I’ve realised it’s not only me who’s changed. So too have many of the people around me.

What I’ve found interesting is that despite what’s happening in the world around us, or maybe because of it, the change doesn’t seem to be making people harder, it’s quite the opposite.

I’m noticing a softening.

There’s a pause where in before there was a quick reaction. Curiosity where there used to be certainty. A greater willingness to sit in the grey and explore it, rather than rush back to black or white. Right or wrong. Truth or lies. Us or them.

What’s this about?

I can’t say for sure whether that softening is because people are consuming different kinds of content, perhaps aging or constant overwhelm has got something to do with it. Perhaps its as simple as feeling more tired, more reflective, or whether the sheer hardness of the world is forcing people to stop and reconsider how they want to be in it.

But I do think something is shifting.

I’m seeing people become less fixed in their stance toward the world and toward other human beings. Less sure that everything can be neatly sorted into simple categories. More open to complexity. More willing to question themselves. More able, perhaps, to stay with discomfort long enough for something truer to emerge.

That, to me, is all part of identity work.

Not reinventing oneself or becoming someone new because the world says you should. Identity work begins when you start to notice that the way you’ve known yourself is changing, and you can no longer ignore it.

You find yourself drawn to things you once overlooked. You stop to notice birdsong. The smell of a flower in the garden. The comfort of being outdoors. A conversation that would once have felt too slow now feels nourishing. A dog leaning into you for a cuddle melting your heart.

These moments may seem small, but I don’t think they are random, they are clues.

Clues that some deeper part of you is asking for attention. Clues that the old pace, old priorities, old certainties or old ways of proving yourself are no longer as important.

Psychologist Dan McAdams describes identity as an evolving inner life story, the story we use to make sense of who we’ve been, who we are, and who we may still become.

That matters, because identity is not fixed. It shifts as life shifts us.

And life does shift us.

Roles change. Children leave home. Jobs evolve.  Businesses grow, fail or lose meaning. Careers plateau. Relationships change. Our bodies falter. Loss interrupts. New responsibility arrives. The life that once made perfect sense begins to ask different things of us.

That is often when identity work becomes unavoidable.

At some point, many of us realise we have built ourselves around roles:  The achiever. The strong one. The provider. The rescuer. The calm one. The capable one. The leader. The one who holds it all together.

These roles are not wrong. They were necessary. They helped us survive, succeed, belong, or be valued.

But they are not all of who we are – our whole self.

And when one of those roles begins to loosen, or no longer feels quite as true, it becomes deeply unsettling.

The Space in the Middle

There is a middle space in identity work that people do not talk about enough. The in-between. The place where the old version of you no longer fully fits, but the new version is not yet clear.   This is where people become impatient.

They want certainty. A clear answer. A next step. Something to hold onto.

So they long for the past. They numb the present. They try to rush clarity. They mistake uncertainty for failure.

But we learn, mostly in hindsight, that the middle space is not failure, it’s just not knowing.  A necessary part of becoming.

It asks us to stay. To listen more carefully. To let go of who we have been without scrambling too quickly to become someone else. To grieve what was, without going back simply because it is familiar.

Because grief is often part of identity work too.

Not only grief for people or endings, though that is part of life. Also grief for previous selves. For the life stage that is over. For the version of you that coped, achieved, endured, performed or pushed through because that is what was needed then.

There can be grief in realising how much of yourself was built around being useful, impressive, competent or needed.

This is why identity work matters.

Without it, people build strategies on shaky ground or worse, they push through, making decisions from habit rather than truth. They stay in roles, relationships or ways of working that no longer reflect who they are. They keep performing until performance becomes a hiding place.

We discover this usually through isolation or the contrary, the healthy version,  through connection. Social circles and meaningful conversations that inspire reflection where we ask ourselves:

• Who am I now?
• What matters to me now?
• What keeps repeating, even when I try to ignore it?
• Where am I living from truth, and where am I still living from duty, performance or fear?

Those questions matter in any season of life. But they matter especially in a complex AI-shaped world, where so much is changing so quickly that it is easy to confuse productivity with meaning, visibility with value, and output with self-worth.

If we do not know who we are beneath the role, we are more easily pulled off course.  We notice this in our relationships.  Are we on or off course?

Identity work helps us return to coherence.

To what is true beneath the noise. Beneath the performance. Beneath the need to keep up.

So if you are in one of those seasons where you feel a little less certain, a little more reflective, a little more aware that something in you is changing, don’t be too quick to treat it like a problem.

It may be an invitation.

Not to become someone else.

But to pause, ask some questions and become more honest yourself.

A Question to reflection on:
Where in your life are you being asked to let go of an old way of seeing yourself, before the next version is fully clear?

Don’t do the work of becoming alone

When life feels uncertain and your old way of being no longer fits as neatly as it once did, try not to rush back to what numbs or distracts. Reach out instead for a real conversation. Speak to a friend, a trusted confidant, someone who can listen well. And if that kind of support is not available, this is where coaching can help. A good coach will not fix you or tell you who to be. They listen without judgement, hold space for discomfort, and walk beside you as you find your own clarity.