When Did You Erase Yourself From Your Own Life? Professional Health

EPISODE 5 - PROFESSIONAL HEALTH

PK: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Momma's Motivational Messages Podcast, where women learn to stop putting themselves on the back burner and start paying attention to caring for themselves first so they can be better for everyone else in their lives. I know you'll be inspired by the stories of resiliency and starting over, of health and self-healing, of gaining clarity through journaling, of showing self-love through world travel, and the list goes on.

I encourage you to relax and enjoy. I'm your host, PK Kirkland, PK [00:01:00] 

Welcome back, everyone. This is episode five of our seven-part series, Celebrating Women. So far, we've covered mental, physical, social, and emotional health. 

PK: Answer this question for me. If someone stopped you today, a stranger, a friend, anyone, and asked you to describe yourself in [00:02:00] three words, what would you say?

I want you to notice something about the words that came up. Were any of them your job title, your professional role, the thing you do to earn a living, or to feel useful in the world? For a lot of women, especially the women who find their way to this show, the answer would be yes. Because somewhere along the way, without quite meaning to, we let what we do become who we are, and for a while that works.

It gives us structure, identity, and purpose. It gives other people a shorthand for referring to us or talking about us. She's the teacher, the lawyer, [00:03:00] the entrepreneur, the doctor, the one who built something from nothing. But then one day, and I want you to think about whether this has happened to you, the job changes or ends or evolves into something that no longer feels like yours.

Or the children leave, and the caretaking role that felt like a career in itself suddenly grows quiet. And you look around and think, if I'm not that anymore, then who am I?

That's what today's episode is about. It's not about your career strategy, not about your next professional move, but about something much more fundamental than that. [00:04:00] Today, we're talking about your professional health and what it means to own who you are beyond the work you do

Speaker: Now, let me say upfront, there's nothing wrong with being ambitious and climbing the corporate ladder.

That's fine if that's what you want. But when work becomes the thing that consumes all of your attention and energy, including your health and your sense of who you are, that is no longer just ambition. That's like taking a huge eraser and rubbing yourself out of the picture.

PK: Remember the days of writing in a notebook in primary school before we all started using technology? Can you recall trying to erase an error and rubbing the eraser so hard across that error that you put a hole in the paper? [00:05:00] Then you sat there in a panic because you didn't know how you would explain the missing work to your teacher or your parent.

That's precisely what you do to yourselves, one item at a time, like skipping your morning walk because someone has an earlier appointment and needs your help getting ready. Or when someone asked you how you were and you said, "Fine, busy." You know, even though you weren't fine, you felt that the person asking didn't have time for your complaints.

It happens every time you move yourself to the bottom of your own list until you remove yourself off the list entirely. It's so gradual that most women don't notice it happening until one day they look in the mirror and think, "I'm not sure I know who that woman looking back at me is anymore." Take a [00:06:00] moment and do a check-in with yourself.

So here's what I need most for you to understand. Erasing yourself by putting your needs at the bottom of your own list is not devotion. It's not the price of being a good mother or a good partner or a good woman. It may feel like love because it looks like sacrifice, and sacrificing is something you're used to doing.

But love does not require you to disappear. Devotion does not require you to cancel or erase yourself. It does not require that you give everything until there's nothing left. To be healthy in your professional settings requires that you keep showing up for yourself at the top of your own list

This brings me to the topic of burnout, that [00:07:00] state of feeling emotionally drained continuously, the feeling like you're on autopilot, just watching your life from the outside, but not being engaged in it. You feel detached from everyone and everything. It's like being at a party where on the outside you're having a blast, but on the inside you feel numb.

You can't even enjoy the music or dancing, some things you genuinely love to do. It's like watching your own life play out, but you're not really involved. Maureen, a woman I know, says, "I feel like I'm going through the motions, but I'm not really there. I watch myself doing things, making dinner, having conversations, going through my day, but it feels automatic, like I'm on autopilot."

[00:08:00] Like being present in body, but absent in spirit. You're carrying on with the usual activities, but you're emotionally drained. It feels like being competent and completely hollow all at the same time kinda like the outside of a coffee cup that's still warm even though the contents are gone This is one of the most important signals your mind and body can send you that something needs to change.

Because the effects of burnout do not stay at work. They get into your relationships, your parenting, your sleep, and your physical health. Burnout becomes not just a work problem, but a whole life problem.

That is what happens when a woman's professional identity has been so [00:09:00] thoroughly built around what she does for others that she has never had the chance to figure out what she does for herself

Is that woman you?

Does anything I just described feel familiar?

If you saw yourself in those words and felt a flicker of shame or embarrassment, stop right there. The good news is that this state does not have to be permanent or your new normal. What you're experiencing is not a personal failing. It's not evidence that you chose the wrong career, or that you're ungrateful for what you've built, or that you're not strong enough to handle what everyone else seems to be handling just fine. This goes deeper than a personal failing.

The first thing [00:10:00] people ask when they meet you is, "What do you do?" Not who you are, not what you love, but what you do. And we have heard that question so many times for so many years that most of us just accepted it.

Of course, your job is who you are. Nobody ever told us anything different 

So if the work has changed or the meaning has faded or the identity has hollowed out, that loss is real. It's significant, and it makes complete sense that it would shake something deep in you. Any woman carrying what you have been carrying would feel exactly this way.

