When I was in graduate school I experienced a radical shift in my health and well-being. It was 2005, and I’d been on antidepressants for six years. I was working myself to the bone and experiencing crippling levels of anxiety. But things were starting to turn around. I was seeing a psychotherapist and a naturopath, I was beginning to eat healthy, nourishing foods, and I’d made yoga a regular practice in my life.

Eventually I got off the antidepressants (which you can read about in my book), but I still found myself extremely stressed about school. I’d gone straight from kindergarten to PhD with no breaks, and I was starting to burn out. Like many college students, I’d spent years going to class all day and working part-time, then studying until the wee hours of the morning. There was barely a separation between my personal life and my work life.

In 2006 I decided that enough was enough, and that I needed to implement some balance into my daily living.

So I made a commitment to start treating grad school like a nine to five job. I forced myself to wake up at 7am every day (even if I didn’t have class) so that I could be on campus by 9am. I took a one hour lunch break and a couple of coffee breaks each day, and the latest I’d leave campus was 6pm. For the first time in my adult life I had a sense of routine, and it felt fantastic. I was hugely productive and finished my PhD on time. I even won a few academic awards and landed a great job right out of school.

In the first two years after finishing my PhD I worked as an IT research analyst in the corporate world, which brought me face-to-face with the realities of working a nine to five job. And despite the fact that I was paid well and worked with great people, I was miserable. I hated being forced to sit in my cubicle for a set amount of hours every day. I felt like a caged animal.

So I quit.

Over the next two and a half years I ran my own health and wellness business. I wrote a book, taught yoga, gave workshops, and did some research consulting. My schedule was my own. I could work when I wanted, where I wanted, on what I wanted. But guess what? I still forced myself into a nine to give schedule. I would wake up at 6:30am every morning so that I could take two and a half hours to make myself a green smoothie, meditate, and shower – all so that I would be at my computer by 9am (even though I rarely needed to be at my computer at that time). I’d left my corporate job to give myself more freedom, but I wasn’t taking advantage of it.

In 2013 I moved to Boston, where I spent two and a half years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School. On the surface, this job also offered a lot of flexibility. My boss explicitly told me that he didn’t care where I worked or when I worked, as long as the work got done. But still, I found myself arriving at the office by 9am every day, and leaving at 5pm. I spent most days at the computer, in a windowless office, wishing I had more flexibility. I experienced a sense of guilt every time I ran an errand in the middle of the day – even important errands like doctor’s appointments.

Then came the summer of 2015. As many of you know, I left my job at Harvard to take a three month work-life sabbatical. I spent some of this time living in a cabin in the woods, where I had no work to do, no schedule, and no routine. I stopped using an alarm clock and refused to plan what I was going to do each day. At first this felt very foreign, but eventually it became somewhat normal.

In August 2015 I moved to Prague, where I again have much more flexibility in my schedule. I’ll be teaching a positive psychology course at a local university, which means that I can mostly work where I want, when I want. But over the past few weeks I’ve noticed myself gravitating back to a nine to five schedule. Again, I experience a sense of guilt and anxiety when I run errands in the middle of the day.

Eventually it dawned on me that I’ve become a closet workaholic. Working an eight hour day has become so entrenched in my being, perhaps through culture, perhaps through media, perhaps through the workaholism that pervades our society. Regardless of the cause, I’ve developed a habit of thinking that I’m not a productive, worthwhile member of society unless I’m working every minute from 9am to 5pm.

In other words, the problem wasn’t with the nine to five, it was with me.

On my website and promotional materials I tout myself as someone who helps people create a life they love – which sometimes (but not always) involves leaving the nine to five behind. I truly thought I’d left this mentality behind, but I hadn’t.

So today I’m coming clean by admitting that I’m a nine to five addict. But, like members of twelve step programs around the world, I’m determined to do the personal work necessary to manage this addiction.

Here are a few concrete steps that I’m taking:

•  I’m not setting an alarm on weekdays unless I have an early morning meeting.
• I meditate for however long I feel like meditating each morning.
• I’m going for afternoon walks and/or running errands in the afternoon.
• I’m visiting a farmer’s market every Friday morning.
• I’m taking as long as I need to make and eat a healthy lunch every day.
• I write blogs (like this one) on weekday mornings, instead of working on pro bono projects “after hours.”

I still get a sense of anxiety when I inject this type of freedom into my schedule, but I’m breathing into it and working with it. And besides, so far I’m still being productive – in other words I’m managing to finish all of the work that I need to finish.

I think that for many of us, workaholism comes down to a basic belief that we aren’t good enough. We aren’t good enough unless we have that fancy car or designer shoes or flashy job title.

But we are good enough simply by virtue of the fact that we are human.

We don’t need to DO more. We need to BE more. @BethanyButzer (Click to Tweet!)

By “being more,” I don’t mean becoming CEO. I mean becoming YOU. The real you. The authentic you. The You that is here on this earth at this time to share your unique gifts with the world. This might mean that you have a lot in your bank account – or very little. It might mean that you wear fancy clothes or second-hand items. It might mean that you work from nine to five every day – or you might work midnights.

What’s important is that your sense of drive and purpose comes from You. Not from external forces telling you how to be you. Today I invite you to bring the real You forward.

What would your ideal workday look like? What’s one step you could take to begin creating that day? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

Bethany Butzer, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, researcher, and yoga teacher who helps people create a life they love. Check out her book, The Antidepressant Antidote, follow her on Facebook and Twitter, and join her whole-self health revolution.

If you’d like tips on how to create a life you love, plus some personal instruction from Bethany, check out her online course, Creating A Life You Love: Find Your Passion, Live Your Purpose and Create Financial Freedom.

Image courtesy of Javier Calvo.