Midlife MavericksA few weeks ago I had a conversation with a former colleague from my banking days. We hadn’t seen each other in years. He left two decades ago. I left nine years ago.
At some point we started talking about the ones who stayed. The ones still there.
Most of them men in their fifties. Earning well. Not happy. Aged beyond their years. Still trapped in a golden cage, dependent on a lifestyle that depends on the job to keep it alive.
He said something that stuck with me. There are people in the City who are simply waiting to be made redundant with a decent package. No plan. No imagination to pivot. Just… holding on.
The worst part isn’t the money. It’s the identity.
I spent 20 years being introduced as “Claudia from UBS” or “Claudia from Morgan Stanley.” The name came attached to an institution. The business card carried weight. It opened doors. Flights were business class. Hotels were good. Restaurants were on someone else’s tab.
Then you leave. No card. No company brand. No corner office. No assistant. No one validating you with a promotion.
You’ve got yourself. And you’re staring at a question nobody prepared you for: who am I without all of this?
I went through it. In the first few months on my own, there were days I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. Not because there wasn’t work. Because there was no one telling me what to do. And not everyone knows what to do with that kind of freedom.
For years, I confused what I did with who I was. The title was my identity. The company was where I belonged. The salary told me what I was worth. When all of that disappears, what’s left?
On good days, everything. On bad days, an enormous silence.
I know brilliant people who left big companies and froze. Institutionalised. No sense of purpose. They went from days packed with meetings and objectives handed down by someone else to an empty calendar and absolutely no idea what to do with it.
These people spent decades boxed in. Trained to think inside a structure. Soldiers lubricating a machine. Some were never creative. Others were, but they hadn’t used that muscle in so long they’d forgotten it existed. They execute. They deliver. But explore? Experiment? Do something just because it interests them? That was trained out of them years ago.
And I know others who never left. Who know they should. Who dream about it. But can’t. Because they’re terrified of finding out that without the structure, they can’t stand on their own.
Today I work where I want, on what interests me, when it suits me, with people I admire. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
But to get here, I had to let a version of myself die. The version that needed the card.
This doesn’t only happen when you leave a company. It happens when you retire. Exactly the same thing. Suddenly you have to figure out who you are without the job. What moves you. What makes you want to get out of bed. What makes you happy when nobody’s paying you to do anything.
If you can’t answer those questions, brace yourself. There’s an identity crisis with your name on it.
Comment below. Who are you without the title? I’m curious. And I’ll tell you what I see.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! (https://executiva.pt/bloguers/oh-pa-nao-me-lixem/) for Executiva.
