Discover how FBI veteran Brian Boetig’s concept of the “self-worth portfolio” can transform your approach to self worth and work life integration, helping you build a more balanced and fulfilling life.
As someone who has walked the path from trauma to healing, I’m always fascinated by the different journeys people take toward wholeness. In my recent conversation with Brian Boetig on The Let’s Heal Show, we explored a concept that revolutionized my understanding of self worth: the self-worth portfolio.
Brian is a 32-year law enforcement veteran who spent 24 years with the FBI. He brings a unique perspective on how career-driven individuals can find themselves with an imbalanced sense of self-worth. We talk how to restore that balance through better work life integration.
When Your Career Overshadows Your Self Worth
Brian’s career took him across the globe, from Kosovo to London to various locations across the United States. His family, including his wife and five children, moved every two years to accommodate his career progression. His oldest daughter attended 11 different schools between kindergarten and 12th grade, including high schools in three different countries.
This level of dedication to a career is something I deeply understand from my own consulting background. Brian dragged his family across the country and the globe throughout his career, which required significant sacrifices from everyone involved.
For many professionals, especially those in demanding fields like law enforcement, healthcare, or consulting, work can gradually consume more and more of your identity. In the process, diminishing other aspects of your self worth. In law enforcement, this process happens subtly. When Brian first joined the police department, he was surrounded by people who would give their lives for him. They worked twelve-hour shifts but would arrive two hours early to work out together at the gym. He spent fourteen hours a day with these people, four days a week, plus many of his off days.
What makes this shift so dangerous is that it feels right when it’s happening. You feel accepted into the career and the culture. The more you give, the more belonging you feel. Everyone around you reinforces that this is normal and expected – even as your work life balance deteriorates without you noticing.
The Danger of a Single-Source Self Worth
During our conversation, Brian introduced me to a concept he calls the “self-worth portfolio”. It is a powerful metaphor that changed his perspective on work life integration:
“If I was your financial manager and I told you, ‘Here’s your financial portfolio, invest everything you have into one thing,’ you should look at me and say, ‘That’s not a good idea because if that one thing fails, then I’ve got nothing.’ And so for your self-worth, what value you have in this world shouldn’t all come from one thing. You have to have a diverse self-worth portfolio.”
This concept hit home for me. Before my healing journey, if you had asked me to list my three best friends and hobbies, my paper would have been blank. I had lost everything about myself. Investing all my self worth in my career and a marriage that wasn’t nourishing me.
Brian pointed out something profound: at the end of the day, whether you work at the FBI, at a consulting firm like FTI (where we both worked), or at a Dairy Queen, it’s still just a job. The paycheck looks exactly the same. When we make our professional identity everything about us, we’re setting ourselves up for crisis when that role changes or ends. It’s a critical insight for anyone struggling with work life balance.
The Reality of First Responder Mental Health
Now, Brian focuses on workforce wellness, particularly for law enforcement officers and healthcare workers. During our talk, he shared disturbing realities about how the job affects officers mentally over time. He talked about exhuming 260 bodies in Kosovo, being a first responder at the Pentagon after 9/11, and other traumatic experiences that he now discusses with a detachment that would shock most people.
This emotional detachment, while necessary for the job, can spill over into personal life. Officers often become isolated, cynical, and emotionally detached. They stop engaging in hobbies and interests outside of work, limiting their social circles to fellow officers.
Officers become dependent on their work community and end up narrowly focusing their life around these people and their career. This isolation happens gradually. Officers pull away from friends who don’t understand their experiences. They abandon hobbies that might put them in social situations they’d rather avoid as law enforcement officers.
How to Diversify Your Self Worth Portfolio
During our conversation, Brian shared several practical strategies for rebalancing your sense of self worth and improving work life integration:
1. Practice Retroactive Satisfaction
Brian introduced me to a concept called “retroactive satisfaction” – doing something you don’t necessarily want to do but should, because you’ll feel better about it afterward. This is key to rebuilding self worth beyond your professional identity.
He gave a touching example about coming home from work to find his young children waiting at the door with a book, wanting him to read to them. He had two options: ask for five minutes to change out of his work clothes first (which often stretched to thirty minutes), or sit down immediately to read in his work suit despite his discomfort.
When he chose to read immediately, his children were happy because he did exactly what they wanted, and he felt like a good father afterward. The satisfaction didn’t come during the reading when he was still thinking about changing clothes – it came after, in knowing he’d made the right choice for his work life integration.
2. Honestly Evaluate Your Current Portfolio
Brian suggests a simple exercise that reveals a lot: write down your three best friends and your hobbies. Then ask yourself some tough questions: Are all your best friends coworkers? When was the last time you actually engaged in those hobbies?
He points out that you can’t claim “camping” as a hobby if you haven’t been in five years. This honest evaluation helps identify which areas of your life need more investment. It prevents you from fooling yourself about how balanced your life really is.
3. Actively Build Relationships Outside Work
Building and maintaining friendships takes deliberate effort, especially as we get older. Brian recently reached out to an old friend to have breakfast together. He admitted that he’d rather have stayed home on a Saturday morning, but he knew he needed to force himself to invest in relationships outside of work.
This kind of intentional relationship-building doesn’t always feel natural or comfortable at first, but it’s essential for a balanced self-worth portfolio.
My Own Journey to a Diversified Self
Brian’s insights resonated deeply with my own healing journey. I’ve been blessed with what I call “reclaiming relationships” – reconnecting with people from my past who would have been on my “best friend list” if I had given them half a chance.
In my experience, I had to be vulnerable, approaching people to acknowledge that I either didn’t allow them to become closer to me or pushed them away entirely. I’ve had to explain why this happened and ask for a fresh start. The blessing has been people welcoming me back with open arms, helping me see myself differently through their eyes.
This process of reclaiming relationships has been part of my own work to diversify my self-worth portfolio – to find value and identity beyond my career and former marriage.
Finding Life-Work Integration Instead of Balance
When Brian and I reconnected recently, it was because of a LinkedIn post about work life balance. I commented that we’ve got it all wrong – it should be “life-work integration,” not the other way around. This shift in perspective is crucial for building genuine self worth that extends beyond professional accomplishments.
Brian offered an important perspective on this, particularly for law enforcement officers. He believes officers need the ability to completely turn off their professional identity when off duty. This is why he opposes residency requirements that force officers to live in the communities they police – they need separation to decompress and be fully present with their families.
In his view, the best employees are those who can give their full attention and energy to work during work hours without bringing personal issues to the job. Then, they can go home and be fully present there without complaining about work or bringing work stress home with them – a true form of work life integration rather than an elusive “balance.”
He shared an insightful observation that sometimes people who stay at work for 14-15 hours a day aren’t more dedicated – they just don’t want to go home because their personal lives are in shambles. Work becomes an escape rather than a balanced part of life, creating a dangerous illusion of self worth tied exclusively to professional identity.
Final Thoughts on Self Worth and Work Life Integration
My conversation with Brian reminded me that healing isn’t just about processing trauma – it’s also about building a rich, multifaceted life where our sense of self worth doesn’t come from just one source.
Whether you’re in law enforcement, healthcare, business, or any other demanding career, take a moment to evaluate your own self-worth portfolio. Is it diversified? Are you investing in relationships, hobbies, and self-care alongside your professional growth? Have you achieved genuine work life integration rather than chasing an impossible balance?
As we grow and our life circumstances change, the composition of our self-worth portfolio will naturally shift. What matters is maintaining diversity within it so that no single element – whether that’s our career, a relationship, or anything else – becomes our sole source of identity and self worth.
If you liked this post, you may want to watch the full conversation: