If you lost your job tomorrow—or if your business suddenly folded—would you still know who you are?
I don’t mean your name or your address. I mean your sense of self. Your identity. The way you understand your value and place in the world.
“I don’t know who I am outside of my career” is something I hear all the time. From clients just starting out in their professional lives, and from people who’ve been in the same industry for decades. From entrepreneurs, creatives, corporate leaders, and new parents navigating the messy in-between.
And honestly? It makes sense. Work takes up a huge amount of our time, energy, and attention. It’s how many of us spend our days—and often, how we define our worth. It becomes the lens we see ourselves through. The story we tell about who we are and what we contribute.
This has become completely normalized. We ask kids what they want to be when they grow up—as if “being” and “working” are the same thing. We introduce ourselves by our job titles. We center productivity and ambition as markers of success and value.
When Work Becomes the Core of Your Identity
And then, something happens. A layoff. A career pivot. A baby. An illness. Burnout. Retirement. Or even just the growing realization that you don’t actually want to keep doing what you’ve been doing.
When that happens, it can feel like the floor drops out from under you.
Because what no one really prepares us for is what these changes mean for our internal world. For our identity. Our sense of purpose. Our belonging. Our confidence.
The truth is: most of us don’t know who we are beyond our LinkedIn bio. We haven’t had space—or permission—to ask the deeper questions. Questions like:
- What actually matters to me?
- What lights me up, beyond external validation?
- What kind of life do I want to be building?
- What kind of person am I when no one’s watching?
Start Asking Before You Have to
These aren’t easy questions. They take time. They take a kind of gentle persistence. And they often require us to sit with the discomfort of not having a quick or polished answer.
But starting to explore them—before you’re forced to—is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself.
Because careers evolve. Jobs end. Even identities we love and are proud of shift over time. That’s part of being human. But when we anchor our sense of self solely in our work, we become fragile in the face of those changes.
By contrast, when we cultivate a deeper connection to who we are—not just what we do—we build resilience. We open up the possibility for growth, for curiosity, for reinvention. We give ourselves the freedom to be more than one thing.
And no, this doesn’t mean you have to abandon ambition or stop caring about your career. It means expanding your sense of identity beyond it. So that when the ground inevitably shifts (as it does), you have something solid to stand on.
You Are More Than Your Job Description
So I’ll leave you with this: Who are you when you’re not achieving? When you’re not producing or performing or crossing things off your to-do list?
What brings you joy? What makes you feel most like you?
You don’t need a perfect answer. Just a willingness to start asking.
