Put Down The Ring Light And Just Post (Jo Moment)

We unpack why tying your identity to your job makes you fragile, especially as AI speeds up role change and redundancy. We share how to build a more fluid sense of self so you can pivot without losing confidence or peace. 
• a single line that reframes job identity as risk 
• how high-achieving women get rewarded into identity fusion 
• the hidden costs of overwork and never switching off 
• why AI exposure can hit older, educated, higher paid women 
• what redundancy triggers: grief, over-responsibility, loss of confidence 
• why more qualifications are not the real fix 
• building a fluid identity by shedding labels and conditioning 
• the must-have skill for the future: adapting without panic 
If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today. And don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite sized breakthroughs. 

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

If something landed today, there's more where that came from.

And if you know a woman this would resonate with, send it her way.

🎙️https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
🔗 www.balanceinstitute.com
💼https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
📷 @therealjostone

Transcript

AI Raises The Stakes

What Redundancy Does To Identity

Skills Help But Identity Matters More

How To Build A Fluid Identity

Share And Subscribe

Jo Stone (Host) 0:28

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments, your weekly dose of insight, wisdom, and mindset shifts, all in 10 minutes or less. Whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective, or a spark of inspiration, this is your space to pause, reflect, and reset. Let's dive in. I was listening to a recent diary of a CEO episode, and there was a blink and your miss it moment that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. It wasn't even the main point, it was just dropped in there. But man, it's the most important thing I think high-achieving women need to hear right now. The moment was, Stephen Bartlett said, if your identity is tied to one job, you are exposed. That one line dropped in. Not even the point of the episode on AI and evolution and jobs and all the things. Here's why this matters. So many women in my world have their identity completely fused to their job. Lawyer, accountant, senior leader, founder, entrepreneur, CEO in this industry, in tech, in blah, blah, blah. And you don't know who you are without the job because you have become the get shit done person, the one everyone relies on. You've got these high standards. Don't drop the ball. And this has worked really, really well. So much of your success is because your identity has been completely fused. But that is no longer going to serve you. In fact, it's going to become kryptonite for what is coming our way. Now, we weren't born this way with our identities tied to our employment, but we were rewarded this way. And for many of us, the word that comes to mind is we were almost groomed. Because every time we delivered something, that identity was great, you're good at your job, well done. Every promotion, every crisis that we held together, every thing that we did that was impossible, every time we were the one that people called to go, hey Joe, got a minute. It became so infused and stopped becoming what we did every day, and it became who we are. It became an identity. It goes beyond just a behavior. Now, this identity fusion comes at a cost, and you're probably already feeling a lot of it. Whether you struggle to enjoy your holiday without actually checking your phone or worrying what's going to be there when you get back. Massively overworking or over-indexing on work. And even though you say family first, I love my kids, I need to make time for myself and a life outside work, work will always come first, despite whatever story you tell yourself. Because work is who you are. Now, this is already costing you, but now AI is pouring rocket fuel on these dangers. Anthropic, the owners of Claude, recently released a report on who are the most exposed workers in at-risk professions. How's this for a giant whack? Older, female, more educated, higher paid. Not junior burgers, not someone else's problem. Oh my god. And if that role that you're in, if you are older, which these days means over 40, female with good paycheck, with lots of qualifications, because you are so the job, if that role shifts or that role disappears, it's not just a job that's gonna get shaken or had the rug pulled under it. It's you. So I've worked with many women who have been through this transition before. And let me tell you, it's not nice. And I'm sharing this because more and more women are about to go through it, and it's going to feel brutal because it's going to happen really, really fast. So I've had many women come to me who literally just been made redundant out of the blue, restructure, company taken over. And the initial instinct is disbelief. Oh my God, how can this be happening to me? I've worked really hard, I've delivered, what's going to happen without me? Our mass over-responsibility patterns kick right in, and then we start overcompensating for well, who's going to take on the clients and who's going to. And so there's this almost leaning in and holding on for dear life because you've just been given a giant slap by the universe to say you are no longer a blah blah blah at blah blah blah company that doesn't exist anymore. But you can't imagine what that life looks like, even if you've been thinking about leaving anyway, you don't really like the job, you know you're stressed, all of those things. So this then usually steps into some form of collapse, grief, loss, confusion, rage, all manner of emotions on that