Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Yet low self esteem is considered to be closely linked to forms of mental illness. It is a classic yin and yang paradox. You want to be proud of yourself, you want others to be proud of you, yet you do not want to be arrogant or narcissistic. You do not want to display such an inflated ego that nobody wants to be around you, yet you do not want to feel like a failure in life either.
I have thought about this a lot because of my career. Not my unpaid blogging career, but my old 9 to 5 one. My persona in the personal finance/careers/retirement space is a little different than most other bloggers. Typically they come at you with an attitude that puts jobs in a negative light. Many look at work as a necessary evil that you tolerate for as short a time as possible, saving and investing like mad, then you transition into real life when you retire early. Its the very essence of the original FIRE. Financial Independence Retire Early (F.I.R.E.) originally was all about escaping the serfdom of work.
My experience was so different from that. I loved my job! And I will not apologize for that, my job was one of the best parts of my life and some of my best accomplishments were things I did at work. Many of my biggest wins in life were successes in the business world. Although I had attained millionaire status by the time I was 50, I chose to keep working until 60 because I did not want to give up the non monetary rewards of my position.
And this is where pride and ego become so entangled with my career. Although the chances are high you have never heard my name, or even the name of the Fortune 500 corporation I worked for, my life was different than the lives of most of the other 7,000 people who worked there and different from most of the bloggers in this space. It was a true case of being a big fish in a little pond. We were the largest employer in the county and a nearly 100 year old company that had a big footprint in our small state. Being the head guy put me on television and in the news and on YouTube doing things and saying things that sounded important. Being the boss there also meant I was the spokesmodel for the company as well as the lobbyist with the state and federal government. I was given preferential treatment by restaurants, doctors and bankers because of who I was. It often seemed as if everybody in my town and many around the state knew my name and face. People wanted to be my friend just because of my status.
You might be thinking, who cares? Who wants the hassle of being well known, and I get that. But you would have to have known me growing up to see why that meant so much to me. I was the smallest kid at school. I was the slowest runner in my class. I really was the last kid chosen when picking teams for kickball at recess in elementary school. My self image was correspondingly poor. I day dreamed up envious scenarios where I was the quarterback with the cheerleader girlfriend. Being one of the smart kids in school had no appeal to me, I wanted to be one of the cool kids.
When I graduated college with some considerable engineering skills and had eight companies make firm job offers to me a full semester before I got out of school, something changed in me. I was popular for the first time, at least with oil and chemical companies. They wanted me! They flew me to their locations, fed me steak and lobster, put me up in swank hotels and offered me what seemed like a king’s ransom for a salary. And when I took a job it just kept getting better. I got raises and promotions and affirmation like they were pouring out of a fire hose. I was put in leadership positions and decided on who was hired and who was promoted within my department and eventually ran the company. I competed with coworkers for higher positions and won most of the time. I was no longer last picked for kickball, I was now the guy picking the team.
If you don’t think there is a big difference in how the guy picking the players feels versus the last person picked (only because they had to pick you) you are not being honest with yourself. Every single one of us wants to be desired and appreciated and admired. Its a fundamental part of our nature. And when you’ve had a lack of that in your life and are suddenly given a surplus, it is like a drug. You cannot get enough of it. I was always a highly competitive person, only now I was winning. And it felt like fun to me. I looked forward to going to work on Monday mornings. I had no concept of the Sunday scaries that the FIRE crowd talks about. I’ve always said that the reason I enjoyed work was because I developed mastery, and that was true. But there is more to it than that, there is a darker side as well. I also loved work because it fed my ego. I loved being known and respected. So much so that one of my friend’s wives gave me a little plaque I keep on display at home. It says “I’m Kind of a Big Deal”. She was my wife’s roommate in college and she knows me too well. That’s exactly how I felt and I liked the feeling. I liked it a lot.
My biggest fear in retirement was that flow of ego boosting attention and my mild celebrity status would fade away. I feared it so much I set up a consulting practice beginning with my first day of retirement so I could keep rubbing shoulders with my political and business friends. And that off ramp from being a mover and a shaker to just being me helped. It helped enough that after five years of doing it I no longer feared losing my identity . I’ve come to appreciate the enjoyment of living mostly off the radar. I still get some notoriety and publicity from my volunteer positions but I think I’ve outgrown the need for it, finally.
