The Quiet Pivot: If I'm Not That Job, Who Am I?

Speaker A: 00:00:02

Hi again, it's Veslemøy here and welcome back to the Quiet Pivot miniseries. In this episode we're talking about something that hit me hard after leaving my job in oil and gas.

It wasn't just about the work and the income that I missed. It was the title. Not as in having a fancy title and being a leader or high up in some system.

No, it was the identity kind of the name I put on myself. The feeling of being someone with a clear role in the world. And suddenly I wasn't sure who I was anymore or what that role was anymore.

And that was a really tough one. And that's what I will talk about today. But first, with this second episode in this mini series, I'm also making available a set of tools.

Tools that I have developed myself over the years, and they are all based on what I was lacking myself back then.

I'm not a career coach and to be honest with you, I don't think that was what I needed back when I was sitting there not knowing what to do, where to go.

I needed someone who had walked the path before me, someone who understood where I was coming from and that understood that I didn't have the faintest idea about where I was going. I needed some mind hacks, perhaps I like to call them that ways to think about my past career and what might be in front of me.

And I needed permission to spend some time figuring things out.

Because I think often the danger in that situation I found myself in is that I would throw myself into something new without taking any time to consider what I really wanted, how that new thing would align with my values, the way I wanted to live and work, and what type of industry and not the least what kind of people I wanted to work with because of the pressure you feel, the thought of that hole in your cv, the income which is suddenly a lot less, the social pressure you might end up rushing. And that I believe is rarely very smart. So the tools are there to give you what I was missing and I truly, truly believe they can be helpful.

You can get access to these tools by becoming a paying substack subscriber or you can get them as a one off buy. On my webpage storiesforthefuture.com I will put the links in the show notes.

And to be clear, this is not an expensive thing, it's just mainly to put some value on it so that you will actually use it as well. So feel free to look at it and decide for yourself. So back to the if I'm not That job, who am I? Title of this episode.

When I left the industry, I thought the hardest part would be the uncertainty, the lack of income, the next steps, the big career questions. But at first it wasn't. It was waking up and not knowing how to introduce myself.

At work, I was the geophysicist, the person working on different projects out and about. I was Vachelemu from Fill in the company name. And I had a clear reason to be in the room. And suddenly I didn't.

You can just imagine at social gatherings when you introduce yourself to somebody new and they ask, so what do you do?

And that was really tough, I think, and not to start with being like the online presence, that was really, really difficult just how to describe yourself on LinkedIn.

And speaking of LinkedIn, you know, when, when I had come to the decision that I didn't want to go back to my old industry, oil and gas, suddenly my whole network on LinkedIn was completely kind of the wrong. Wrong network, the wrong crowd. Because how to say to your whole network that I, I don't want to go back to you, I prefer something else.

So that was a tough one. And it took me months and years, I would say, to. To figure that part out. And for so.

Because for so long, the job wasn't just a job, it was kind of a description for my value, I would say. And when that label fell off, it felt like I had nothing left to hang on to.

And that's when I kind of realized that I had outsourced my identity to my job title and now I had to figure out who I was without the title. And that's not a small task, to be honest. If you're in that place right now, let me say, your value didn't disappear when the job did.

There are things, you know, things you're good at, things people trust you with, that don't depend on your old title. But it takes a little bit of digging to remember them. That's why one of the tools I have in my backpack has to do with identity.

I did some really heavy lifting on this myself, or I wouldn't actually call it heavy. It was a lot of fun, but it really took some work and some digging.

So in my tool pack, I have something I call the Identity Sketchpad, which is just a handful of prompts to help you reconnect with who you've always been underneath the business card and the job title. You might be really surprised at what you rediscover. So just to take an example from my own exploration journey, I rediscovered my love for writing.

I was thinking back to my school days and remembering how I always looked forward to the tests and exams that had to do with creative writing. So why on earth hadn't I followed that a bit more? I. I don't know.

But as a result of that discovery, I started a blog just writing about the ongoing journey and all the coconut moments I was experiencing. The blog was of course called Coconut Moments and it's still out there in Norwegian. So if you're curious, you can always check it out.

I also have this mind hack I call put your professional identity on the shelf. And I use it myself to this day a lot actually.

And it has been really, really helpful because if you manage to put your professional identity on the shelf, you will open up for so many other opportunities and like just starting to become aware of all the other things you actually can do. So I hope you will find that useful as well. Maybe you're listening to this now and thinking, yes, that's me.

I don't really know who I am anymore without that job. First of all, welcome. You're so not alone.

And I promise you there's something quite powerful and really exciting in this moment because without those job labels stuck to you, you can actually get to decide what goes back on. And that is a very exciting place to be in. It's not about reinventing yourself overnight. It's about remembering who you've been all along.

So in the tools you'll find the prompts to help you dust off old passions, forgotten strengths, and all the parts of you that might have gone quiet while you were busy being that expert in some field. And don't worry, you don't need to do anything with it right away. Sometimes it's just about noticing and becoming more aware. That's the first step.

As mentioned, all the tools are free for all paid Substack subscribers and also available on my website. You'll find the links in the show notes or head to vclovnest.com. substack.com to learn more about it.

This is the work I wish someone had helped me do back then. Now I get to offer it to you and I'm really happy about that. Take your time with it. Let it be fun and be curious.

And if you need a little nudge, I'm right there with you. Talk soon. Sa.