The other day, when I got back from work, as exhausted as I was, all I wanted to do was just bake some scones. And that desire actually got me thinking about the importance of building an identity beyond your job and how a lot of us, without really meaning to, build our entire identity around our work.

— and I think this is even more true for people who are ambitious, who care about doing good work, who want to grow — there's this really easy shift that happens where your job stops being something you do and starts being something you are.

Like, you go from "I work as…." to "I am a/an" — and those feel like the same sentence but they are actually very different. One is a description of what you spend your time doing. the other is a statement about who you fundamentally are as a person.

And when you are your job — when the job is the whole thing — it creates this really fragile situation. Because jobs change. Companies restructure. Roles evolve. You get passed over for something, or something doesn't go the way you hoped, or you have a hard week, and suddenly — because the job is you — that can start to impact how you view yourself, how you value yourself and even your self esteem.

That's a lot of weight to put on something that is ultimately just one part of your life.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about your job or that you shouldn’t take your job seriously. I think you should care about your work. I think you should be proud of what you do — genuinely, deeply proud. I think ambition is real and valid and worth pursuing. I think doing your job well matters. What I'm saying is that those things can all be true and your job still does not have to be the whole of who you are.

You can be excellent at your work and also be a person who loves making scones on a Sunday morning. You can be a dedicated professional and also be someone who has friendships and hobbies and opinions about things that have absolutely nothing to do with your work. You can take your career seriously without it being the only thing that defines you.

And if you’re trying to navigate this, I think an important question to ask yourself is— what does my identity look like outside of the job? like if tomorrow, for whatever reason, the job was gone — who would I be?

For me personally — this is something I had to work on in the early years of my career. I spent so much time putting my all into my work. I was so ambitious I had so many career goals and I justified it all based on what I went through to get to where I was at that point in my career. And as a young black African woman who for the most part is introverted I felt like I had to commit myself even more than my peers, I had to show up even more than my peers, and eventually, the work consumed me.

I put so much of myself into the work that I hadn't really been tending to the rest.

I think that happens a lot. especially when you're early in your career and the job is new and exciting and there's a lot to learn and a lot to prove. It's easy for it to consume everything.

But I quickly learnt that it didn’t have to be that way that. You could still be successful in your job you could still experience growth in your work. You could still be ambitious without allowing your work or your job to fully consume you, to be the only thing you identify with.

The people I've watched thrive long term in corporate spaces — not just survive, but actually thrive — they almost all have a full life outside of work. A full sense of self that doesn't live or die by what happens in the office.

It makes them more resilient when hard things happen at work. It makes them more interesting to be around. And honestly? I think it makes them better at their jobs — because they bring a wholeness to what they do that people who are only their job just don't have.

So I guess what I'm saying is —

Be proud of your work. Show up fully. Care deeply about what you do and how you do it.

And also — make the scones! Read the book that has nothing to do with your career. Have the friendship that is not a networking opportunity. Pursue the thing you enjoy that is never going to go on your CV. Let yourself be a full person.

Because your job is not your whole story. It's one chapter. And the chapters that happen outside of the office, those matter too. Those are the ones that hold you when work gets hard.

Your identity is bigger than your job title. It should be. Let it be.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Full YouTube video is up on my channel:

You Are Not Your Job | A Reminder for the ambitious Corporate Girl | Corporate Girl Diaries Ep.5

Mila 🤍

At some point in most people's early careers — quietly, without a formal announcement — they hand over the steering wheel. Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just gradually. A decision made to please a parent. A career path chosen because someone said it was practical. A job stayed in too long because leaving felt ungrateful or too risky. An opportunity not pursued because someone said it was unrealistic.

And before long, the career you are living looks a lot more like the one other people imagined for you than the one you actually want.

The voices that get in the way

The external influences on your career are not always obvious. Some of them come dressed as wisdom.

A parent who steered you toward something stable because they were afraid of what uncertainty would cost you. A manager who quietly diminished your ambitions because your growth made them uncomfortable. A circle where nobody talked about wanting more — so wanting more started to feel embarrassing. A culture that told you certain careers were not for people like you.

None of these people necessarily meant you harm. But the effect was the same: someone else's fears, limitations, or comfort became a ceiling on what you allowed yourself to believe was possible.

