Thread

Who am I without the job title?

Guest after guest describes how their sense of self had merged with their employer or role, and the discomfort of losing it. They talk about social pressure, feeling lost at first, and slowly finding their own worth. Petro adds her own account of untangling herself from corporate life.

How it developed: It moves from the shock of losing a corporate identity to reclaiming self-worth (#034). In #038 it adds a practical point: separate the skills you enjoy from the environment that soured them.

The thread's title and description are AI-written, drawn from the episodes below. The quotations are verbatim from the episode audio, each linked to the moment it was said.

What was said

“I needed to be very clear that I am not my job, I am not a job.”
— Fatima Collins, guest · #027 Purposeful Pauses | Fatima Collins · [06:32]
“I seem to have found my worth in that corporate persona,”
— Hermien Uys, guest · #029 A Life-Changing Break | Hermien Uys · [37:53]
“I almost felt like a loss of purpose. I think because I tied a lot of my identity and my purpose to my work, I was living out my passion and living out my purpose through my work. So when my work stopped, it almost felt like that stopped.”
— Zaheera Soomar, guest · #034 The Transformative Break | Zaheera Soomar · [15:46]
“It was about disentangling myself or my identity from, from the company I used to work for, is to actually find out who I was without being that corporate person.”
— Petro du Pisani, host · #035 The Re-ignition Pause | Briony Liber · [25:59]
“if you go to a braai, people normally ask you two things, what's your name and then what you do, right? And what you do defines you.”
— Sas Wessels, guest · #036 Rest, Reset, and Recharge | Sas Wessels · [20:50]
“And that year I turned 40 and I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't, or I felt didn't feel comfortable trading on being the ex-CEO of Cerebra anymore. I felt like there was a statute of limitations and how long I could take credit for my legacy.”
— Mike Stopforth, guest · #038 The Reinvention Pause | Mike Stopforth · [08:09]

Episodes in this thread

All topics and episodes of On Change with Petro du Pisani