Our weekly advice column from Giselle Massi, a former journalist with The Denver Post.

G: Last week’s focus was on certain professionals who feel the persistent itch to break away from what they have been doing. It’s not just about wanting to quit a job that is mind numbing, uninspiring, boring, exhausting, or doesn’t pay adequately. This mental turmoil that has become so common is more about wanting to choose a path that will be more in alignment with what one believes they are here to do. Or a role that may be a better fit for how they wish to express themselves.

Continuing on that topic, a growing trend in pop self-help is focusing on one’s identity, and looking at whether or not a person is satisfied with what their identity label or identity image is conveying to others, or represents to oneself. It’s become almost a dare, asking yourself if what you look like, and what you do for a living or spend your attention on, are actually truthful depictions of your core nature and values, and conveys what matters most to you.

Much of the pop therapy emphasizes having the guts, even being fearless, to take the unhappiness or discontentedness that one feels about the current state of oneself and one’s position in life, and go for broke. This is in order to transform life into something that holds the promise of more joy, more more.

This shift will require one to admit that one has the right, even the obligation, to change one’s mind about long-held ideas and ambitions. Ideally one is to do this without regret or remorse, or looking back with doubt.

Whether or not a career person who is in a state of uncertainty or flux, feels like they have the agency to break out – to risk the unknowns that await them if they cut and run to do other things – depends on many external factors. It’s not just about what one prefers to do, rather it’s more about the reality of what can actually be done and in what timeframe.

For example, when someone is going through these types of professional or personal upheavals, they may tend to fixate on whether or not they can actually afford to make a significant change. These are the same folks who know that taking paid family leave or a sabbatical break is not necessarily going to fully recharge their batteries to ignite their desire to succeed where they are.

They need a bigger switch-up in life, and they have to figure out what is truly possible. This requires a brutally honest assessment of what one is willing to let go of. Those who may want to retire from one field and enter another may need more skilled training or else an academic credential, and this may involve taking loans, selling assets to fund the pivot, or allocating more time to thoroughly plan and save.

This difficult turmoil hits certain folks who believe, who do not question, that they can have more than they have now, whether it be in terms of creative expression or increasing opportunities for greater control, influence and status. Whether or not they seek to fulfill those aches often depends on how many tradeoffs they are capable of making, and sustaining, over what can be many years.

This quandary is not limited to paid workers. It is a phase of questioning what one truly wants to spend their time on, whether it is being a support to one’s family and friends or reallocating more space and time for themselves. Or it could mean an overhaul of priorities and principles to determine what the proper compromise or sacrifice is to make for a boss, one’s professional goals, or for a romantic relationship.

I don’t think one’s identity is the crux of the angst. More than identity (by that I mean how one refers to one’s station in life, job, or particular circumstances) which are the descriptors we are familiar with, I think the arc of life can organically bring us to a point where we must reevaluate what we think and know.

In my spiritual playbook, it is more about curiosity than it is about challenging one’s concept of self-identity. If a person is driven, even energized, by an insatiable curiosity, or has a large appetite for daily intellectual stimulation, staying in one place can end up feeling like a punishment. Or else a violation of the gifts and advantages one has been given.

For most people, it is the self-narrative, not the identity, that must evolve. It is our story, the one we imagine and manifest, that always improves with editing and rewriting.

Giselle M. Massi is the author of “We are Here for a Purpose: HOW TO FIND YOURS” and the novel “Just Dance the Steps.” Her romantacy “WYNTER’S DREAM” is now available. Giselle was a journalist with The Denver Post for 16 years and writes the newspaper advice column TELL GISELLE. Contact her at www.gisellemassi.com.