Mel Robbins talks to people who left high-achievement roles like star athlete or top student and now feel lost in ordinary jobs. Your old identity is gone, but the skills, grit, and confidence you built are still there. The shift is asking not who you are, but who you can become next.
Is there any research or any specific advice that you have to somebody who was like the star athlete and all of a sudden they don't have sports, or who was the star math student?
Yes.
And now they're in the corporate world and they're just lost. Like, it's sort of that— can you talk a little bit about this?
Because yes, just because they've lost the ability to do that thing just because they're not the star athlete anymore, just because they're not the top math student, doesn't mean that all of the soft and hard skills that they built, all the experiences they had, all the wisdom and knowledge they accrued as a result of doing those things can't serve them meaningfully in what comes next. So we feel like we lost everything, but actually it turns out when it comes to the violin, Guess what I'm still holding onto? All that grit. Guess what else I'm using? That fearlessness, going on stage as a little kid, performing in front of thousands of people. That's helping me today in my roles that I have, right? As a writer, podcaster, cognitive scientist. And so the relevant question to ask themselves when they're no longer that math student or that star soccer player is, who else can this person be?
You apply the worth to the label, and when the label is gone and identity foreclosure happens, we make the mistake of thinking that all of the value that was underneath the surface is gone too.
