in Australia, my workplace quickly became my friendship circle and my whole world. We were a predominately female, single workplace, and everyone was within 5 years of starting their careers. There was no discernible line between person and professional. I loved the job, and quickly felt defined by the role I had landed in an industry with notoriously few entry-level spots. Our work days would blur into nights at the pub. Drunken escapades bonded us. At work, critiques felt like daggers and success made me feel high as a kite. 

Then I moved to New York, where there was a much clearer line between professional and personal. You didn’t really become friends with your workmates. Work was agonised over and perfected, which meant more critical review than I was used to at home. My style of taking things personally started to take up too much mental space, as the slaps (or professional feedback) came faster than the pats (pretty much non-existent). I discovered that fretting gets in the way of creativity and decision-making. And while I was able to help co-workers with their own anxiety, I didn’t yet understand how to show myself the same compassion. My inner-coach was quiet as a mouse. 

We hear this all the time: “It’s not personal, it’s business.” In fact over the last year, this is sentiment many business owners and managers have shared with employees they need to let go. It’s the old “it’s not you, it’s me.” No-one believes that, right? When you are let go…when a project fails… when you don’t get a promotion… it all smarts. Your confidence suffers. And since work is the place where we spend the bulk of our time, and our colleagues the people we spend the bulk of our lives with, perhaps it should. 

The question is, then, how do we give a job our best without allowing it to cost us too much in terms of our own self-worth? How do we stop beating ourselves up?

I heard organisational psychiatrist Gianpiero Petriglieri, MD, discussing this very thing here. He had been studying successful people who work completely independently, and noticed that for these workers there was no such thing as a personal life and a professional life. This is something many of us have experienced in the last year, plunged into WFH situations that blurred every line. According to Petriglieri, when what you do is who you are, on the one hand it’s liberating because you can express yourself, discover yourself and develop yourself through your work. But, it’s also extremely anxiety-provoking.

And here’s where the rubber hits the road: the nature of the anxiety that a very close relationship with work generates is not just the usual performance anxiety, which he describes as questions like ‘Will people listen to me?’ ‘Will I finish this project?’ ‘Will people see that I am adding value?’ ‘Will I get the promotion?’ When everything is very personal, the anxiety becomes existential very quickly. If you succeed, you are a success. You don’t have failures… you are a failure.

The key is to assert boundaries between work and the rest of your life. Yes, feel frustrated at work. Sure, feel elated and disappointed and loyal. The connections we make can lead to great job satisfaction. But don’t let those ups and down penetrate your self-worth. For me, I do think I bring my best self when I feel attached to my work. When I make it personal. But I also try to leave that part of myself at work, rather than drag it home through the door. I try to create parts of my life that work cannot touch. That are good and solid with or without this role or that. That way, if something goes pear-shaped with the former, I have a place where it does not matter. It doesn’t always work, but it’s certainly worth trying.