"The most invisible cage in corporate life is the one built out of other people's expectations — because it never announces itself as a cage."

I have watched this happen up close. I have sat in rooms where talented women spoke about their careers in a way that was entirely shaped by what others had told them about what they were worth, what they were suited for, and how far they could realistically go.

And I have noticed that the ones who eventually broke out of it — quietly, without drama, without anyone's permission — almost always had one thing in common. They started being intentional about what they allowed into their mental space.

The thing about exposure

Here’s the thing: what you surround yourself with shapes what you believe is possible for you.

This is not fluff. It is not manifestation. It is something more practical and more honest than that.

When you spend most of your time around people who have stopped dreaming — who talk about careers in terms of survival rather than building — your own ambition starts to feel excessive. Embarrassing, even. You begin to quietly edit yourself to fit the room.

But when you intentionally expose yourself to the version of the life you are working toward — through the content you consume, the people you spend time with, the conversations you allow yourself to have — something shifts. Not because the exposure magically creates opportunities. But because it keeps the belief alive that what you want is actually possible. And belief, in early career especially, is a resource you cannot afford to run out of.

THE HONEST TRUTH

You are not going to outgrow what you cannot first imagine. Surrounding yourself with your goals is not indulgent or naive. It is one of the most practical career and life decisions you can make.

So how do you practically do this?

It does not have to be dramatic. It is not about overhauling your life or cutting people off. It is about small, intentional choices that compound over time.

It is choosing to follow the accounts that align with the career and life you are trying to build, and watch the content that shows you people doing the kind of work you want to do — especially people who look like you, who come from where you come from, who navigated the similar obstacles.

It is intentionally having conversations with someone who is further along the path you want to be on — not to extract advice, but simply to normalise the possibility of being where they are.

It is noticing when a room — whether physical or digital — consistently makes your ambitions feel smaller, and making a quiet decision to spend less time in it.

It is letting yourself want things out loud. To yourself first. Then, when you are ready, to others.

Your career is still yours

In all this, it’s important to remember that you did not come this far — through everything it took to get here — to let someone else decide where you end up.

The external factors are real. The pressures are real. The financial obligations, the family expectations, the organisational politics, the structural inequalities — none of that is imagined. I am not going to pretend that agency means any of it disappears.

But inside all of that, there is still a version of your career that belongs to you. A direction that is yours to choose. A path that you get to build — imperfectly, non-linearly, with detours and setbacks and seasons that look still from the outside.

Nobody is coming to hand it to you. But it is also not out of reach.

The question is not whether you have agency. The question is whether you are using it.

I have a full yap session about this on my YouTube channel:

Day of an EA in JHB | You Have More Say In Your Career Than You Think | Corporate Girl Diaries Ep. 4

NEW HERE?

Get the free Corporate Glossary 🤍

30 corporate phrases decoded — what they say, what they actually mean, and how to navigate each one. Free when you subscribe to Dear Corporate Girl.

Subscribe & get the free guide →

Happy Mother’s Day. 🤍

I hope today is soft for you. I hope someone makes you tea without being asked, and that the day has more warmth than obligation in it.

But more than that — I hope you know that the version of you that goes to work on Monday is not in conflict with the version of you that came home last night from a night out with the girls. They are the same person. Both of them are real. Both of them deserve to exist fully.

You are allowed to want a career that fulfils you. You are allowed to care about your professional growth, your reputation, your ambitions — the ones that belong to you and no one else. You are allowed to find meaning in your work without it being a commentary on how much you love your family.

The guilt you carry is not evidence that you’re doing something wrong. It’s evidence that you care deeply — about your work and about your people, your tribe, your family. That kind of care is not a problem to be solved. It’s a sign of who you are.

You are building something. In your career and in your home. You are becoming a version of yourself that younger you always dreamt of. A version that younger you would pin to their Pinterest board. And the fact that you’re doing both, imperfectly and persistently, in a world that makes it harder than it should be — that is one of the bravest things I know.

You are more than enough, as you are. And you deserve the World and more🤍

— Mila, Dear Corporate Girl
@_iammila · dearcorporategirl.substack.com

New here?

Get the free Corporate Glossary 🤍

30 corporate phrases decoded — what they say, what they actually mean, and how to navigate each one. Free when you subscribe to Dear Corporate Girl.

