Who Are You Without the Titles

In this episode, we explore one of the most important questions you will ever ask yourself: Who are you—beyond the roles you play and the titles you carry? So often, when asked to describe ourselves, we respond with our job, our responsibilities, or the people we care for. But none of that fully captures the truth of who we are at our core.

I guide you through a powerful reflection exercise that invites you to uncover the parts of yourself that have nothing to do with being a parent, a professional, a partner, or the expectations placed on you. You’ll hear me challenge you to name five things you genuinely love about yourself and five things you love doing—and none of them can be tied to a role. This is where the real identity work begins.

There’s no right or wrong answer. And if you find yourself struggling, that’s not a failure—it’s clarity. It shows you exactly where your starting point is, and I’m here to help you walk that journey. I even invite you to email your answers directly to me, because you don’t have to navigate this process alone.

If you’re ready to reconnect with who you truly are—beneath the titles, beyond the expectations—this episode will meet you right where you are and guide you toward the deeper version of you that’s waiting to be seen.

• www.tkstrickland.com
• Email: info@tkstrickland.com
• Instagram: @iamtkstrickland
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/tkstrickland

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Thank you for listening to TK Conversations and being a part of TK Conversation community. I appreciate each and every one of you that tune in to listen to this podcast. Please always feel free to send me a message, your email. You're more than welcome to join my email list as well. And you can find that on my website at tkstricklin.com. That's tkstricklin.com. The top right of the page is an email link button. If you click on that and enter your email in there, you will be the first to know about any upcoming workshops, retreats, anything, any events that I'm going to be at or speaking at, you'll be the first to know any type of specials or sales I have going on. So please go to the website, enter your email information, and we will definitely stay in touch. So today's podcast, I was thinking through it again, through my morning routine, and something that was on my mind yesterday and was weighing a little heavily today, and it's something that is frequently asked of me, and it always comes up, whether I'm doing an individual coaching, a group coaching, random conversations with strangers. So I just felt compelled today to actually dive into this one and talk about it a little bit. So as we journey through this thing called life together, again today, one step at a time, one moment at a time, what we're gonna embark on is who we are. So who I am and who each and every one of you are. First and foremost, we all know that we're humans and we do human things, we're just being human. But when I say who we are, who are you, who is TK, that's a much deeper dive. And that question goes far beyond the first thought you probably have. And generally, when I'm in a session or talking to someone, and I be like, oh, well, tell me a little bit about yourself, and I want you to think about that as I'm saying it to you as a listener. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Generally, what I get is I'm a mom, I'm a sister, I work for whatever the company name is, or whatever it is that that individual does for a living. They may say I'm a daughter, they they give me all of the hats that they wear, or let's say the roles that they play. So let's say this this thing that we call life is a movie, and we're the main character in our movie. So in your movie, you play all those roles because you wear all of those hats. So those are your titles with the role that you play. So we would think a question as simple as who are you a person would be able to tell us. And they do in a sense, but they don't recognize that they're telling us their roles, they're telling us the role that they play, but they're not actually telling us who they are. So I want you to think about this, and this will be what I want everyone to walk away with today. And I want this to be the assignment, and I'm really hoping that the message touches you deep enough that you actually walk away from this podcast and do the assignment. And I would love for everyone to reach out to me and just let me know. So I'm gonna ask the question, and then I want you to email your answer to me. And my email is infoinfo, so info at tkstricklin.com. Please email me your answer there and I will reach out to you. And the first five people that email me and be completely vulnerable and transparent, I will send you a gift. Can't tell you what it is, but it will be a nice surprise to you. So here's the question. We know my first question was, who are you? Now, the assignment and challenge that I have for you today that I want you to think about as we're going through this is I want you to name me five things that you love doing, and five things you love about yourself. Okay, we got that five things that you love doing, and five things you love about yourself, and it cannot involve the role that you play or the hat that you wear. I need you to tell me those things that you, who you are, you actually love about yourself and love doing. And that's the tricky part. Because I need you to really think about if you're not attached to that role or that title, who would you be? And that's the person that I want to answer those questions and email to me. And I took a pause there because I want each and every one of you to pause before you answer it. Write it down on a piece of paper, put it into your notes on your phone, type it up on your computer, whatever it may be. I want you to pause for a moment and take about five minutes or so and dig deep and say, who am I? And what is it that I love about myself and that I love doing? What this does is it enables you to discover or rediscover who you are, the identity of you, and not the roles that you play. So let's imagine ourselves still in our our movie, and we're the star, and at this moment you're listening to my podcast. So you're you're playing the role of whom? What's the title that you're holding? And as soon as you're done listening to this, what hat do you switch to? What role do you play? Because every single moment we're playing a character within our movie. If your phone rings and it's your father, you're playing the role of a daughter. If you go get in your car to go pick up your child from school, you're playing the role of the mother. When you go clock in to work, or you go perform on that stage, or you go record that that EP for your new record that's coming out, whatever it may be, data entry, I don't care what it is, you're playing the role of that particular thing. Whatever that title may be, whatever that job is, you're playing that role. So now I want you to really get a clear picture of this. As you play these roles, just those few things that I thought of, you could think about how many times you take off a hat and put on a hat throughout the whole entire day. How many times your role changes every single day, all day. And now I want you to think about throughout this whole day, and you can do this at the end of your day as well, but I want you to be completely present and conscious of what I'm saying right now, and it would be great to think about it at the end of the day so you can actually reflect on it. So throughout your whole day of interchanging these hats, taking one off, putting