What are you willing to lose?

On the art of shifting positions, letting go of the roles that hold us captive – and daring to stand where change truly needs you

Everything is moving. And not in ways we’re used to. Climate, technology, war, nature, relationships, power, work – the world is reshaping itself, and we’re trying to do the same. Yet we cling to what we know. Perhaps more tightly than we care to admit.

Places where we’ve been seen. Positions and roles we’ve fought hard for. That still reward us, even as we begin to doubt their true worth. Relationships that helped make us who we are.

Even though the world speaks of transformation, most of the curves still point in the wrong direction – the planet is getting warmer, species are disappearing, and people’s mental health is declining. So what are we missing? When we talk about transition, could it be that we all want to do it from roughly the same place we already stand? We say, “I want to make a difference.” But perhaps what we really mean is, “I want to make a difference – without losing what I’ve built.” Without too much compromise, without too much sacrifice.

And maybe that’s where the transition gets stuck. Not in knowledge or intention, but in our inability to let go. In self-examination.

We were shaped by a logic that taught us to take space. To make what we do grow. Expand. Become more. Have more. Be more. Become someone. Research shows that the more you have, the more entitled you feel to keep it. The system trained us to hold positions, to defend them, to compete. Not to yield.

But your position isn’t just what you do. It’s where you stand – in relation to others. It shapes how you speak, how you move, what you allow to emerge. How the world moves around you. That’s where change has to begin.
We need to start doing the hardest thing of all – to shift our own positions.

So what happens if you start to move? To turn. To explore. Is there a more natural place to stand?
If you’ve always been the one pushing – what happens if you pause?
If you’ve always held back your thoughts – what happens if you start to speak?
If you’ve always taken space – what happens if you step aside?

Who might you become if you stopped doing what you do? What did you abandon long ago – perhaps without even noticing? What position did you take because it was possible, not because it was true?

Where do you make the most difference?

Inside, it turns and grinds. Where do I actually make the most difference? Not where you’re most visible. Not where you hold the title you worked hard for. Not where you feel most comfortable or secure.

To truly transform, you have to be willing to compromise with everything you already know. To stay open to the possibility that the place where you’re needed most might be entirely unexpected. That your contribution may be required in spaces you can’t yet imagine. That you might need to say goodbye to the things you’ve built your identity around.

Because wherever you stand – as employee or unemployable, citizen, consultant or freelancer, artist, entrepreneur, parent, leader, politician, or financier – there are scripts already written. Expectations.

As an employee: stay within your job description, don’t risk too much. As an entrepreneur: deliver what the investor wants, build according to their logic, not your own. As a leader: be clear, strong, have the answers. Everywhere, we’re expected to repeat old patterns.

But these roles hold us captive. We learned to put them on, leaving parts of ourselves at the door – longing, doubt, the body – to fit into a form that suited the system. We became so skilled at it that we stopped noticing we were doing it.

When a position no longer serves

Some have already begun to move. A little or a lot. Only to discover that the world around them hasn’t yet caught up. You think you’ve found a new position, but since few others are there, you can neither act in new ways nor return to the old ones. You have to shift others’ positions while moving your own.
An open way of working doesn’t function if the surrounding relationships still depend on control. Regenerative business doesn’t work if what’s meant to regenerate isn’t allowed to set the pace.

So you have to do several things at once: turn roles upside down, become the new market, play your way into positions that others can later step into. I picture enough of us existing to begin living the new paradigm – yet we fumble for one another inside a system not built for us to see or hear each other. And unless we step out of it, fully or even temporarily, we can’t see our new positions.

There’s also responsibility in leaving positions that no longer serve. In not clinging to what was once right but no longer is. It takes courage. Time. Awareness. To see that even well-intentioned roles can stand in the way of what’s trying to emerge.

The system’s imprint

But it’s not just you. And it’s not new. The roles we live in were shaped by old systems – by Descartes and a long line of thought that separated mind from body, reason from emotion. By industrialism, which turned people into cogs in a machine. By power structures that decided who got to speak and who was expected to listen.

When industrialism arrived, every person suddenly had to fit into a box. The job description became the map. The hierarchy became the truth. Position became something you had, not something you took. Profession became identity. Job titles, organizational charts, ideals.

We all carry this legacy – but we carry it differently. Some were born into rooms where their voices were already heard. Others have had to fight for every place at the table. Some learned that their bodies automatically granted credibility. Others learned to constantly prove their right to be there. Systemic patterns, shaped by class, gender, race, geography.

Position is not only about function – it’s also about conditions. What do you have that you never really had to fight for? What network? What education? What automatic credibility? How could you use it differently – not to lose, but to liberate?

Privilege doesn’t have to carry guilt – but it carries responsibility.