crazy change curve. Very often women go into this dark void of, well, who am I? I'm never gonna get a job again, takes it so personally and overanalyzes what I could have done. Maybe I should have done more on that project, maybe I shouldn't have taken that on. It's never actually, you know what? This isn't my fault. I rocked it. I'm amazing at what I do. It was just it's just business, as they say. But really, really hard when you've poured your life and your soul into business, even if it's not yours, and then you're told, oh, actually, you're just an employee number and slide your Excel spreadsheet across the table and here's your calculation. Thanks very much, even if you get that. So you know, logically, it's not personal, but everything on the inside says different. And on the other side of that grief moment and everything that comes with that, there's usually a huge dent to women's confidence. In the environment we're going into, if roles are going to be changing, consolidating, who knows what, finding a new role is gonna get harder. So all that pressure comes on. Oh my God, I've got to make money. What am I gonna do? Oh my god, I need more qualifications. But this is not about the qualifications. Yes, of course, go learn AI, experiment, play with things, play with agents, go to the conference if you must, upskill, like do all of it. That's now no longer just a nice to have. Nobody in no matter what profession they are, can stick their head in the sand and pretend that this isn't coming. But that's not the work. That's not what's actually going to change you. The work, as Stephen Bartlett said in this interview, is about having more of a fluid identity, not latching on to all the roles that we have. And he said in this episode, he dedicated an entire chapter to leaving the labels, all the roles that we tell ourselves we have. That can even be wife or partner, mother, all of these things that come with stuff. If we need to be nimble, if we need to pivot, if we are going to be organizing a conference one minute, starting a podcast the next, running a festival another time, building a new company, we have to be fluid. Our worth can no longer be hooked to output because robots and machines are going to be doing most of the output. So what's left is the thinking, is the deciding, is then the other end of the spectrum, is this fit for market? Completely different skill set, but the work is being able to move and adapt without feeling like you're losing yourself or you're contorting yourself. I, for a long time, called myself a chameleon. I was really good at contorting into spaces, but that was literally me deciding in that moment, well, I'm gonna go to the golf day and I'm gonna talk to all the blokes about this, and I'm gonna fit in. And then I'd be at the mums at the school gate and I'd go, hi, and they'd ask me about what recipe I cooked, and I was just morphing and changing. This really is the identity crisis sitting underneath the career crisis. And I don't want you to be sideswiped by this. I don't want you to be caught flat-footed because you can do this work now. You don't have to wait until the rug is pulled out from you. So people always say to me, all right, Joe, well, what does this unhooking actually look like? Well, you've got to take apart the layers of who you've become, realizing that this perfectionist, perhaps, or people pleaser, or one who doesn't like letting people down, the helpful one, these are all parts of conditioning. They were given to you, gifted to you by childhood, by your gender, by society. Some of it serves you and it has to this point, but moving forward, not so much. This is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to now decide who you actually want to be. What do you want to put down? What do you intentionally want to keep? What new parts of your life, of your soul, of your being, of your desires have you never actually dreamed that you could pick up? Because the opportunities that are waiting for us now are once in a generation, possibly once ever. This is your chance to lead a more authentic life that is very much built on your terms for who you want to be. And we're gonna have to constantly pivot in a world of, we've used the word bloody rapid change and vulcar and all that stuff for years, but the speed is just a coming. Constantly pivoting, constantly reimagining yourself, dealing with failure, putting yourself out there, that not working, picking up and doing it again when you won't allow yourself to fail and you beat yourself up constantly for that mistake you made four years ago on that document, you don't have a chance in hell. And I don't want that for you. I don't want you to shrink and to live in fear and to be paranoid and hold on even tighter to the job that you may have right now because who knows what that's gonna look like. So the women who navigate this next phase well are not going to be the most technical skill. Don't think you have to now go out and learn code and build a robot and all those things. You need to be someone who can let go of who you've been and not panic in the gap of who you're about to become and build that muscle so you can do that over and over again. That period of evolution, of shedding a layer, of picking up a new one. That is the skill, the must-have skill that all high-achieving women must develop if they are going to thrive in the future. And most high-achieving women have never been taught how to do that. This is why I want to talk about this more. I have to talk about this more. If this landed for you, stick around. I'll be sharing more on exactly this. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today. And don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite sized breakthroughs. See you next time.