Pampered egos are very common among high achievers in business, in professional sports and in politics. Our last two presidents were well past retirement age but they will likely never retire from politics until health forces them. For some, who you are is so tightly melded into what you do for a living that it becomes your identity. And because what you do is highly visible to others you get respect and admiration for your success. And I think that part, the respect and admiration, is one reason Tom Brady still throws a football. He makes millions and loves to compete but he also has fame and admiration motivating him to stay in the game. Its why Musk keeps working. And its why a lot of guys like me did as well.
It isn’t a good thing, its just a thing. Obviously I’m no Brady or Musk, but my job fed my ego just like theirs. And it was hard to walk away from something that felt that good. OK, I’m a shallow person. But so are we all. Its why pride made the top seven list, because we all crave that feeling. Fortunately I had a best friend I was married to, a lot of hobbies and volunteer opportunities and the consulting to make retirement even better than working. If I had not had a well rounded life, and many executives do not, I would still be working and not enjoying the better life I have now.
How about you, are you still working because your job makes you feel like a big deal, and you like that feeling?
Do you see that kind of thing going on in others at your company?
As always, click on the title at the top of the post if you can’t find the comment box.
What an honest article. Very refreshing!
Thanks Diane, it was kind of hard to admit all that but definitely all true.
we’ve discussed this before steve but i was also the small brainly kid in the small pond and that can surely be tough. my main ego came in college when learning the material came so much easier for me than many. in fact, one of the brighter guys on our college cross country team has been a professor of immunology for a long time now. that’s a challenging subject but i’ll bet he still thinks i’m smarter albeit much less accomplished than he is. i don’t think it’s true but i’ll bet he thinks it is.
in a sense it has been a blessing and a curse never being a big deal in my career. it makes it easier to leave for the reasons you mention but also feeling like i had more to offer. anyhow, i enjoyed the read today like always. enjoy your holidays. cheers!
That’s interesting Freddy. I think every path is a blessing and a curse. And at the end of the day not that important. Six years after I left nobody there remembers me now I’m sure. The name of the company isn’t even the same. My closest work friends are all retired or have moved on.
Great post. My ego is not—and never has been—a huge driving force for me. There are pros and cons to that, of course. A big con being that I never had a strong ego that likely would’ve allowed me to have obtained higher positions and the monetary and nonmonetary things that would have come with that. A big pro being, your post makes me believe, that I’m going to be able to drop my job like a bad habit.
Fifo, that’s a very accurate take I think. Much like Freddy’s. There are trade offs to every choice we make. I don’t claim to have made the best choices, I am happy enough with how they worked out but I’m sure there were some negative trade offs.
I do not know whether my job makes me feel like a big deal (because honestly, I am not that big a deal as you were). But, the lack of a job does make me feel very inadequate. Let me share an anecdote:
Four years back, I was switching from company-C to company-I, and I took a break of 20 days in-between. During break time, I once got into an elevator with a stranger. As a casual conversation ice-breaker, he asked me where do I work. I blurted out, “Right now, I do not go anywhere, but I will be joining company-I in two weeks”!!
I stunned myself! I prided myself on being a reserved/less-ego person, freer than most of my friends who live out life on Instagram/Facebook to soothe their egos. But I could not afford to tell a stranger that “I do not work”. I was afraid of being judged, god knows for what. I guess that is ego. That ego is a factor that will keep me working, irrespective of my financial status.
PS: What a coincidence that this is my second FIRE related comment in the last 12 hours. There was another discussion at https://twitter.com/baransam/status/1471085455709929472?s=20
Baransam, thanks for commenting. In my retired life I find it difficult to answer the question “What do you do?” Its like that short break between your jobs except its been six years for me. I used to say I consulted, now I sometimes say I’m mostly retired, only doing expert witness work for friends and not much of that. Or I say I am retired and do a lot of volunteer work. But it feels fuzzy and not as clean as when I could say I ran a chemical plant or was an oil executive. It is surprising when we see ourselves like we were watching a movie and are surprised by what we say. Those moments of learning about ourselves, not always pleasant, are huge moments of learning and growth.