another one on from row to row, at the end of the day before you lay down, take about five minutes, take a couple of deep breaths, and then I want you to say, at what point did I play the role of who I am? And I said it that way intentionally. At what part did you play the role of who you are? Not who they need you to be, not who they want you to be, not any of the hats you were wearing, not any of the titles or the characters, but you. So now, at what point did you sit with you being who you are? That's what I want you to think about at the end of the day. So I want you to write up your list of five things that you love doing and five things that you love about yourself. And at the end of the day, I want you to sit back and think about at what point throughout your day you played the role of you, that you were actually you. And you think through that every single day, as because once we wake up again and start our day, our movie starts over. It it basically is a continuance from the next day, and we can go deeper into that because really, what you left behind on one day, you don't have to bring that into the new day. But generally, as humans, being humans, that is exactly what we do. So those issues, those traumas, whatever was going on on Monday, we'll bring it into Tuesday, and we need to learn how to leave it there. Different, different podcast episode. But I want you to do that on a consistent basis because you need to truly discover who you are, and it it doesn't even matter. Say you have your ideal dream job, that doesn't even matter because you may love and enjoy what you're doing, and I commend you if you do that. That's a wonderful thing, that's a part of the coachings that I go through because I want each and every person to enjoy what it is that they do for a living. Because if you love it and enjoy it, it does not feel like work. But you need to remember that that is a role that you're playing. So, what I'm asking you is to dig deep into who you are, discover who you are, rediscover who you are. So that causes you to tap into you. And let me say this, because I, when everyone starts to think about this, if you start to think and you draw a blank, don't feel bad at all. Because most of the time we don't even think about that, we don't think about who we truly are, we think about the roles that we play, and we just didn't label them as that. And I'm asking you to discover your identity, to rediscover your identity, and that's what those two questions are. When I ask five things that you love doing and five things that you love about yourself, a lot of times people can't answer that question. We never get to the five things that they love doing or the five things that they love about themselves. Well, not in the initial conversation. It could, if it's a coaching session, we may be five or six deep into our sessions before they start to discover or rediscover just one. Just one thing that they love doing because any answer that they give me, I'm gonna question it so they can think deeper and go deeper. So, for example, if one of the answers is I love taking my kids to the park. Okay, that sounds fun. But if you wasn't a mother, would you love going to the park? If that answer is yes, then I'm gonna dig a little deeper and say, what is it about going to the park that you love? And now that forces them to think about it. And they're gonna start pulling stuff out that breaks down why they love going to the park. If that answer is no, if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't go to the park. Okay, then that's one thing that you cannot use. You can't tell me one of the five is I love going to the park because it's not, it's attached to the role. And I really, really need every last one of you listening to really understand that. Because I would truly love to know who you are, and I would love to share with each and every one of you who I am. As you listen to me, if you start listening to me on a regular basis, I reveal who I am quite often. As I sit here and do these podcasts, this is a part of my identity. TK Strickland coming on here doing the podcast is a role that I play because that is a title, but the message that I deliver is my identity, that is part of who I am, and I share that with each and every one of you. Now, this one I know gives you a lot to think about, and again, my rule is always leave you better than I found you. So I always want to leave you better than when you tuned in originally. And our assignment for today, normally I leave one thing for you to think about, but this this takes a little bit more work. So this takes you being very intentional and thinking through this with purpose, and the purpose is to find out who you are. And don't be afraid. If you need some help, please feel free to reach out. Never hesitate. You can even leave a message for me on my website. You can go to my social medias and DM me if you need help. I'm here to help. But I want you to ask yourself who you are, and then I want you to think about and ask yourself, writing everything down. This is where journaling really comes in handy. And we haven't even discussed journaling, but please keep that in mind. Grab a notebook, whatever you write on, but I want you to keep it near and dear to your heart, always be able to go back to it. So, who are you? Is the first question without telling me any titles or rows. And then five things that you love doing, and five things that you love about yourself. If you cannot answer the question of who you are without naming your title or role, that is perfectly fine. Just skip to the five things that you love doing or the five things that you love about yourself. If you can't answer both of those, pick one of those that you can. Make it as easy as possible for yourself because this is a journey that I'm sending you down. And we can start with one. You may not even have five things. If you come up with one, that is great. If you come up with five, that's awesome. There's no right or wrong to it. It's just me opening you up to another level. That's all I'm doing. It's helping you grow, and growing's not easy. It's me giving you something to think about to tap into that other part of you. That's all this assignment is. So if you can answer one out of the three questions, perfect. If you cannot answer any of the three questions, that's perfect too. All the more reason to reach out to me. So don't not send me a message or an email because you didn't have an answer. Please still send it anyway because what I'll do is I'll be able to respond to you and give you another way of thinking of it so you can come up with an answer for at least one of those questions. And as we continue on this journey of life together, although all of our journeys are different because we're all on our own journey, I'm still here to help you through that journey. I can always throw out questions that will get you to thinking and get you to discover and rediscover. So remember, don't hesitate to reach out. And I really hope that each and every listener today really be intentional about answering those. Because all we're doing is making your light shine brighter. So until next time, I want every last one of you to have a beautiful day. Remember, no matter what's going on around you, what's happening in life, it's happening for you and not to you. Always remember it's happening for you and not to you. For you to make you a better person so you can grow and evolve. So don't look at it as a negative thing, no matter what it is. I want you guys to be bright, shine bright today. Go have a fabulous day. Until we speak again, thank you for listening to TK Conversations.