Who Am I Without What I Do?

When I quit my corporate job, I thought I was leaving a job.

I don't think I realised how much of my identity I was leaving with it.

For years, work had answered so many questions for me.

What do I do every day?

What am I good at?

Am I successful?

Am I financially independent?

Am I valued?

And perhaps the biggest one - what am I worth?

I had spent years getting validation through work. There were achievements I could point to, money I earned, a career I had built. There was a very clear answer when someone asked me what I did.

And then suddenly, there wasn't.

I remember feeling quite lost.

It wasn't just that I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I wasn't entirely sure who I was without that corporate identity.

And I think, without really knowing it at the time, I started looking for other ways to feel worthy.

One of them became the way I looked.

I started calorie counting every meal. I would turn down outings with my parents or friends because I'd already had a "cheat meal" that week and I was worried about how many calories I would end up eating.

I'd come back from a holiday abroad and practically starve myself because, God forbid, I had put on a kilo.

And how would that look?

Then there was my house.

Everything had to be perfect.

Not one pillow out of place. Not a speck of dust on the sofa. And everything I bought for the house had to be aesthetic, not merely functional.

At the time, I don't think I connected any of these things.

Work was one thing.

My weight was another.

My home was another.

It was only when mindfulness became a regular part of my life that I started noticing a connection.

I realised I had never really been this attached to fitness or to the way I looked.

So what had changed?

The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable the answer became.

I think I was trying to avoid a question.

“So, what do you do, beta?”

Such an ordinary question.

But I hated being asked it.

Because I no longer had an answer that made me feel successful.

Maybe if I looked a certain way, the conversation would become about how fit I was.

Maybe if someone came home, they would notice how beautiful it looked.

Maybe these things could say something about me that I no longer knew how to say about myself.

I'm doing well.

I'm successful.

I'm worthy.

That was quite a difficult thing for me to see.

But once I saw it, I started thinking about identity itself.

Why had I allowed one role to become such a large part of who I was?

Yes, I had been a corporate professional.

But I was also a wife.

A daughter.

A sister.

A friend.

Someone who exercised.

Someone who meditated.

Someone who enjoyed investing.

Someone who loved calligraphy.

There was actually so much more to me.

And there could be so much more still.

I started wondering whether an identity really needed to be this fixed thing at all.

At different points in the same day, I can be completely different versions of myself.

I can teach a mindfulness session in the morning, be a daughter having lunch with my parents in the afternoon, spend an hour looking at my investments, exercise, meditate, meet a friend for dinner and come home and be a wife.

Which one of those is me?

All of them.

And none of them needs to carry the entire weight of who I am.

That thought also made me look at something else I'd been holding onto quite tightly.

My definition of success.

For a very long time, success had been fairly easy to measure.

A good job.

A certain salary.

A nice house.

A nice car.

The things we have collectively decided mean someone is doing well.

But once I no longer had my career as my main measure, I started wondering why those were the only things I was counting.

Why couldn't success also be finally getting a recipe right?

Solving a crossword puzzle that had me completely stuck?

Learning something new?

Showing up for someone I love?

Or simply getting out of bed on a day when I really didn't feel like it?

None of these things would look particularly impressive if someone asked me what I'd achieved that day.

But maybe that isn't the point.

I think a lot of my discontent came from trying to feel worthy in other people's eyes.

And there will always be another person's eyes to look through.

Someone will have a bigger house.

Someone will earn more.

Someone will have a better job title.

Someone will be thinner.

Someone will have a more beautiful home.

If those are the things I use to decide whether I'm doing well, I'm not sure there's ever really an end to it.

For me, mindfulness didn't suddenly give me a new identity.

If anything, it helped me see how tightly I'd been holding on to the old one.

And over time, I began to understand two things.

Who I am changes from moment to moment depending on the role I'm playing. I don't need any one of those roles to define all of me.

And success doesn't have just one definition either.

I still care about achievement. I still enjoy beautiful things. I still like my house looking a certain way. And yes, I still care about how I look.

The difference is that I'm trying not to ask any one of those things to tell me what I'm worth.

Because perhaps the question isn't only:

"What do you do?"

Maybe there are other questions worth asking too.

What do you enjoy?

Who do you love?

What are you learning?

What matters to you?

What makes you feel like yourself?

I'm still discovering my answers.

And perhaps who I am doesn't need to be one of them.