Who Are You?

By Jackie Leon

Who Are You?

This newsletter is longer than usual. But I respect this subject too much, and I respect you too much, to rush it. It's important—especially in the 2025 identity crisis we're all living through. I love you. Respectfully, here we go:

I ask people all the time: "Who are you?"

And they give me a list.

"I'm a CEO." "I'm a mother." "I'm an investment banker." "I'm a restaurateur." "I'm a father, a brother, a friend."

These aren't answers. They're borrowed identities. Roles you've worn for so long, you forgot they aren't actually you.

Most people can't answer this question because they've been living in someone else's skin. An identity they absorbed, adopted, inherited to survive. It worked. It got you here. But it was never yours.

So let me ask again, in three different ways.

Level One: Who Are You?

Strip away the roles. Strip away the titles. Strip away what you do for a living and who you take care of. What's left?

Most people panic here. Because without the performance, without the script, they don't know.

They panic because their entire identity has been built on external validation. On being needed, being seen, being valued for what they DO. When you take that away, there's just... silence. And that silence is terrifying.

It means sitting with the uncomfortable truth that you've been performing for so long, you forgot there was supposed to be someone underneath. The emptiness isn't because there's nothing there. It's because you've never looked.

You can't think your way to the answer. You can't Google it. You have to feel it, sit with it, experience it. And we're not taught how to do that.

Level Two: Who Are You, Really?

Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz and taught us this: You are your response to what life asks of you. You are the person who answers life's questions through how you show up, how you choose, what you do when everything is stripped away.

You're not what happens to you. You're what you do with what happens to you.

Level Three: Who Are You at the Deepest Level?

Michael Singer says it plainly: You are the one who sees. You are the consciousness behind the thoughts, watching everything unfold. You're not the anxiety, you're the one aware of the anxiety. You're not the achievement, you're the one witnessing it.

You are awareness itself.

This question threatens everything. If you're not your job, your marriage, your kids, your achievements... then what was it all for? The question destabilizes the entire structure you've built. That's why people avoid it.

The career identity crisis gripping 2025 isn't really about careers. It's about people waking up to the fact that they've been performing someone else's life.

The job title you cling to? Borrowed. The identity you defend? Not yours. The script you've been following? Written by someone else.

The question isn't "What do I do next?"

The question is: "Who am I when I stop performing?"

That's where freedom lives. That's where your actual life begins.

For reflection: Who are you being right now?