Speaker #0I didn't know what was coming next, where I didn't have that title to introduce myself. I just was Alyssa. That's all I had. I was Alyssa. And slowly I got used to the discomfort of meeting someone and not getting to sweep in with this fairly glamorous sounding title and talk all about my company and, you know, having a company in two countries and... our European client base and how many people I employed, you know, suddenly I was leading with Alyssa. If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Alyssa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO. who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week I share stories, reflections and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alyssa Murphy and this is your lifeline out of corporate and into meaningful work. Today I want to ask you a difficult question. Who would you be without your job? Because the answer for many of us is really unclear and that fear of not knowing who we would be without our job and our job titles is one of the most powerful factors that's keeping people stuck. in jobs that they hate. It's keeping people stuck long after internally they've made that decision that they want to change and yet somehow quarter after quarter, year after year, there they are still in the same job, still making the same sacrifices unable to let go and finally make that leap into work that would feel deeply meaningful to them. Because our identities get so tied up with our jobs. It's often how we introduce ourselves to someone. It's often how people judge us. As soon as we say our job title, that comes with certain implications, certain prestige, a certain level of, oh, that's interesting. Tell me more about that. And we get really, really attached to that. And no wonder we spend so much of our adult lives in our jobs. It's you know, it's a necessary coping strategy to attach that much meaning to our job. And for me, it's okay if our work is that deeply meaningful to us, but to attach that same importance to a job and to a title and to a specific role, that becomes really quite tricky. That is when we can get trapped inside of organisations that we don't align with. We don't align with their values, we don't align with their purpose, we want something more for ourselves but oh my goodness it's scary to let go of that identity and find out who we are without it. And that's exactly what I'm here to encourage you to do today. I'm going to share a story of a friend of mine and so that you can see exactly what this kind of attachment is. looks like in action, I'm gonna tell you about my own experience of what it was like for me after 15 years to finally let go of the title of founder and CEO and how difficult that was for me truly. And then I'm gonna give you some practical tips so that if you find yourself in this position, if you're hearing this question and it's really hitting you in the stomach and you know that this could be the thing that is keeping you stuck. I'm gonna give you practical steps that you can take, different ways that you can explore this so you can start freeing yourself up and really discover who you are beyond the confines of your job. So let's start with an introduction to a friend of mine. She is an absolutely formidable woman. She has four children and she is a GP. which for my friends outside of the UK means she's a family doctor. So she works incredibly long hours under extremely stressful conditions. You probably don't need me to tell you the The NHS in this country, it's on its knees. The system is broken. So many incredible professionals who are so passionate about medicine are leaving the NHS because it is frankly just breaking them in half. And my friend has felt that strain for a number of years. In fact the very first time I met her she talked about what she wanted to do beyond her role as a GP. But it's five years later and she's still there. But I have hopes that that is finally about to change for her because for personal reasons she's had a number of weeks where she hasn't been at work. And for the first time she truly has that space for change. And you'll know from previous episodes that making space is one of the absolute non-negotiables of making a regenerative career transition. And now that she has that space, she's really able to see and feel deeply the level of sacrifice that she has been making for that job. She told me about what it meant to her to be able to make a home-cooked meal for her children and have that ready before they even got home from school. She talked about the simple joy of being able to just cuddle up on the sofa with her daughter and just cuddle and watch TV and chat about her day. And that sounds so simple, but that is such a luxury for someone that's in a really high pressured, high stress role. And I asked her, you've known you've wanted to make this change for a long time and now you can feel what it's costing you, but there must be a reason you're staying. You're a very, very smart woman. What is it that is keeping you there? And she said, I don't know who I am without this job. Now think about it, medical training, years and years of training in extremely high pressured situation. And then you finally get the kind of placements that you're looking for, you're constantly upskilling, you're moving your way up through the surgery structure until you get to that senior level. For this friend of mine, her whole career from the moment she moved into higher education has been geared towards this job that she's in now and i think that's