Subscribe & get the free guide →

If this resonated — share it with a working mom who needed to hear it today. 🌸

Dear Corporate Girl · dearcorporategirl.substack.com · @_iammila on TikTok

The other day, I found myself disappointed — not in anyone else, but in myself. I had just returned to work after almost three weeks of leave, and I had done absolutely none of the things I said I was going to do. Part of me was trying to justify it: I work hard. I deserve to rest. Let me just be a bum for a little while. And honestly? Rest is valid. But then something shifted.

The other day I was reading the Bible, and I came across Romans 12:6, which speaks about using the gifts God has given you — and using them well. The verse even gives specific examples: if you have the gift of speaking, speak well. If you have the gift of leadership, lead well. It sounds simple enough, but it hit me differently in that moment. It convicted me. I was like…wow!

I had to check myself.

I shared this thought with my husband using an analogy that felt so clear to me in that moment. Imagine you’re trying to drive from Johannesburg to Pretoria. You have a car — and you expect that car to simply get you there. But you’re forgetting something: you have to actually drive it. You need to apply your skills, your attention, your effort. The car doesn’t get you to Pretoria on its own. It’s a tool, and you are the one who has to use it.

It was a real conviction. So that just made me think.

It’s the living embodiment of the principle that faith without works is dead. We are sitting on gifts — real, God-given gifts — that are not there for decoration. They are there with purpose and intention.

God doesn’t give us gifts just for fluff. There is a reason He placed specific abilities inside of you, and it is on us to apply them — to use them to help create the life we want, to achieve the things we’re believing for. And here’s the beautiful part: when we do that, we are actually living in obedience. We are saying,

That is worship in action.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve been praying, asking God to change things, to provide, to open doors — I want to encourage you to pause and reflect. Ask yourself:

I know it can feel frustrating, especially when you feel like you’re already putting in the work and not seeing results. But nothing good comes overnight. Success is not instant. What it requires is discipline, obedience, and intentionality — showing up consistently with what you already have, and trusting that as you do, God will meet you right there at your gift.

He will favour you. He will provide. Not because you earned it, but because you were faithful with what He gave you.

I hope this encourages someone today.

— Mila, Dear Corporate Girl
dearcorporategirl.substack.com

New here?

Get the free Corporate Glossary 🤍

30 corporate phrases decoded — what they say, what they actually mean, and how to navigate each one. Free when you subscribe to Dear Corporate Girl.

Subscribe now

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs a Sunday reminder that they are not behind. 🤍

Dear Corporate Girl | DCG · dearcorporategirl.substack.com · @_iammila on TikTok · @_dearcorporategirl on Instagram

Okay, come sit. Tea in hand. It’s Sunday and we’re not rushing anywhere.

I want to talk about something that I think a lot of us carry quietly — this silent anxiety that follows us around the longer we are in our careers. The feeling of being behind. The sense that everyone else is moving at a pace you haven’t quite matched. That somehow, despite doing everything you were supposed to do — studying, showing up, working hard — you are still not where you thought you would be by now.

I know that feeling. I have lived it. And I want to offer you the honest version of the conversation about it — not the motivational poster version, not the LinkedIn success story version. Just the real one, between us, on a Sunday morning/afternoon/evening…wherever you are reading this from.

The romanticized version

We have been sold a very specific story about how careers are supposed to go. You study. You graduate. You get the job. You work hard. You get recognized. You get promoted. You keep going up. The trajectory is clean and linear and upward, and if you are talented and diligent, the rewards follow in a timely and logical fashion.

That story is everywhere. It’s in graduate programme brochures. It’s in the way we talk about success at family dinners. It’s in the LinkedIn posts that start with “Excited to announce...” and end with a title that sounds like forward motion.

And for some people, something close to that story does happen. Not the clean version — nobody’s career is actually clean — but a version that feels like progress, that has visible milestones, that looks the way success is supposed to look.

But for a lot of us? It doesn’t go like that. And the gap between the story we were told and the reality we’re living is where a very particular kind of frustration lives.

What career growth actually looks like

Here is the version nobody puts online:

Career growth is mostly invisible. It happens in skills you didn’t know you were developing. In situations that felt like failures that were actually teaching you something irreplaceable. In years that look still from the outside and are full of formation on the inside.

