Are Religious People More Mentally Resilient? The Idea of Separating Work from Self-Worth

The other day, I was watching a video about how to become more mentally resilient.

One point in it made a great deal of sense to me.

Mentally resilient people, it said, separate their performance at work from their value as a person.

Suppose, for example, that you make a mistake at work and your boss gets angry with you.

Some people become discouraged and think, “I am a failure as a person.” Others simply accept the fact that they made a mistake at work.

There may be a problem with the work they produced, but that has nothing to do with their worth as a human being.

I understand the logic. In practice, however, it is difficult to draw such a clean line.

As I thought about this, religion suddenly came to mind.

Perhaps people with a deep religious faith have already made this separation from the beginning.

From God’s Perspective, a Company’s Evaluation Is Not Such a Big Deal

For a devout Christian, for example, the most important thing in life is not being promoted at work. It is their relationship with God and living according to God’s teachings.

Failing at work does not reduce their value in God’s eyes.

Even if a boss shouts at them, that boss is not God.

Seen this way, perhaps religion is an extraordinarily powerful system for protecting one’s mental well-being.

The standard by which life is judged exists outside the company. It also sits at a level far above anything comparable to a workplace evaluation.

Perhaps the idea introduced in the video—separating work from personal worth—is built into faith from the start.

When the Company Became God for Japanese Workers

In Japan, loyalty to one’s company was once regarded as a virtue, and dedicating one’s life to work was considered an admirable way to live.

A promotion made you an important person, while being pushed aside into a dead-end role made you a failure in life. Some people even lost their sense of who they were the moment they retired.

Perhaps the company had become a kind of religion.

This particular god, however, is troublesome.

When business deteriorates, it discards employees. Even someone celebrated for years of contribution can become unnecessary when management policy changes.

Entrusting your sense of worth to something like that is extremely dangerous.

I have worked as a freelancer for many years, so I do not have a boss in the first place.

Clients evaluate my work, and a failure may affect a contract. Even so, I see work as a means of earning a living.

If I fail, I reflect on it. But that is separate from my value as a person.

A client has the right to evaluate my work, but not to determine my worth as a human being.

What Should People Without Religion Believe In?

I do not follow any particular religion either.

I am interested in the psychological strength religion can provide, but joining a religion because “I want to become mentally stronger” does not feel quite right.

If it were easy to find a god we could believe in whenever it suited us, life would not be so difficult.

Still, there are things we can learn from religion.

Do not entrust your sense of worth to other people’s judgments.

It could be time with family, a hobby, or a way of living that feels right to you.

If you have something more important than work, you can put events at work into perspective.

A client said something harsh to you. So what?

You made a mistake at work. Fix it.

A contract ended. That does not mean your entire life has been rejected.

A Work Evaluation Is Not an Evaluation of Your Life

What I found interesting about the video was how its psychological discussion of mental resilience connected with the role religion plays.

Religion has given people standards of value that stand above work and social evaluation.

I am not religious, but I believe there is something to learn from this mechanism.

Taking responsibility for your work is not the same as allowing work to control your life.

Clients are in a position to evaluate my work, but they are not in a position to evaluate my life.

When you think about it, it is strange that those of us without religion sometimes treat workplace evaluations as though they were divine revelations.

Especially when that god will casually terminate the contract as soon as the budget runs out.