I dunno, to me work has never been associated with my self-worth. Work is there to pay bills. Plenty of people make work their identity, let it define who they are. I'm defined by my internal world, not what or how I interact with the external world. So to me, probably around the age of 17, I decided that work wasn't what I wanted to spend my life measuring myself by. Does it pay my bills? Afford me some luxuries? Provide security? Cool. But any job can do that, they just do it to varying degrees. It's a matter of how miserable your job makes you, whether that misery is worth the securities it affords. If your job made you miserable, it's not a reasonable survival equation. But I wouldn't pin your selfworth on what job you have. There are garbage men who go to work with a smile on their faces everyday because it makes them money and they don't mind the smell, they appreciate the steady, uncomplicated nature of the thing that lets them live.
By contrast, my boss is an entrepreneur. That's how he defines himself, from the minute he gets up to the minute he goes to bed. And he wants recognition for that, he wants to be seen as smart, savvy, prescient with business. That's what drives him. He likes looking back at this thing he built and that keeps going on in perpetuity, the way a gardener admires their garden.
I will say that the one thing I can absolutely grok is that work gives you purpose. It means people depend on you, which keeps you grounded in the real world. Not having a job and just drifting, you're in one of two positions: either you have enough money to do whatever you want whenever you want, which technically makes you the idle rich....or you don't have enough money to do whatever you want, so you find compromises with how to live and spend your time. Some people convince themselves that they're living exactly the life they want to within in their means, while others moan and lament that they can't do or afford whatever they want, but also don't want to commit to anything more than what they're already doing.
So yeah. I'd decouple your sense of self-worth based on what kind of job you have. Any job will do, as long as you are willing to go back to it and it doesn't make you hate your own existence. But the point of being human isn't to work; the point of being human is to live. Jobs are a means to that end for most people, nothing more.