Ep 18 | Exploring your relationship to work with Roberta Dombrowski

In this solo episode, I open season two of In Her Words by reflecting on the growing sense of disappointment and disillusionment many of us are experiencing at work. With layoffs continuing to rise, particularly impacting women, I explore how these moments often force us into deeper inflection points around identity, meaning, and alignment.

I share my own experience of being laid off in 2023 and what it revealed about how tightly my sense of self had become intertwined with my job. From there, I invite you to pause and examine your own relationship to work—how it fits into the broader context of your life, what needs it’s fulfilling, and where it may no longer be serving you.

Drawing on frameworks like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the idea of vocation as calling, this episode sets the foundation for the season ahead as we begin to question not just what we do for work, but why we do it.

Topics Discussed in This Episode

• The current state of work and the emotional impact of widespread layoffs
• How work shapes identity, self-worth, and belonging
• Reflective questions to explore who you are beyond your job
• Applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to motivation and fulfillment at work
• Reimagining work as a calling rather than an obligation

Links & Resources:
Season 2 reflection exercises https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

Grab Consciously Crafting Your Career Path: https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

Connect with Roberta on LinkedIn 

Connect with Roberta on LinkedIn 

Grab Consciously Crafting Your Career Path: https://www.learnmindfully.co/store

If this episode sparked new insight, please consider rating, following, or reviewing the show. It’s the best way to help more people find and benefit from these vital conversations. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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In my opinion, work is the only acceptable form of addiction in society. You're rewarded for not having boundaries and doing more. There is never enough time, and there always is a list of things to do and do and do. But it doesn't have to be that way. Welcome to In Her Words. This podcast is for women navigating through change, career, identity, motherhood, and just figuring out what's next. I'm Roberta Dembrowski, host of In Her Words and founder of Learn Mindfully. Each episode, I sit down with women who are asking big questions, navigating transitions, and trying to make sense of life as it shifts. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just need space to be real. Let's get into it. Welcome to season two. In conversations with clients lately, I've been hearing a lot of disappointment around the current state of work. It makes sense. In 2025 alone, there were over 1.17 million layoffs. This was the highest since 2020. Estimates show that over 450,000 of them have been women. This is causing so many people to hit inflection points when it comes to their lives and careers. So many of my clients have been saying the same thing. I did everything I was told. I played by the rules. And for what? I think a lot of our frustration stems from the fact that many of us have never stopped to think about where exactly work falls into the bigger scheme of things. We've worked, we've overstepped our boundaries, we've said yes to taking on more, but never actually stopped to think whether it aligned with our lives and who we are as people. So today I'm going to dive deeper into how you can begin to explore your relationship to work. If you enjoy the exercises from today's episode, you can purchase them from the link in our store. As always, thank you for supporting In Her Words. Let's get into it. According to Andrew Neighbor, industrial organizational psychologist at Randcorp, the average person will spend over 90,000 hours at work. That totals out to roughly one-third of our lives. We spend more time at work than we do with many of our families. It is a defining aspect of our lives and even our identities. When we meet someone for the first time, often the most common question we hear is, what do you do for work? Work, therefore, is not only something we do, but it can be the way that we identify ourselves in the world. Through work, we can find things like identity, status, challenge, and even wealth. As a transracial adoptee, work has filled a void of identity for much of my life. I've identified with the titles of instructor, researcher, manager, coach, more than any other identities I've inherited or chosen. Work was a way for me to prove my competence, develop self-worth, and find meaning. I didn't know how much work was defining my sense of self until I was laid off from a full-time job in 2023. I found myself for the first time in my life taking a break. The open space in my calendar was suffocating. If I didn't work, what did that mean? Who was I? What value did I provide? Was I just wasting space? This time was really uncomfortable, but it made me realize how unhealthy my relationship with work was. It made me realize that I'm so much more than my job. So this is where I usually first begin with clients. We start to explore who you are, what your identity is, and what makes you you. So if you want to follow along, feel free to grab a piece of paper and reflect on some of the key questions. What is your identity? What roles do you play in your life? For example, are you a mother, artist, friend, caregiver, coach, performer? What did you inherit in your life? Either your place of birth, maybe aspects of your physical appearance, birth family. What things have you chosen for yourself? Could be where you work, where you live, maybe hobbies. What do you feel confident about? What brings you joy? What do you want to be or do? Take a few moments to look at what you wrote down. Notice any themes, patterns that emerge for you. Let's start to talk a little bit about how you can identify your relationship to work. As a society, our relationship with work has transformed over time. As we moved to the agrarian age, we became farmers. Much of our days were spent in fields with animals and planting crops. With the introduction of the Industrial Revolution, our world transformed. Factory work brought us processes that still influence the dominant approaches to our work today. In the 1960s, we saw a rise in knowledge workers, and we're now on the precipice of finding out the impact of AI on our lives and work. This shift in how we work has also impacted workers' needs today. One helpful framework that conveys this is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Created by Abraham Maslow in 1943, Maslow proposed that humans have five levels of needs. Within each level are specific needs that have to be met before an individual feels fulfilled and can progress to the next level. We can apply the same framework to the workplace to help us understand motivation and engagement at work. These needs are really for the most working professionals in the Western world. The first needs are psychological needs. These are foundational needs of food, water, shelter, and clothing that are often being satisfied today. Safety is the second level of needs. Once the basic needs are met, safety is another vital need. Workers need to feel secure, both physically and psychologically, in order to perform. If you're worried about layoffs, budget cuts, or politics, they can have a huge impact on your workplace well-being. The third level of needs is belonging. This relates to whether you have opportunities to build relationships with your peers or coworkers. The fourth level is esteem. This level relates to whether you feel like you're driving an impact within the wider business. And the fifth level is self-transcendence. It really translates to whether you're feeling like you have a calling or you're serving a larger purpose or contribution in the world. Many workers in developed countries find themselves at the lower order of needs being met. They have food on the table, they feel particularly safe, and they have a healthy sense of belonging with their peers. But now they're turning themselves to their higher order of needs of esteem and self-actualization when it comes to work. As an elder millennial, this rings true. I grew up hearing that I should find work that gave me a good salary, allowed me to save for retirement, and eventually buy a house. Stability was the value being championed by those around me, not fulfillment. But inside, I knew I wanted more. I always found myself drawn to the writings of Parker Palmer, who viewed vocations more as callings. He wrote, Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we thought we ought to be. As we do, we will not only find the joy that human beings seek, we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service. His beliefs really align with my own position on work, that it can be a calling and service of something greater than ourselves. My calling is to create the conditions for growth in myself and others. I have multiple avenues that I do that through. Writing, teaching, coaching, even this podcast. I have one mentor, Bazad Surjani, who aims to create a portfolio approach to his work, which enables him to chip away at different ideas, engagement models, and partnerships. Your view of work may be different. Have you offer thought about why you work? Is it to make ends meet or is it something more? How do you define good work? What does money or growth have to do with it? When you take some time to reflect on these things, you may be surprised. In my opinion, work is the only acceptable form of addiction in society. You're rewarded for not having boundaries and doing more. There is never enough time, and there always is a list of things to do and do and do. But it doesn't have to be that way. For the rest of this season of In Her Words, we will dive into ways that you can begin to reclaim work and life for yourself. You'll hear stories from amazing women who took a stand and made shifts in their careers, even when the systems were screaming at them to stay put and keep going. So thanks so much for listening. I can't wait for you to hear more this season. Thanks for being here. If something in this episode landed with you, feel free to pass it along to someone who might need it too. You can leave a review, subscribe, or just keep tuning in. We're figuring it out together. And remember, your story, your voice, your becoming. It all matters.