The truth is there are many different F words, but today I’m talking about the kind of fraud where you slowly con yourself out of your own identity by bundling more meaning into it than you ever realized.
It isn’t the kind where someone steals your identity.
It’s when you hand it over piece by piece without noticing, wrapping your entire sense of self around a title, a role, or a label you never questioned.
Most people don’t realize they’ve done this until something shifts. A job ends. A relationship changes. A role disappears. Suddenly, they are standing there, wondering who they are without it. That panic is the signal that somewhere along the way, they bundled too much meaning into something that was never supposed to define them completely.
You can lose yourself without ever intending to. It happens quietly, one belief and one assumption at a time, until you forget where the job ends and where you begin.
The good news is this can be undone. It starts with unbundling. You break apart the role from the skills, the title from the person, the meaning from the work. Once someone sees what they actually bring to the table, they realize the cage was never locked. They just forgot they were the ones who held the key.
The Real Fraud: When You Con Yourself
The biggest scam isn’t always external. Sometimes it is the one you run on yourself when you mistake a role for an identity and never question what that role actually means to you.