When Your Identity No Longer Fits
- Kim Meninger
- Jul 7
- 21 min read
In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about career reinvention, identity and what happens when the path you’ve spent your life pursuing no longer feels aligned. My guest this week is Kate Kayaian, author, speaker and former professional cellist.
Kate shares her journey from building a successful career in classical music to realizing, after decades as a performer, that the identity she had always carried no longer fit. We explore the emotional complexity of walking away from something you once loved, especially when it has shaped your sense of self for most of your life.
In our conversation, we discuss the stories we tell ourselves about success, obligation and what we “should” want. Kate reflects on the guilt that can come with changing direction after years of investment and achievement, and why so many people stay in careers that no longer fulfill them because they fear disappointing others or starting over.
We also talk about how impostor syndrome shows up during periods of transition, the importance of reassessing old narratives and how reconnecting with childhood curiosity can offer clues about what’s next. Kate shares why she believes career pivots are becoming increasingly common and why permission to evolve matters more than ever.
Finally, we explore the idea that closing one chapter does not erase who we’ve been. Kate reminds us that we can honor past versions of ourselves while still creating space for new possibilities, new identities and new ways of contributing.
About My Guest
Kate Kayaian is an author, speaker, and career strategist for high achievers who want to build lives of impact, purpose, and sustainable success.
A former professional cellist, Kate performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist in venues ranging from Boston’s Jordan Hall to leading European concert halls. She trained at the New England Conservatory of Music and held a fellowship with the New World Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas.
Today, Kate’s work centers on helping accomplished professionals—creatives, executives, educators, and entrepreneurs—define success on their own terms and create careers that feel as good as they look. Through her 1:1 coaching and her signature group program, the Creatives Leadership Academy, she guides clients to develop clarity, confidence, and the practical strategies needed to lead at the highest level without sacrificing their well-being.
She is the author of Beyond Potential, a practical guide for high performers navigating the next chapter of their professional lives, and the host of Tales from The Lane, a podcast exploring the hidden challenges and unexpected joys of success. As a sought-after speaker, Kate delivers keynotes and workshops on leadership presence, mindset transformation, and redefining what’s possible for high achievers across industries.
Alongside her private practice, Kate serves as President and Artistic Director of the Bermuda Philharmonic Orchestra, where she continues to champion creativity, collaboration, and innovation in the arts. She lives on the island of Bermuda, where she spends her days coaching clients around the world, writing, speaking, and tending to her garden.
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Connect with Kate:
Website: https://katekayaian.com/
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Kate. I'm so excited to have you here, and I would love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Kate Kayaian
Thank you, Kim. I'm really thrilled to be here too. So, about myself, I started most of my life as a cellist. I grew up in Chicago, four and a half years old, had a crush on a boy who played the cello, he was eight, he was a redhead, he had freckles, and I was madly in love, and I understood that we could only get married if we both played the cello, we had to play the same instrument, right, so I chose the cello, and I loved it, it became my thing, right? So, just from before I even started kindergarten, I was known as Katie the cellist, so I had it everywhere, and I spent, you know, my weekends playing and practicing, and that was really my identity. I went to music school, I spent my whole weekends in youth orchestras and chamber music, and that it was my life and I loved it. I had amazing friends and got to go away to all these summer camps, and it was really a wonderful experience. I had a great career. I was very fortunate, so I went to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, which was very difficult to get into, and it was a great honor, and all of those things, and then I was a fellow with the New World Symphony down in Miami, which again you had to audition for, and I'm telling you all these things not to, not to show off and brag, but to explain that eventually after 40 years of being a cellist, of being only a cellist, exclusively a cellist, that identity started to not fit anymore. Something just felt kind of… I don't know, it was like a jacket that you loved, right? It's like your favorite beautiful suede jacket, and you put it on one day and it's just too tight. It's really uncomfortable, and you, you haven't changed, right? Your body hasn't changed, you haven't gained or lost weight, it's just it's too tight, and you, you don't want to wear it, and you find that you're not reaching for that jacket anymore, and that's really what it felt like, so for anybody who's familiar with the classical music world, people don't retire, and they certainly don't quit, right? We do this career until we can't get out of bed anymore. I mean, you know, Herbert Blomstedt, the conductor, is what, 98 years old, and he's still doing concerts. I mean, it's really incredible. So, it's not something that you ever plan on not doing at any point in your life. You will do it until the day you die. And so, the idea, after working so hard and having so much success, the idea of leaving it all behind was a little bit strange to everybody, and so that's what I had to navigate in my mid 40s, and didn't know what I wanted to do. Quite honestly, I knew that I wanted to do something else. I knew that I wanted to do something bigger. I knew that I wanted to have a bigger effect on the world, make a mark in some bigger way. Wasn't, oh, I just want to be considered the best cellist, or I wasn't even, I just want to be as good a cellist as I could possibly be. All of that suddenly started to feel a little bit ego-based and I just wasn't into it anymore, and so, yeah, that's I pivoted. So now I am a coach, I run my own business, I am an author. I wrote my book, Beyond Potential, that came out about a year ago, and I have my own podcast, Tales from the Lane, and I do some public speaking, talking about, you know, reimagining your career and living your best life, pursuing excellence without burnout, all of those types of things. So that's, that's my story in a nutshell.
