Self-worth? I don't know her.

The other day, someone asked us about coaching and support to help them reset their relationship to work. They were starting a new job, and wanted to use that transition as a moment to set new boundaries and rebuild space for hobbies and creative projects outside of their job. 

It’s a great goal, and one that often sounds so simple on paper: Just sign up for that pottery class. Join your local run club, or civic association, or tabletop gaming meetup. Set a firm shutdown time each evening, and don’t say yes when someone at the new job inevitably asks you for a late meeting or an unrealistic turnaround time. 

But the reality is often more challenging: You sign up for the class… and then no-show on half the sessions because you’re too tired to go. Something keeps coming up. This one request is just too urgent to put off. This one stakeholder is just too important to disappoint. 

When that happens, I often hear people blame themselves: I don’t have the willpower. I’m too lazy. I have bad boundaries. I’m a pushover. 

But after spending the past six plus years helping hundreds (thousands?) of people make sense of their professional lives, I can tell you this for sure: It’s not personal weakness that makes this shift hard. It’s that schedule changes and class signups are surface-level interventions—but the real problem isn’t at the surface. It’s often deep in our psyches—a culturally ingrained belief that our work should be our identity. That the only way to be valuable and worthy as a person is to be constantly productive and successful within a capitalist system. 

Once this belief has taken root, it’s nearly impossible to simply work less or prioritize hobbies more. Because once we’ve fully enmeshed our identity with our work, stepping away from that work—even just a bit—tends to feel like a loss of self. So no matter how much we might crave more time for creative projects and hobbies and friendships and all the rest… when we actually give that time to ourselves, it doesn’t feel as fulfilling or magical as we’d hoped it would. Because we’re still looking to our work to validate who we are as people. 

And until we change that—until we do the deep work of truly unpacking where that belief comes from and untangling our self-worth from our work—all the attempts at work-life boundaries in the world won’t really help. 

But there’s also a twist: This overidentification with work? It also makes us less successful at work. 

This might sound counterintuitive—if work is your #1 priority all the time, wouldn’t that help you get ahead?

Often, no. Because when we believe that our work determines our worth as humans, everything at work feels personal. A piece of design feedback feels like an attack on our character. A difference of opinion feels like rejection. And so to protect ourselves from all that pain, we avoid hard conversations. We try to make everyone happy. We don’t put our best ideas out there. We people-please and play small. We go along to get along. 

And these behaviors will never make us good leaders or good colleagues. Instead, we become more indecisive—because making the wrong call at work would mean we’re not valuable as people. We don’t speak up for what’s right—because all our self-worth is tied to being easy to work with. And we don’t share our ideas and drive a vision forward—because if someone disagrees, it would threaten our whole identity. 

We behave as if disappointing a colleague is the worst crime in the world, and avoid it like the plague. Even when it means staying up all night to hit an unrealistic deadline on a project no one even cares about that much. 

And unfortunately, I’ve noticed that this impulse has been particularly strong on design teams this year. 

It’s not surprising when you think about it: The world feels more unstable and more violent. The industry is shifting. Jobs are harder to get and harder to keep. Of course people feel more afraid—the sense of precarity is real. 

But that’s actually why I think it’s an even more important time to invest in this work—to not just sign up for an art class or join a powerlifting gym, but to do the deeper work of understanding yourself and your identity. The work of learning to see yourself as inherently valuable—as worthy of love and support and care and connection—no matter what’s happening at the office.

That work won’t happen overnight. It’s a process—of reconnecting with your values, of learning to listen to your gut, of finding out what you really think and feel and want. It’s about asking questions like: 

These are big questions—questions that often require you to slow down and sit with discomfort. But I promise, it’s worth it. Because when your sense of self stops resting on the shaky ground of work and career in 2026, you can face the stressors of this moment with less panic and more distance.

You can evaluate the risks of setting a boundary or speaking up in a given moment—instead of avoiding them entirely, because any misstep at work threatens your sense of self. 

You can become a better colleague. A better decision-maker. A more powerful leader.

And actually enjoy that quilting workshop (or guitar lesson, or yoga retreat, or cooking project), too. 

– Sara 

If today’s newsletter resonated with you, I’d love to have you check out Power Shift. It’s our 9-week program designed to help you untangle your self-worth from your work—and claim the power you already have. 

Each week, you’ll get a self-paced module of videos and activities designed to help you explore your relationship with work, power, and your own voice. You’ll also get a weekly live session—either a 90-minute masterclass with me, or a 60-minute group coaching session with Jen. Plus, you’ll be in community with a group of peers who are struggling with the same stuff you are—and asking themselves the same big questions, too. 

Meets Wednesdays starting April 8
Last day to register: April 3
Scholarship application deadline: March 13