Stop Asking Work to Love You Back

Imagine expecting your partner to meet all your emotional, intellectual, physical, and social needs. To be your therapist, your gym buddy, your creative muse, your gossip outlet, your personal cheer squad, and your Netflix co-critic. Most of us would agree—that’s too much pressure for one person. It’s the same when we expect one part of life, like work, to give us everything we need.

And yet, how many of us have let work slowly expand until it fills the whole room? There are certainly a few people I coach - or just know - where this is the case.

If work is the first thing on your mind in the morning, the thing that interrupts your sleep at 2am, and the only thing you talk about over dinner—it might be time to diversify your life a little. Stop putting all your life eggs in the work basket? We need more than one thing going on.

Not necessarily more to do—you’re probably already busy—but more things that matter. Things that aren’t about productivity, KPIs, or inboxes. Things that don’t need to “pay off.” Reading weird books. Playing the drums badly. Gardening. Volunteering. Cooking elaborate meals just because. Spending time with people who remind you that you’re more than your job title.

When we only invest in work, we over-identify with it. Which means when work is hard (and it will be), it hits too close to the bone. But when we’ve got other parts of life that are full and meaningful, work can take its proper place: important, yes—but not everything.

So, what’s one thing you could do this week that has nothing to do with work, but everything to do with you?

It doesn’t have to be big. Just not about your job. Start there.