so true i'm sure for so many of us and for many of you listening that the role that you're doing now is what you have been working towards for years if not decades it's what you were supposed to always want and what do you do when you stop feeling that love and probably like my friend you haven't stopped loving the work but you've outgrown the job or you've realized that the job is within a system that is just fundamentally broken and isn't going to be changed but that attachment to our title and to our role is so profound because it's deeply connected to how we understand ourselves as my friend said she just doesn't know who she is without it so when i encourage people to take that leap out of corporate when I talk about finding the courage to quit Let's take a moment and understand the scale of courage that we're talking about Because really what I'm asking you to do is confront the fact that you don't know who you are outside of that job and I'm saying to you take the leap and find out and Let me tell you I know from personal experience How destabilizing and uncomfortable that can be. Because I was for 15 years, I was the founder and CEO of my own company. And actually it goes deeper than this, so let's get really personal for a moment. This is a personal topic, so I'm gonna go there. I started my career as an actor. And I wanted to be an actor from as soon as, as long as I can remember, as soon as anyone asked me, what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was an actor. I always knew that was what I was going to do and I headed in exactly the direction that I was meant to do. I did all of the, you know, local dramatic societies, the plays, the roles. I got into what's probably considered to be the most prestigious drama school in the world. I, you know, I went to that school, I got a good agent, I left early to do work. Acting was always the thing. I never considered the possibility that I would do anything else in my career. I was very, very tied up in that identity and in that passion. And then as how things, the way things turned out, I ended up making this really quite dramatic shift into the world of business when I was just 25 and I had, you know, absolutely no credentials for what I was doing. It was just kind of pure nerve and adrenaline and luck. And that was a big shift for me. It was a very, very, very big decision to give up acting. But I was able to do it because I replaced it with this kind of really juicy identity around being a founder and by being the CEO of my own company and when people who'd know me as an actor asked what I was doing I got to say you know I'm the founder and CEO of Life Size Media and you know having that title really carried me through the ups and downs and the difficult times and as I really built my credentials in in the world of climate tech and communications and as my skills. deepened and my reputation developed, that only kind of served to deepen my attachment to that title. For many, many years, when someone would say introduce yourself, that was absolutely what I would lead with. When people asked me about myself, the very first thing I would talk about was my role in my own company. And I loved it. To be honest, I absolutely loved being a founder and CEO. You know, I loved hanging out with other founders. I loved the doors that that opened for me. I loved the implication that I had built something of my own and something that mattered, which I had. But somehow I also needed that title to reinforce that sense of value. So when, you know, 15 years on from founding my own company, I realized it was time for me to step back and to open a new chapter and I sold my company to my team we became employee owned and It was time for me to let go of that title of CEO Unfortunately, I had an incredible colleague to hand that title on to and I sort of stepped back and now I'm the chair of the Board of Trustees for the company and of course, I am the creator of Regenerative Work Life and I do this work but there was a long period in between when I didn't know what was coming next, where I didn't have that title to introduce myself, I just was Alyssa, that's all I had, I was Alyssa and slowly I got used to the discomfort of meeting someone and not getting to sweep in with this fairly glamorous sounding title and talk all about my company and you know having a company in two countries and our European client base and how many people I employed you know suddenly I was leading with Alyssa you know Alyssa who is a mum Alyssa who loves walking in the woods um you know Alyssa who loves to bake um Alyssa who likes to read sci-fi um Alyssa who is a really good listener and then you know over time I began sort of Alyssa the coach but that never gave me the same kind of prestige you know coaching is what I love it's what I do but it it's not a title that comes with the same kind of attachment and I think what I'm saying is that there was this kind of wilderness period where I really had to learn who I was. without the title. And at first that was scary, it was difficult, there was a sadness even in it. So I really do understand that attachment and I'm not promising you that it will be easy to let go of but what I can tell you is I am so much more secure in who I am now. I don't feel the need to to attach labels to myself. Some people know me first and foremost as a mum because that's how we're connected through our children. Some people know me as the person that they often see walking around in the woods. Some people know me more as a kind