You are a woman who's being asked, perhaps for the first time, to figure out who she is [00:11:00] when the title does not do the work for her. This is not a crisis. It's an invitation to make some changes to the way you have been doing things

I know the oxygen mask example is overused, but it fits perfectly with today's conversation. Every time you get on a plane, the flight attendant tells you, "In the event of an emergency, put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others." Every single time. And yet, how many of us live our professional lives doing exactly the opposite?

You stay late to cover for a colleague while your own project falls behind. You take on additional responsibilities because you want to be seen as a team player. You skip lunch. You answer emails at 11:00 [00:12:00] PM. You tell yourself, "Just until this project is done."

And then there's always another project. The oxygen mask principle is not selfish. It's the only strategy that actually works. You cannot sustain yourself or what you're building if you're running out of air. That's why I'm going to suggest some strategies to help you get back on track, especially in our culture of always being on.

It's like we never turn off the noise. It doesn't help that many people still work remotely, so the lines between the office and the home become blurred

Professional health, true professional health, is about knowing who you are when the work is done, about having an [00:13:00] identity that's large enough to hold your career as one part of it, an important part, a meaningful part, without letting the career be the whole of it

It's about owning your story rather than outsourcing it to a job description. And here's what I know from working with women in exactly this place: The women who navigate professional transitions with the most grace, the ones who move through job loss, career pivots, retirement, or role changes without losing themselves, are not the ones who loved their work less.

They're the ones who loved themselves more. The ones who had a self that existed independently of the work. A self that was curious and [00:14:00] opinionated and alive in ways that had nothing to do with their professional identity 

Here are some things you can try to start getting back to the self that is in you, the curious, opinionated, alive person outside of your professional identity that's just been waiting for permission to shine. These practices are grounded in current occupational health research and designed for the realities of twenty-twenty-six, which is a hybrid work, always-on culture, and the blurring of professional and personal boundaries

Number one: Define your enough threshold. Before a workday starts, decide what done [00:15:00] looks like. And when you hit it, stop without guilt. Personally, I'm a work in progress where this is concerned. Because without that predetermined hard stop, I can find myself taking just another hour, and another, and another.

And before you know it, I've added another three hours to an already exhausting workday

Number two, and this is very important, block exercise time on your work calendar. Treat it like a meeting you cannot cancel because it is

Next, conduct a regular social media audit. Track how much time you actually spend on platforms versus how much time you think you [00:16:00] spend. The numbers are usually alarming. I was alarmed by my own numbers since I'm not a social media buff, or didn't think I was

Identify three recurring tasks you can hand off, automate, or simply stop doing. Next, design a workday boundary ritual, a specific action that signals work is done. Change your clothes, take a walk, and make a cup of tea. Your nervous system needs a cue that you've transitioned out of work mode

Then curate your environment intentionally. Proximity to positive, supportive people at work is not just nice. Research shows it directly affects your stress levels, creativity, and job satisfaction [00:17:00] 

Then I want you to create a non-negotiable list. What are the personal commitments that you will not sacrifice regardless of work? Time with your children? A weekly dinner with a friend? Your Saturday morning exercise routine? Write them down. Post them. Protect them 

 PK: Reality check, my friends. You don't have to do it all. You don't have to do it perfectly. You don't have to do it alone. And choosing yourself, setting a limit, asking for help, none of those things make you less of a woman. In fact, they make you a woman who's going to be around for a long, long time.

With that in [00:18:00] mind, here is today's affirmation

I define success on my own terms. I work with purpose and rest without guilt. My worth is not measured by my productivity.

 I define success on my own terms. I work with purpose and rest without guilt. My worth is not measured by my productivity

 I define success on my own terms.  I work with purpose and rest without guilt. My worth is not measured by my productivity 

Before we close, I wanna say something directly to you. You're not your job title. You're not your professional achievements. You're not your career trajectory, your LinkedIn profile, your [00:19:00]annual performance review, Or the sum total of what you've produced in exchange for a salary you are a woman with a particular and irreplaceable way of seeing the world, with values that have been shaped by everything you have lived through, with curiosity that has survived decades of being redirected toward other people's priorities.

You're a woman with a story that's still being written, and that is more interesting, more complicated, and more worthy of your attention than any job description that has ever tried to contain you The fact that you're here today listening to this, sitting with these questions, willing to look at the parts of your professional life that have felt hollow or heavy or confusing, is the [00:20:00] beginning of your professional health.

Real professional health. The kind that does not depend on a title or a salary or a performance review to tell you who you are

You are a woman with an unfinished glow that is worth every bit of the attention you are finally giving yourself

Thank you for being here today, my beautiful midlifers and empty nesters. Thank you for giving this conversation your time and your honest attention.

If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. It is the simplest way to make sure you never miss a conversation. 

And if you know a woman who would recognize herself in what we talked about today, one who is competent and [00:21:00] capable and quietly hollow in the middle of a career that should feel like enough, please share this episode with her. That's how we find each other

PK: In our next episode, we're going inward to the part of you that no job title can touch. We're talking about spiritual wellness. Until then, this is PK [00:22:00]