our many identities

We are all made up of many different identities, we often step into these roles and don't consciously realise what we are doing, who we are becoming. For a while you are a mother, a spouse, we have a work personality, a social/private persona etc.

I have only recently realised that I have a work personality. From one day to another, I developed one. Which may mean that I had one all along or that we are very quick to adapting and bringing out our potential. Daily it surprises me how my work personality does not coincide with my private personality. How much do we give away at our workplace of what we are like in our private lives? I think that no matter how much we enjoy our work, there's a sense of limited freedom when we are at work, we wait for time to pass so we can 'liberate' yourself a little. Or tune in to our other self, the one we are at home; we count down the hours where we are free to spend our time as we please. Where we can forget about the work restraints and our personality can break loose...

Then there's the personality we project. I have noticed some people even change their tone of voice when they speak to other people or when speaking on the phone. Is this consciously done or just an ingrained routine? What is the purpose of this?

I don't think I am one to project a different personality in different situations. But at work, when I am doing my routine of explaining patients the details of the examinations, it has become an ingrained routine so it feels a little strange to do it off work. I feel I morph into my work identity once I enter the clinic.

It's interesting how these different identities co-exist and merge together to make us whole. The trick is to find yourself in each of these roles and manage to feel at ease and true to yourself.