It is not linear. It does not follow a schedule. It does not care that you thought you would be a manager by now, or that your friend from university is already a director, or that someone three years younger than you just got a promotion that felt like it should have been yours.

I have worked closely with senior leaders for years (a perk about my job I am forever grateful for). And one of the things that stuck with me — in conversations, watching how they made decisions, observing what separated people who grew from people who stalled — is that the ones who had eventually built something real had almost universally spent years doing quiet, unglamorous, unrecognized work before anyone started paying attention.

The recognition came later. Sometimes much later. And the work they did in the waiting period was not wasted — it was, in almost every case, the foundation that made the recognition possible when it finally arrived. To use my own personal journey as an example: I am now 37 years old. It is only in the past 6 years that I have experienced exponential growth and recognition in my career.

The comparison problem

Let’s talk about the thing that makes feeling behind so much worse: comparison. Specifically, the particular cruelty of comparing your insides to everyone else’s outsides.

You see someone’s LinkedIn announcement. You see the title. You see the company name. You see the professional photo and the hundred congratulatory comments. And you are sitting at your desk in a role that feels too small, in a company that feels stuck, wondering what you are doing wrong.

What you do not see: the two jobs they left before this one. The year they spent feeling exactly how you feel right now. The mentor who happened to be in the right place. The opportunity that came from a connection, not a CV. The anxiety they still carry every single day about whether they are actually as capable as the title suggests.

This is not a new observation. But I want to say it specifically to you, on a this Sunday, in the context of your career — because I think knowing something intellectually and actually releasing the comparison are two very different things. And the releasing takes practice. It takes a daily, quiet decision to come back to your own path.

Your timeline is not their timeline. Their title is not your measure. Their pace is not your pace. These are facts, not consolations.

The years that feel like nothing

I want to say something specific about the years that feel like nothing is happening.

The year you stayed in a role that wasn’t growing you but taught you exactly what you didn’t know you needed to learn. The year you got passed over for something and had to sit with the rejection and keep showing up anyway. The year you weren’t sure if you were in the right field, the right company, the right city — and you couldn’t find the answer, so you just kept going.

Those years are not wasted. I know they feel like they are. I know it is deeply unsatisfying to be told that the hard years will make sense later — because later is not now, and now is where you are living.

But I have watched enough careers — my own, the ones I’ve had close proximity to, the ones I’ve observed from a vantage point that most people don’t get early in their careers — to tell you with some confidence: the years that look quiet are almost always the years doing the most work.

What you can actually do right now

I don’t want to leave you with only the philosophical version of this. So here are some practical, honest things.

Stop using other people’s timelines as your measure. Not permanently, because comparison is human. But do it intentionally, regularly, as a practice. Every time you notice yourself measuring your progress against someone else’s, gently bring your attention back to your own path. Where are you growing? What did you not know a year ago that you know now? What can you do today that you could not do when you started?

Write things down. I cannot tell you enough how much this changed things for me. Journal if you must. When you are in the middle of a season that feels stagnant, you lose sight of how much has actually shifted. Your notes become evidence. Keep them. Return to them. They will surprise you.

Separate your worth from your title. I know this is easier said than done when the world largely measures people by what they do and what they’re called. But the version of you that exists outside the job title is the actual you. Do not let your sense of self become entirely contingent on where you are in a hierarchy. It is a fragile place to live.

Find one real thing to focus on this week. Not a goal board. Not a five-year plan. One real, specific thing that you can do this week that moves you — even by a centimeter — in a direction that matters to you. Small actions, repeated over time, are what careers are actually made of.

A letter — because this felt like it needed one

Dear Corporate Girl,

You are not behind.

I know that is hard to believe right now — when you are watching everyone else seem to accelerate past you, when your title hasn’t changed in a while, when you are working hard and quietly and feel like nobody is noticing.

But here is what I want you to understand: the version of success you are comparing yourself to was designed for someone else. It was built around someone else’s circumstances, someone else’s connections, someone else’s timeline. Someone else’s purpose. You were never running that race.

You are running yours. And your race has a different rhythm — slower in some places, faster in others, with terrain that nobody else’s map prepared you for.

The work you are doing right now — the quiet work, the unrecognized work, the work that feels invisible — is building something. You may not see it from where you’re standing. You probably won’t see it for a while. But it is building.

