Owning Your Story: How Identity Shapes the Work We Choose
A few months ago, I found myself walking with a cane after a knee injury. My doctor told me I’d need surgery, but reassured me that I would recover. Then came the harder news — my running days were over.
To some, that might sound like a blessing — a doctor-approved reason to skip exercise. But for me, running was more than a hobby. It was part of who I was. Losing that identity felt more painful than the injury itself.
Like everyone, I carry many identities: I’m a woman, a mother, an American, and a proud Rhode Islander. Professionally, I’ve been a tour guide, camp counsellor, teacher, graduate student, podcast host, and now, a career counsellor. Through this work, I’ve seen how personal identity profoundly shapes professional identity — and why that connection matters more than ever in a world where work is constantly changing.
The Engagement Problem
According to Gallup, 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work. Consultants often point to external causes — culture, wages, management — but I’m more interested in the internal reasons: why people choose the jobs they do, and why they stay in them.
Throughout history, most people never had a choice. You did what your parents did, and your work was determined by class, gender, or geography. But with the industrial revolutions came freedom — and confusion.
The first career-counselling office opened in 1908 in Boston’s North End. It helped ordinary people navigate this new world of work by assessing their backgrounds, skills, and local job opportunities. During the World Wars, the military adopted similar methods, hiring psychologists to match recruits with roles — a practice that still influences career testing today.
From Tests to Passions
When I began my career in the late 1990s, the field had entered the digital age. Career tests still existed, but a new philosophy dominated: follow your passion. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” we were told.
I remember attending a professional workshop where a well-known counsellor shared a story about a client who didn’t know her passion. In desperation, the counsellor asked, “What are you interested in — anything?” The woman replied timidly, “I’ve always liked gorillas.”
Triumphantly, the counsellor announced that her client went on to work at a zoo. Problem solved. Passion wins.
But when I told this story to my business-school clients, they laughed. Most MBAs weren’t passionate about gorillas — they were burdened by student debt and simply wanted stable, well-paying careers. They were seeking a fresh start, not a calling.
In recent years, the “passion” mantra has faced serious criticism. Many people don’t know their passions, and even if they do, the job market is changing faster than their interests. Artificial intelligence and automation are reshaping careers, and no one can predict what jobs will exist in five or ten years.
So if passion isn’t the answer, what is?
Designing a Career, Not Discovering One
A promising new framework comes from an unexpected place — design thinking.
Designers work by empathising with users, defining their problems, brainstorming, prototyping, and testing solutions. Applied to careers, this means treating your professional life as an experiment — trying different roles, learning from experience, and continuously iterating.
In the future, people won’t have one lifelong job but multiple evolving identities. They’ll need to “try on” different versions of themselves and adapt repeatedly.
The problem? Most people lack the self-awareness to do this well. They rush into decisions without understanding who they are — and end up designing careers around other people’s expectations.
The Psychology Behind Our Choices
Research in psychology and behavioural economics shows that humans aren’t rational decision-makers. We overspend today and neglect saving for tomorrow. We make similar mistakes in our careers — chasing prestige, security, or approval instead of alignment with our true selves.
I once counselled a law student who was devastated by her poor grades. She confessed she hated studying law. When I asked why she went to law school, she replied, “Because I didn’t want to go to medical school.”
Her answer was both honest and revealing. Many people don’t choose careers out of passion or strategy — they choose them by elimination or by following subconscious biases shaped by family, peers, and culture.
We inherit invisible rules: what’s “appropriate” for our gender, race, religion, or class. These beliefs quietly steer our choices — often limiting our potential before we’ve even begun.
The Power of Self-Awareness
This is why self-awareness is essential. It helps us recognise cultural biases without internalising them. It helps us make decisions based on authenticity, not assumptions. And when it’s our turn to hire others, it prevents us from projecting those same biases onto them.
Each of us is a collection of identities — parent, student, immigrant, artist, athlete — all shifting throughout our lives. Together, they form what I call our career script.
Unlike an equation, this script is not fixed. It’s a story — messy, evolving, and deeply personal. And while you can’t programme a computer to write it for you, you can choose how you revise it.
Your story is yours to edit, but not to abandon. You can question it, change it, and improve it — but never stop owning it.
Owning the Messiness
Career development has never been neat. It’s full of false starts, rewrites, and revisions. But embracing that messiness is the key to finding meaning in your work.
If I once identified as a runner and lost that part of myself, I’ve learned that identities shift — and that’s okay. What matters is understanding the story you’re telling and making sure you’re the one writing it.
To borrow from Cicero, “To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Two thousand years later, that remains true — and perhaps the hardest lesson of all.