Enjoy your posts because I can relate to most of them including this one. A favorite book over time has been Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. My career was awesome and I reluctantly held many C-level technical leadership positions. I say, reluctant … but I really enjoyed them all. But I was fine to let them go 18 months ago at age 60. Was I really? My linkedin profile still says “Gap Year(s)” ;). Keeping the door open. There is a certain ego to it all I suppose, but I really believed that if somebody was gonna tell the right story, then it might as well be me. I was comfortable doing that. An article that I bookmarked a couple years ago was, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/work-peak-professional-decline/590650/. The third ashrama as the learning/training part for stage of life always resonates with me. If we were able to be good in our careers, then we should be great at figuring out retirement. Whatever retirement means! Definitely tennis, golf, travel and some recreational computer programming.
Wow, what an honest post. I definitely felt the pain of always being picked last growing up. So I had a lot to prove early on, set some big goals, and felt the amazing feeling of finally being a big deal (or at least thinking I was). You’re right; it’s an intoxicating feeling. But I looked around and saw a lot of people whose lives I didn’t want—who didn’t have the balance that it sounds like you have. My top priority became having jobs that were true 9-5 gigs, and after that FIRE became the priority.
I’m around the military a lot, and there are soooooo many people who retired from high ranks and appear to be having an identity crisis. Many lost marriages chasing their positions, and now they’re just regular dudes just like anyone else. No rank, no salutes, no Sirs. They’ll still try to remind people of their glory days by mentioning it too much, but it’s just sad.
I’m glad you had a smoother transition as well as some other hobbies and interests to throw yourself into. It’s probably never good to be a one-trick pony :).
Mrs. FCB, I’m not surprised you had similar experiences. We are probably a lot alike in how we think. I certainly nod my head a lot in agreement when I read your posts. Its almost a cliche how retired officers have issues when that power trip ceases. Lots of stories about them ordering their families about like they were soldiers, or at least trying to. I’m happy to say I don’t miss that status at all now. And never really did, which surprised me a lot.
*ascent (sorry)
This post does a better job of defining what drives most of the folks with big titles in the business world than anything else I have ever read. I used to have one of those big titles and was a “big deal” in the (very) small world of my industry. When I walked away at 55 I was worried that I would miss that ego boost that comes from having a car and driver waiting for me at every airport and a group of people (probably pretending) to hang on my every word (or so I told myself). I grew up poor and have always been slightly surprised by my accent — but I loved being in charge and liked the perks of my job and industry. Strangely enough, I didn’t miss most of it very much at all… which was a nice surprise. FIRE folks need to pay attention to posts like this and be honest with themselves about what really drives them before they wander off into early retirement. I suspect they’re underestimating the wider impacts of FIRE. But maybe not.. I do miss having someone else pay for business class flights around the world though… 🤔🤔
Jack, I think you were a Great Dane vs. me a mere Labrador Retriever. But we both were at the level where we were spoiled by special treatment. Treatment that doesn’t follow you into retirement. Like me you don’t miss that life other than some of the bigger perks. I think we are lucky in that way. I’ve had several friends who went back to full time jobs due to boredom. And my relative who bought a factory to run in his 70’s because work is his only hobby, he’s an extreme example. Retiring isn’t for everyone.
Thanks Steve, I was more of a Boston Terrier I think..
I too was surprised by the way people started to seek me out when I joined the executive team at a publicly traded MNC. It was an interesting phenomenon and sure greased the wheels to make me more effective. I had no lack of self confidence as a kid, I was the tallest person in the class for years in elementary school, and I understand from psychology studies that that ‘tall person energy’ sticks with you (particularly for women) after the boys start to shoot up. I have very low ego needs so for me it was more an interesting phenomenon to observe rather than fanning my vanity. I have noticed though that people who are used to having their authority followed somehow convey that message to people with no obligation to do as they’re told. It’s fascinating to observe how the source of power is people thinking that you are powerful – it’s quite circular.
Caro, very thoughtful analysis. It really is a situation where perception creates reality. I never felt like I was important at all, I was just playing a role, acting. I was younger than my classmates and eventually grew to average size. By college, nobody considered me short or small but definitely not tall either.
Congrats, I wish I had a job/career that makes you feel like a big deal, but for me it’s exactly the opposite. 50yo working a job for that brings little happiness and personal joy, except it pays well… at this stage of my journey it’s too late to begin that path, so I just plan for the day I can FIRE
I’m not sure its great to feed an ego that way, but it was a fun part of the job, so I don’t know. I think most everyone has to settle to some extent and if the pay is good then it certainly makes up for a lot. I would not give up on possibilities to find something you enjoy more. I think people are generally much more employable than they think they are. Its that negative outlook that keeps us safe, but it can hold us back as well.