Kim Meninger
Thank you for sharing that. I have so many different follow-up questions that I'm trying, where to start, because, you know, I didn't realize, or had never thought of the this notion of you don't retire from that type of a career, and so you make what feels like this lifelong commitment. One of the things that I often like outright say to people when I'm talking to them from a career coaching perspective is, oh, you know, this isn't this isn't a life sentence, right? Like, you can try it out, and you can, but, but with something that is so core to your identity, especially if you've been doing it since you were four years old. I can imagine that that could have been very unsettling. Like, did it sneak up on you? Well, how did you.. when did you know this is no, longer what I want to do?
Kate Kayaian
Yeah, there were two things happening that I can, I can see clearly in hindsight, right? That's always the way it is. In the middle of it, it just seemed like I was having some sort of crisis of the heart, right? But there were two things going on. First of all, I think I've always had a bit of an entrepreneur streak in me when I was little, and friends would come over, you know, they'd want to play with Barbies, and I'd say, "Great, let's, let's make friendship bracelets, and then go sell them on the corner, right? No, I'm the one who set up a babysitting camp, right? It wasn't enough to just like babysit for one family when I could have a camp in my backyard and get paid by all of the families at once, right. So that's always kind of been part of me, and I started thinking more and more about like what kinds of things could I do. I was touring more, so part of it was I would be on the other side, my performance side, I would show up to say an orchestra gig in a room full of my closest friends that I had been collaborating with for years, right, and I just felt so detached from the music that we were playing, you know. We were going to play it for four days of rehearsals and a weekend of concerts, and then I was probably never going to see it again, or I wouldn't see it again for years. I, I loved the classical repertoire, but it was like, if you told me I was never going to play it again, I would be fine with it. And I started to feel this disconnect from what I was doing as a cellist. When I talked to people, they kept encouraging me to do more. They're like, "Well, you just don't like playing an orchestra, like play more solo and chambered music gigs. Okay, so I did that, started practicing, you know, solo repertoire, and I did a recording, which I'm very proud of. It's music that I love. I was going on tours that I would set up myself, very entrepreneur stick, like just sort of putting myself out there and getting finding opportunities for me to do what I was told would make me happier, and while it was fun and I enjoyed it, and I think to a certain extent we all enjoy doing things that we're really good at, right? I mean, there's, there's always a challenge to getting up on stage and performing something really difficult. There's the adrenaline rush of doing it well, the dopamine hit of the applause, all of it. There's something very enticing and enthralling about it, but it still wasn't hitting, wasn't feeling fulfilling, satisfying, grounding anymore. I kept thinking, like, what's next, and I would think, like, well, if I did it more, if I was a cellist at an even higher level, that's playing a concerto in a different city every weekend, that's getting management and having them control your career, and you know, the more concerts you play, the more money they make. So that's it. I didn't want that. I knew I didn't want that, and I wanted.. I became more of a homebody, and maybe that came from just hitting my 40s, and things evolved and changed, that I was kind of just as excited about going to a dinner party on a Saturday night as I was about playing on stage, which had never been the case my whole life. There's nowhere I would have preferred being than on stage on a Saturday night at 8pm That was it. Why would you want to go to a silly dinner party? Why would you want to go to somebody else's performance? Why would you want to do that? Well, that's how I felt until I didn't, until I did want to be at a dinner party, until I did want to be socializing and just relaxing. So, I think those two things, just the feeling the distance from my performance career, and feeling less and less and less and less enthusiastic about it, and also thinking about new projects, entrepreneurship, and again, I, it's not like I had a specific thing, right? I had a friend who was a brilliant cellist, and she was a few years older than me, so she was getting her master's when I got my bachelor's, and she was in another program, and I was there, and she decided that she wanted to leave music and become a neurosurgeon. Wow, right? I mean, that's impressive, but it's also impressive that she knew exactly what it was. It wasn't like, oh, I'm not sure I want to be a cellist. I don't know what I want to do, but it was, I love cello, but I have this other dream, and I'm going to go pursue that now. And she did, and she pursued it, and she became a brilliant doctor. And then she went back to cello, so she's now a professional cellist again, but she did both, right? And I. Wasn't like that, it wasn't like, well, no, I want to stop playing because I want to do this specific thing, and so it was never a clear cut thing, I can't point to you and say, well, Kim, and then on this day I packed up my cello and I sold it, and I never looked back, right? I stopped performing, but I, well, let me back up one second. The thing that really did it for me, because these thoughts weren't going away, and I was taking marketing classes online, and business, and I did like Marie Forleo's B school, right, like everybody, baby's first online course, right? So I took all of these things, I was collecting all of these little entrepreneurial skills, if you