Learn who you are without introductions, titles, reactions, or applause.

Almost everything you use to explain yourself is external: the job, the role, the reactions of people who know you, the record of what you have done. Strip those away and there is still someone there, and most people have very little sense of who that is because they have never been without the scaffolding.

Spend some time where none of it applies. Somewhere nobody knows you, or simply alone with the question. Ask who you are with none of the identifiers attached. It is a difficult question and worth returning to, because everything else in your life rests on the answer.