Never Be Defined By What You Do
Never Be Defined By What You Do
Transcript
I never want to be defined by what I do, ever, because what happens if I stop doing it? And I think it's a mistake that people private sector or vets in the service make. They define themselves by their MOS. They define themselves by their job.
I'm a banker. I'm an artillery guy. You know, whatever it is. Then what happens if you don't do that? And you see this a lot when people retire, which is they have identity crisis. Because they don't know who they are without their jobs.
Empty nesters have this. They spent 18 years of their lives or more raising these children. And when they leave the house, they're like, now what, right? And some people embrace it, and some people have a real hard time with it. And so, yes, absolutely, I want to be defined by something other than what I do.
So I have written books, so technically I'm an author. You know, I stand on stages and talk, so technically I'm a speaker. But if I never give another speech or write another book, who am I? And so you'll notice like when I blurb on books, for example, when I give an author a blurb on the back of the book, I always insist that they don't write Simon Sinek, author, blah, blah, blah.
It always says Simon Sinek, optimist and author, da, da, da, da, da. I want to be defined by who I am, not what I've done. And so core to my own self view is that I am an optimist, and I can do that in many different forms.
So I think I agree with you. I think we need to have a thing to latch on to that we define ourselves in terms beyond the work we do, and that we can bring that to the work that we do. You can the right thing and don't be lazy in anything. I can bring optimism in anything.
That's really what my purpose is is to bring that thing to my job. The job is incidental. The job is a form. The job is an opportunity for me to bring that contribution, so what do you call it, the why?
Or would you call it values, or what you call it what my dad taught me? It doesn't matter where it comes from, but I completely, completely agree. I think we have to have something to define ourselves by other than the work that we do.
I'm a banker. I'm an artillery guy. You know, whatever it is. Then what happens if you don't do that? And you see this a lot when people retire, which is they have identity crisis. Because they don't know who they are without their jobs.
Empty nesters have this. They spent 18 years of their lives or more raising these children. And when they leave the house, they're like, now what, right? And some people embrace it, and some people have a real hard time with it. And so, yes, absolutely, I want to be defined by something other than what I do.
So I have written books, so technically I'm an author. You know, I stand on stages and talk, so technically I'm a speaker. But if I never give another speech or write another book, who am I? And so you'll notice like when I blurb on books, for example, when I give an author a blurb on the back of the book, I always insist that they don't write Simon Sinek, author, blah, blah, blah.
It always says Simon Sinek, optimist and author, da, da, da, da, da. I want to be defined by who I am, not what I've done. And so core to my own self view is that I am an optimist, and I can do that in many different forms.
So I think I agree with you. I think we need to have a thing to latch on to that we define ourselves in terms beyond the work we do, and that we can bring that to the work that we do. You can the right thing and don't be lazy in anything. I can bring optimism in anything.
That's really what my purpose is is to bring that thing to my job. The job is incidental. The job is a form. The job is an opportunity for me to bring that contribution, so what do you call it, the why?
Or would you call it values, or what you call it what my dad taught me? It doesn't matter where it comes from, but I completely, completely agree. I think we have to have something to define ourselves by other than the work that we do.