• Reducing yourself to any single characteristic, whether it be your title or your job performance, is a deeply damaging act.
• Too many people who work hard and strive for success self-objectify as excellent work machines and tools of performance.
• Strivers seek professional s...

Objectification lowers well-being. Research shows, for example, that when people are reduced by others to physical attributes through objectifying stares or harassment, it can lower self-confidence and competence in tasks. The philosopher Immanuel Kant referred to this as becoming “an Object of a...

The case against objectifying others is fairly straightforward. Less obvious but equally damaging is when the objectifier and the person being objectified are one and the same.

Humans are capable of objectifying themselves in many ways—by assessing their self-worth in terms of their physi...

Ask yourself a few questions, and answer them honestly.

• Is your job the biggest part of your identity? Is it the way you introduce yourself, or even understand yourself?
• Do you find yourself sacrificing love relationships for work? Have you forgone romance, friendship, or start...

Use this principle in your professional life. To begin with, it should be the main goal of your vacation—to get a break from work and spend time with people you love. As obvious as this may sound, that means taking your vacation, and not working during it at all.

Your employer sh...

Having friends outside your professional circles is important. Striking up friendships with people who don’t have any connection to your professional life encourages you to develop nonwork interests and virtues, and thus be a fuller person.

The way to do this goes hand in hand with recomm...

We all want to stand out in some way, and working harder than others and being better at our jobs seems a straightforward way to do so. This is a normal human drive, but it can nonetheless lead to destructive ends.

The great irony is that by trying to be special, we end up reducing ourselv...