From ego to function

Something is breaking open. More and more people feel it: this no longer fits. Titles feel hollow, careers feel meaningless. The question arises: Am I really making a difference?

The shift happens there – from ego to function. From building status to responding to what’s needed. Not who you want to become, but what the moment requires.

The old system was built on being someone. Having status. Climbing. Being seen.
The new one asks for something else: that we contribute. That we find the place where our presence actually changes something. Where we’re needed.

The old model was hierarchical – top-down, with fixed roles. The new is situational, ecological, relational. Like a web – where positions shift with rhythm, need, and context.

A living position isn’t something you are – it’s something you inhabit. And it changes. With the moment, with time, with what’s needed. You can be a leader in one situation, a supporter in another, a listener in a third.

So how do we take that step? Perhaps by listening differently. To what’s needed, not what we want. By letting movement arise from within. By accepting that you may be needed somewhere other than where you’ve grown used to being.

But to understand how to return to that, we must first understand where our current roles come from – the forces that shaped them – and how we can begin to shift them.

Why it’s so hard to step out

It’s not easy to change role or position. It’s frightening. Because who are you then?
And the system around you – it’s grown used to you playing your part. When you change, everything moves.

We carry a constant noise in our heads – the expectations we’ve internalized. Our parents’ voices, society’s norms, colleagues’ gazes. They’ve become so ingrained that we mistake them for our own thoughts.

And then there’s the practical side: the money, the reputation, the dreams you’ve built on the position you hold. The history, the investments you’ve made – of time, effort, or money. The fear of loss. Your place in the network. It’s not only your identity you risk losing – it’s your safety, your belonging, your future.

So perhaps it starts there. Not by throwing everything overboard, but by shifting slightly. Testing, returning. Feeling your way forward.

Your position isn’t static. It changes – with life, with time, with what’s needed. That, too, is a form of responsibility: to step forward, or to step aside. To not cling to a role simply because it once fit. To know when you’re no longer needed – that’s a kind of responsibility, too.

Another future

What if we could simply lay all our roles on the table? See them. Turn them over. Set them free. Leave some behind and start again. Or maybe both – one foot in one position, the other in another.

What might happen then?

It won’t be without pain. Or loss. Or resistance. The real question may not be what you want to change, but what you’re willing to lose so that something else can grow.

When we let go of roles that no longer serve, we release energy. When we build organizations that prioritize life over control, we create systems that can breathe. When we listen to our true positions, we can build futures that endure.

A reality where more of us ask, Where do I actually make a difference? instead of How do I become successful? Where we build organizations that allow people to move where they’re needed. Where power becomes something that flows – not something to hold onto. Where position isn’t a role you take, but a relationship you enter.

Then we can begin to build something that lasts. For real.

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About this essay
We’re facing challenges that cannot be solved with the same logic that created them. In exploring our vast “knowing–doing gap,” I’m developing a tool to help us see our inner and outer systems – and the friction between them. Like a compass, it offers a set of lenses or directions that can be explored individually or together.

Position is the second of these lenses.

You can subscribe to follow this work, or explore it through your own life and context by joining 100 Days.

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Gateways for listening

Embodied positions

• How you stand in a room – open, closed, leaning forward, withdrawn

• Whose voice rises and whose softens

• Where you sit in meetings – at the center, on the side, at the head

• How your presence changes the room – do people notice when you enter?

• Your position in the conversation – the one who listens, the one who speaks, the one who sums up

Inherited positions

• Your class background – the rooms you were shaped for

• Your gender – the expectations that come with it

• Your skin color – which doors open, which stay closed

• Your education – the language you have access to

• Your age – who listens to you, and who doesn’t

• Your networks – who you can call when something needs to happen

Professional positions

• Your formal role – what the contract says

• What you chase, and what seeks you out

• Your actual function – what you really do

• Your informal power – who asks you first

• Your place in the hierarchy – who you report to, who reports to you

• Whose work is visible, and whose remains unseen

Relational positions

• Who gets to speak first – and who gets the last word

• Who asks the questions – and who’s expected to answer

• Whose silence is noticed – and whose presence is taken for granted

• Your position in the family – eldest, youngest, the one who holds it together

• Your position in friendship – the initiator, the responder

Systemic positions we’re held in

• Gender roles – who’s expected to lead, who’s expected to support

• Work roles – manager, employee, consultant, intern

• Economic positions – to own, to rent, to share, to lack, to hold power

• Geographic positions – city, countryside, center, periphery

• Political positions – voice, representation, marginalization

• Knowledge positions – expert, beginner, autodidact, academic

And the positions we can choose

• To step forward when something needs to be said

• To step aside when something or someone else is needed

• To hold space for others’ processes

• To connect what needs to be linked

• To translate between different worlds

• To initiate without taking over

• To listen until you know where you’re needed

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