Who Are You Without the Title? (with Carly Anna Walker)

Send us Fan MailWhen people lose a job, a role, or a career they've spent decades building, they often describe it as losing themselves. And I understand why — when your identity has been organized around your work, your title, your mission, the work going away can feel like you going away. But here's what this conversation with my guest Carly Anna Walker made even clearer: Your work was never the foundation of your identity to begin with. It was just one expression of it. And that distinction changes everything.Carly Anna Walker is a former behavior analyst, a master's-level psychologist, and a coach to coaches and entrepreneurs whose work sits at the intersection of behavioral reconditioning and identity change. She created the Midas Coach — a psychology-grounded coach training program — and has spent nearly a decade helping people identify and update the conditioning that quietly puts a ceiling on their growth, their income, and their freedom. Carly is also one of my most trusted mentors, and someone I turn to when I want to think more rigorously about how identity actually works.In this episode, you'll learn:What self-concept actually is, how it's formed, and why a fixed self-concept creates as many problems as it solvesWhy the feeling that your identity has been "taken away" is a misunderstanding — and what's actually true about identity that makes this moment an opportunityHow to use your values as a decision-making framework when everything feels uncertain and unclearWhy we wait for external permission to change — and what it takes to stop outsourcing that decision to circumstances, other people, or fateWhat agency actually means in the context of identity change, and how to start exercising it even when you're still in the thick of loss or transitionI hope you love this conversation as much as I loved having it. Carly is one of those people who makes the abstract feel actionable and the psychological feel personal. She has inspired me, and I know she'll inspire you, too.Changeology is a podcast about the real, messy, nonlinear process of personal change — hosted by Dr. Meg Trucano, developmental psychologist and change coach.