Keep your head down when the comparison noise gets loud. Keep writing things down. Keep showing up with the same quiet competence you bring when nobody is watching. That is what eventually compounds into something real.

You are not late. You are in your own season. And this one, as frustrating as it feels, is doing more for you than you know.

Keep going. 🤍

— Mila, Dear Corporate Girl
dearcorporategirl.substack.com

New here?

Get the free Corporate Glossary 🤍

30 corporate phrases decoded — what they say, what they actually mean, and how to navigate each one. Free when you subscribe to Dear Corporate Girl.

Subscribe now

If this resonated, share it with someone who needs a Sunday reminder that they are not behind. 🤍

Dear Corporate Girl · dearcorporategirl.substack.com · @_iammila on TikTok · @_dearcorporategirl on Instagram

Dear Corporate Girl,

If you’re anything like I was as a young girl, you might feel unsure about where you’re going. Maybe you’re studying something but you’re not entirely sure what it will lead to. Maybe you’ve already graduated and you’re wondering “what next?”. Or maybe you’re simply trying to figure out how people actually build careers in corporate. But not just any career, one that’s fulfilling and with purpose. And maybe honestly, just trying to figure it out has left you nothing short of frustrated.

If that’s you, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve been there.

I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family. My parents, like many parents, did the best they could with what they had. They believed strongly in the value of education and the doors it could open for a young Black African girl, so they made sacrifices to ensure I could go to school. Like many families, they even took on debt to make that possible.

Looking back now, I understand just how much belief and hope that required.

My upbringing was fairly average. Some days I walked to school, Some days I took buses. Some days I was driven to school. All in all, I lived a life that many people would probably describe as ordinary. But like many young people trying to find their place in the world, I often felt like an outsider during much of my schooling. I was naturally introverted (still am, by the way), and that meant I spent a lot of time observing rather than always participating.

At the time, I didn’t realize how valuable that tendency to observe would eventually become.

In my early student years, I didn’t have a clear vision of my career path. I wasn’t one of those people who knew from the beginning exactly what they wanted to do or where they were headed. In fact, in High School, I found myself taking subjects that would maybe one day lead to a career that would be pleasing to my parents or deemed “respectable” by society. An honestly, I barely made it out of High School. Instead, my journey involved a lot of trial and error, a lot of learning through experience, and a lot of moments where I had to figure things out as I went.

There were times when I felt uncertain about whether I was on the right path. Times when I wondered if I had chosen the right direction. Times when I questioned whether things would ever really fall into place.

But over time, something interesting happened.

Through different opportunities and experiences, I found myself working within corporate environments. Eventually, I began working closely with many different Executives and Teams. Being in those spaces gave me a perspective that many people outside corporate don’t often get to see.

I started to notice how organizations actually function. How decisions are made. What leaders pay attention to. Which skills quietly open doors for people. And which career paths exist that many young professionals don’t even realize are possible.

I also noticed something else.

Many of the lessons that help people navigate corporate environments successfully are things no one really teaches you in school.

There are so many small, unspoken dynamics that shape careers — things like professional reputation, reliability, thoughtful communication, intentionallity, positioning, and the ability to anticipate needs. These are skills that often determine whether someone grows in their career or stays stuck, yet they’re rarely explained openly.

And the truth is, it took me years of trial and error to fully understand many of these things.

Years of learning by doing. Years of observing. Years of slowly connecting the dots.

Which is exactly why I’m writing this.

I created Dear Corporate Girl as a space where I can share the lessons, observations, and reflections that come from navigating corporate from the inside. Not as someone who has all the answers, but as someone who has spent enough time in these spaces to understand how many of the pieces fit together.

My hope is simple.

If you’re early in your career, still figuring things out, or wondering what opportunities exist beyond the obvious ones, maybe the things I share here will help shorten your learning curve.

Maybe they’ll help you see possibilities you didn’t know existed.

Maybe they’ll help you understand how corporate works a little sooner than I did.

And maybe they’ll remind you that you don’t have to have everything figured out right away.

Careers are rarely as linear as they appear from the outside. Most people are figuring things out as they go — even the ones who seem the most confident.

So if you’re still finding your way, still exploring, still learning, that’s okay.

You’re exactly where many of us started.

Welcome to Dear Corporate Girl.

I’m glad you’re here.

Leave a comment