You are not your job title
At some point, someone asks you what you do. And without thinking you tell them who you are. "I'm an accountant," "I'm in sales," "I'm a manager."
We answer the question of what… with the answer to who. And most of us never even notice we're doing it. But what happens when the job disappears? I know this one from the inside. Growing up in Mumbai, life had a very clear script. Study hard. Get into a good college. Do your MBA. Climb the ladder. And I followed it. Accountant for eleven years. Sales Manager for almost a decade after that. On paper, I was successful. But what I didn't realise — for most of that time — was how completely I had fused who I was with what I did. My title wasn't just a job description. It was my identity. My self-worth. My answer to the question "am I enough?"
And then I lost my corporate job. And in that moment… it wasn't just income that disappeared. It felt like I disappeared. I sat my family down to tell them. My daughter — who was eight at the time — actually celebrated. And my son, who was eleven, looked at me and said…"Dad, you've been really short-tempered. Unpredictable. Not that great to be around." That stopped me completely. Because I had been so attached to performing the role of the successful professional…that I had lost track of who I actually was.
Asmita
And here's the thing — yoga philosophy has a name for exactly this. In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, there is a concept called Asmita. It's one of the five Kleshas i.e., the five causes of human suffering. Asmita is often translated as ego. But more precisely, it means this: the tendency of the self to fuse with what it experiences. To become what it does, to become what it owns, to become what others think of it.
Patanjali wasn't saying that having a career is wrong. He was pointing to something more subtle. The problem isn't the job. The problem is when we glue our sense of self to the job. Because the job can always be taken away. The title can change, the company can restructure, the market can shift. And if your identity lives entirely inside those things, you are one redundancy away from an existential crisis.
Vairagya
So what's the alternative? The Sutras offer another concept: Vairagya i.e., non-attachment. Now — I want to be clear about what this doesn't mean. It doesn't mean not caring about your work, it doesn't mean doing less, it doesn't mean being passive or indifferent.
Vairagya means doing excellent work…without needing the outcome to define you. The Bhagavad Gita puts it beautifully — you may have heard this before: "You have the right to perform your actions, but not to the fruits of your actions." Do the work. Do it with full effort and full commitment. But don't let your peace — or your sense of who you are — depend on the result.
The privilege is in the work itself. Not in the title that comes with it. When I became a yoga teacher, I had to learn this completely. I wasn't a manager anymore. I wasn't climbing anything. And for a long time, that felt like loss. Until I realised… I was more present. More myself. More connected. Not because I had a better title. But because I had let go of needing one.
The question worth sitting with
So here is what I want to leave you with. Not a formula. Not a five-step plan. Just a question. If you stripped away your job title tomorrow…your salary…your role…your LinkedIn headline…What's still there?
Not as a crisis. Not as something to fear. But as a genuine inquiry. Because the part of you that remains when all of that is gone…that's what your heart is actually pointing to. That's the self that was never a job title. And that's the one worth knowing. Thanks for being here.