I’ve been fortunate to hold leadership positions from early on in my career. I’ve also had multiple self-imposed career breaks. These transitions are very interesting to me. One day, you have stature and people wanting your attention. The next day, you’re nobody.
I’ve always fought this in the past, even though I’ve been the instigator of these transitions. I want to get back in the game, regain my stature, be needed again. In Vietnam, I became the CFO of a billion-dollar company. After quitting and moving back to India, I immediately started looking for my next role. It took me six frustrating months to find a suitable one. No one cared about what I had done in Vietnam. A couple of VC friends graciously connected me to companies and I found a role as CFO and then COO at Zoomcar. When I quit my role as the COO of a company in Canada, I immediately started looking for my next CFO/COO role. That’s who I was. That’s what I wanted.
This time is different. I’m enjoying being nobody. It’s liberating. For the first time, I’m not fighting it. I’m taking the time to explore and figure out what I want to do next. Several factors have brought this change in mindset. We’re financially more secure now so there’s no urgent need for a salary. We’re not moving geographies so I don’t feel the need to prove myself in a new place. But the key shift is in how I perceive my identity.
I’ve spent a lot of time and (electronic) pages thinking about my identity and trying to unbind myself from parts of it. So much of it has been tied up in my professional life – being an integral part of leadership teams, charging hard and achieving results, leading and developing people, building successful companies, being needed. I’ve felt incomplete if I don’t have these things. So, when I’ve quit roles in the past, I’ve wanted to jump right back into another similar role. Fill the void. As I thought and wrote about it, I started to understand how limiting this is. By tying up my identity in my work stature, I was always in exploitation mode. Being in exploitation mode restricts me from taking the time to learn and explore new things, try what catches my fancy, find what could excite me for the next 20 years, maybe make transformative changes.
I feel like I’m finally starting to make inroads on this mindset. This doesn’t mean that I discard the past. I’ll still bring my skills and experience to whatever I do next. But I no longer feel bound by what I’ve achieved. It’s something to file away and use as needed, not something that dictates what I do next.