The first question strangers ask is what you do. Answer it the same way for enough years and the answer stops being a description and becomes a self. That fusion feels like commitment while everything is going well. It becomes a trap the moment the role stops fitting, because now leaving the job feels like losing yourself.
Why We Stay Too Long
Decision scientist Annie Duke argues in Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away that quitting is a skill, and that most of us exercise it badly precisely when identity is involved. Her observation that if you quit at the right time it will usually feel too early is worth sitting with for anyone circling a hard decision. The underlying pattern is old and well documented: foundational research on escalation of commitment showed that people invest more in a failing course of action when they feel responsible for having chosen it.
Building an Identity That Can Survive a Career Change
The protection is diversification. People with several sources of identity, family roles, craft, community, faith, the body, absorb a professional setback without an existential one. In coaching we work on this directly: naming what you value apart from the title, setting kill criteria in advance so a future decision is made by your calmest self rather than your most invested one, and separating what you owe an employer from what you owe a younger version of yourself who made a promise under different conditions.
None of this requires quitting anything. It requires knowing you could, which changes how you show up even if you stay.
Selected Reading
Duke A. Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. Portfolio, 2022. About the book.
Staw BM. Knee-deep in the big muddy: a study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1976. Foundational. Read via DOI.
This article is for general education only. Coaching is not psychotherapy or medical care. Talk with a qualified clinician about your individual situation.