A brilliant woman at a Big 4 firm — smart, ambitious, respected — wasn't happy. "I'm just working too much. I can't keep doing this." Friends said quit. But people often change jobs and keep their old beliefs, so the same problems follow. I asked: before you leave, can we explore why you're overworking?
Unpacking her relationship with work, she said the words that tied it together: "I define myself through work."
I asked her to picture a child coming home glowing with an A+, and a mother hugging them saying "I love you so much BECAUSE you're so good at math." "That's awful," she said. "That's conditional love. It should be unconditional." A silence — then gently: "And what about you? Shouldn't you love yourself regardless of how much you work?" The tears came — not sadness, release.
It didn't instantly fix her hours, but it changed the lens: work as part of her life, not the definition of it.
If you removed your work from your identity — who would you be?
