Home
>
Parenting
>
Who Are You When the Professional In You Meets Baby?

Who Are You When the Professional In You Meets Baby?

Are you a professional?

Notice how the questions differs from, "Do you have a profession?"

To enter a profession, you invested an enormous amount of time, energy and money. Then you put great effort into earning the respect of clients and colleagues. Now you continually sharpen and update your professional skills.

Your profession has become a major part of your identity. Your profession is a key source -- maybe even the main source -- of meaning and purpose in your life. You feel good when others affirm your professional status and skills.

Your professional role is so woven into the fiber of your being that your don't merely HAVE a profession. You ARE a professional.

All well and good.

Your professional identity can bolster your integrity when you're facing difficult clients or temptations to cut corners. You can take pride in the high standards you set for yourself.

At the same time, your professional identity is only one part of you.

Overwork can unduly inflate the "professional" part of your ID equation. In Work to Live (The Berkley Publishing Group, 2003), author Joe Robinson notes that a job can become "the tail that wags the dog."

When that happens, "you're conditioned to feel as good, or as bad, as your latest performance, your worth always hanging in the balance," Robinson writes. "You have to prove yourself all over again with every task."

Much better if YOU call the tune.

A more resilient identity rests on the full range of who you are: devoted spouse, enthusiastic cook, avid reader, attentive mother, fearsome karate student, passionate gardener, loyal friend, seeker of spiritual truth.

Children are another reason to keep your professional identity from ballooning out of proportion. For one thing, you kids probably couldn't care less about it (though they enjoy the material perks that come with it). For another, attachment to the "strokes" your profession gets you can keep you stuck in work that doesn't work.

Learning to wear your professional identity more lightly is a shift that takes time, patience and a clear intention. You might want to set aside a few moments to reaquaint yourself with your non-professional values, goals and passions. Family members and friends can help you add to your list.

Robinson suggests creating a business card for your non-job identity, with a title related to your personality or a hobby, e.g., "Soulful Gourmet." Robinson recommends pulling out the card often "as a reminder of your real business: to partake in as much of this planet as you can while you can."

The reward is a world of fresh possibilities.

You are much, much bigger than the professional in you.

P.S. If you like the non-professional business card idea, you can choose from a variety of templates for free cards at www.vistaprint.com.

Norma Schmidt, Coach, LLC, specializes in helping working mothers create balance. She offers workshops, teleclasses and individual and group coaching. She also publishes "The Balance Point," a free e-mail newsletter. Visit http://www.normaschmidt.com to learn more.

recurring cleaning service Mundelein ..

In The News:

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Scammers nearly stole an Apple account by exploiting the support system with authentic-looking tickets and phone calls, users can protect themselves with safety steps.

FoloToy restored sales of its AI teddy bear Kumma after a weeklong suspension following safety group findings of risky and inappropriate responses to children.

Threat intelligence firm Synthient uncovers one of the largest password exposures ever, prompting immediate security recommendations.

Viral video shared by Elon Musk shows Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots performing tasks from cooking to construction, garnering over 58.5 million views on social media.

Chinese hackers used Anthropic's Claude AI to launch autonomous cyberattacks on 30 organizations worldwide, marking a major shift in cybersecurity threats.

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Cybersecurity research shows weak passwords remain a major threat, with simple patterns and number sequences putting millions of accounts at risk.

New Android malware BankBot YNRK silences phones, steals banking data and drains crypto wallets automatically. Learn how this advanced threat works.

FDA approves first human trial for Paradromics' brain-computer interface that could restore speech for paralyzed patients through neural technology.

New phishing platform QRR targets Microsoft 365 users across 1,000 domains in 90 countries. Learn how to spot fake login pages and protect your accounts.

OpenTable now uses AI to track your dining habits and share insights with restaurants. Learn what data they collect and how to protect your privacy.

Google's discontinued Nest thermostats still secretly upload home data to company servers despite losing smart features, raising serious privacy concerns.

New Android malware NGate steals NFC payment codes in real-time, allowing criminals to withdraw cash from ATMs without your card. Learn protection tips.

DoorDash confirms data breach exposing customer names, emails, addresses after social engineering attack. Learn how to protect yourself from scams.

Who Are You When the Professional In You Meets Baby?

Parenting