of a local activist. Some people know me still in my previous role. And a lot of people know me through what I do with Regenerative Work Life, through the work that I do to help. people out of corporate and into meaningful work. But even when I talk about that work, I don't feel the need to lead with a title or a role anymore. I can let the work speak for itself because I'm not defined by it. It's part of who I am. It's grown out of who I am. It complements who I am. And that is a much, much more balanced relationship. It's much healthier. Frankly than where I was before and where I see many of my clients starting out There's so much more space for me the human and that is what I See in front of my friend the GP I see so much more space for her as the incredible human being that she is her having time to enjoy being in a domestic setting and her having time to mess around with her children and her building out a new kind of meaningful work in which I have absolutely no doubt she will help an incredible amount of people to heal very deeply because that is just... part and parcel of who she is and that is the opportunity that I believe is waiting for you. When you can find the courage to reach beyond your job title let it go, let those confines go, you know it's not who you are anymore, you know it's not working for you. What you don't know yet is who you are without it. But can you find a way to let that not be a fearful question, but let it be a joyful question, one that opens you into all kinds of possibility? Now let's pause here and take a look at a few practical steps that you can take. I hope that what I'm talking about resonates with you. I know lots of people who've reached out and said to me that they experience exactly this kind of fear and And I've also had the pleasure of working with many people who have moved beyond that and are so much happier and freer and fulfilled by their work but not overwhelmed and defined by their work. So start by just naming that attachment. You know, maybe do some journaling around that question or just let that question kind of play in the back of your mind. Like, what am I trying to hold onto? with this title. You know, for me, it was a kind of validation that I'd made a good choice stepping out of my acting career and into business. That was a big part of it. It was also this kind of assertion that I'm an interesting person. You know, that when I meet people and I get to say I'm a fan from the CEO, oh, that's interesting, oh, wow. You know, and I have enough self-awareness to know that I have enough ego that I really enjoy that. kind of reaction when people go oh that's interesting I liked that I liked being able to sort of open doors you know be at a networking event and someone come up and you get to say I'm you know I'm the founder and CEO because really what I was doing was kind of outsourcing a lot of my self-worth and my value to that job title is that perhaps what is going on for you what does that title mean to you And what are you afraid of losing by letting that title go? And then when you have that awareness, you can start to think, well, where else can I get those things from? It's not wrong to want validation. It's not wrong to want to experience self-worth. It's not wrong even to want to be interesting, but how can you broaden your perspective of where those things come from? It's not just your job that makes you interesting. It's the whole of who you are. Your job is not what makes you a valuable person. Where else does your value come from? And how can you start shifting your attention out to some of those other things? How can you start to broaden your sense of identity so that that job title doesn't have such a strong hold over you? And for a while, How can you just get comfortable with that in-between space? Knowing that it's a temporary period of in-between, between an old title and a new meaningful work, where you don't have to lead with labels because the work fills you up and it's palpable and all those around you can experience it. This is really at the heart of regenerative career change. go of the label, letting go of a role that somebody else designed so that you can build a work life that's truly your own. That is what I believe is possible for you, that is what I help people to do. And if you would like to explore more deeply what that process can look like, how I can help you through that process, I would love for you to reach out to me. I'm always available on email. It's A-L-I-S-A, Alyssa, at regenerativeworklife.com. We can talk about the various ways that I can support from my Courage to Quit offer, which is a kind of concentrated one-off session that I promise you will have you walking out the door in a way that you feel really good about. And then my longer-term coaching inside the Meaningful Business Incubator, where we will together design, test, and launch your regenerative business. So let's come back to the question that we opened with. Who are you without your job? I hope that from listening to this... episode your energy around that answer feels different and even if you don't know the answer yet I hope that you are excited and curious and ready to find out thank you for listening and I'll see you back here next week if this episode of from corporate to calling was helpful or inspiring follow the show so you don't miss an episode and if you know someone who's questioning their career. send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that brings back life to you and to the world around you.
