And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols, and this is episode 162.

It's titled, Don't Let Your Career Define You.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

So, quick question for you, listeners.

Imagine you're invited to a friend's house for a party and you find yourself chatting to a total stranger.

If they were to say to you, so what do you do?

What's the first thing that pops into your mind?

Go on. What do you do?

Do you swim? Do you play cricket? Do you party? What do you do? Do you swim? Do you play cricket? Do you party? What do you do? Because that's what they're asking, isn't it? What sort of things do you do? Or are they? Do they actually mean, what do you do for a living? What's your job? Of course it is. Now, I know that it's just small talk, chit-chat,

something to say just to get the conversation going, but the fact that, apart from the weather,

what someone does for a living is the first place people tend to go. I think it's worth questioning

it, to be honest, because there's more to us than our job.

It shouldn't define who we are. At least, it shouldn't be the only thing that defines us.

But in our culture, we do seem to overly value a career and use it to describe ourselves.

And this even starts before kids get to school. If someone

doesn't really know how to talk to children, they sort of run out of things to say. Within a minute or

two, we're on to that peculiar question of, what do you want to be when you grow up? Hmm. What do you

want to be? How serious is that for a four-year-old? It's

pretty deep, really. Always makes me think of a Charlie Brown cartoon strip from the 1960s where

Charlie Brown says to Linus, do you ever think much about the future, Linus? And he says,

...