will, and then Covid hit, and I knew that all of my concerts, at least over the next six months, were going to be canceled, and I said, okay, you know what, I'm just going to take this as a gift of a forced sabbatical, a sabbatical that nobody can question, nobody can ask, nobody's going to ask me why I'm not performing for six months, because nobody is performing for these six months, and I'm just going to see how I feel, and during those six months I started an online cello festival. I did like an online year-round teaching program for advanced high school and college-age cellists. I was very active. I was teaching my students here at the Bermuda School of Music. I was actively teaching cello every day, and therefore having to practice, because my students were advanced, right, so I had to be able to play their advanced pieces too, so I had to keep practicing, but I knew that I wasn't a performer, I didn't have to practice my own repertoire, I didn't have to be going after concerts, I didn't have to do any of that, and after six months I was like maybe I'll give it another six months, and so I did that, and I took a concert. Somebody asked me if I would play a concert in, like, it was June of 2021 and I said yes. It was here in Bermuda, so I didn't have to travel. It was a piece that I loved to play. It was people that I liked. I was like, even if I know 100% I want to quit, that'll be a fun concert, regardless. I won't mind, it'll be okay. And so I did that, and I really felt like I don't need to do this anymore. I'm good. And so slowly but surely, I just let my students graduate and didn't replace them, and let my studio shrink. And then the last thing I did was I left the Bermuda School of Muzik, and that was that, and my cello is sitting right next to me over there, and I don't think I've opened the case since November, that's June right now, when we're recording, it's probably covered in mold. I live in Bermuda, everything's covered in holes, but I'm just kidding, it's fine, but yeah, so I don't know if that answer was sort of a long answer to your question, because it was never a clear cut, like, well, this is how I felt, and so this is what I did about it, it was this unease that I would talk to people, and they would say, "No, no, no, you're fine, you're just burnt out. I knew I wasn't burnt out. I knew I wasn't burnt out, because I never had that feeling of, like, "Oh my god, I can't do this another day. I could have kept doing it. I could still be doing it. I think about that a lot, like if Covid hadn't happened, if I had never quit, if I had never, like, I'd still be performing, and I wouldn't be fulfilled or satisfied, but I'd be fine to have my career, and I think a lot of people get stuck in that, so they have that, that yearning, that sort of nagging feeling, they, that feeling like the Jack, their favorite jacket, has gotten too tight, and they just keep wearing it, they just keep wearing it, and maybe they try to change themselves, maybe they go on some like extreme diet, so that it fits a little bit better, right? I can't think of another metaphor, but like they force themselves to make it work, and they can just get a new jacket.
Kim Meninger
Well…
Kate Kayaian
Just get a new jacket.
Kim Meninger
You, I want to talk about that for a minute, because I think that there is simplicity and freedom to what you just said, but I don't know that a lot of people actually believe that you can just get a new jacket, right? And I wonder, because there is the identity piece, there's also this feeling sometimes like I will talk to people, especially, and I think this is certainly applies to you, maybe even more so than some of the other examples that that I've seen, but when you have invested a lot in your education, so you've gone to law school, medical school, you've spent a lot of money. Money on your education, you've done a lot to get to where you are, and there's this feeling that I should want this, especially if you have a cohort of people that are continuing to enjoy it, and you're thinking, what's wrong with me? Right, I, this is my dream, and if I walk away from this, I'm walking away from my identity, from everything I've worked so hard for. So, how did you process it? Sounds like you know the pandemic gave you this, you know, sort of break that you might not have otherwise taken on your own, but like, how did you process this from an identity standpoint?
Kate Kayaian
Oh, that was the biggest part. And you know, yes, I had the space to do it. I had the opportunity to do it. I'd like to think that I would have found that space and opportunity regardless, but I didn't have any resources or tools to help me through it, right. Every time I reached out to somebody, like I said, they don't know you're just burnt out. No, no, you just need a break. You just, no, no, no, you can't quit. And so that's why I ended up writing my book when I got to the other side of it, because yes, there is so much guilt, and for me it wasn't even that we had spent so much money, or that I had spent so much money. It was that other people had spent money on me. I was getting scholarships. My parents didn't have money to support that kind of education. I got scholarships. People invested in me. People supported me. People opened doors for me. I owed my career to yes, a lot of hours in the practice room, and a lot of hard work, and a lot of dedication and commitment, but also to all of the people who helped me and believed in me along the way, and I felt like I was letting them down, and finally I just talked to a couple of them, I talked to my mom, and I was like, does it bother you that I've stopped playing the cello, and she was like, no, what do I care, it's your life, right? The woman who, you know, if I didn't practice like one day when I was 12, she'd be like, I'm not paying for any more lessons, right, like, you know, the typical thing, like she was constantly harping to me about how much this was costing, and at the end, when I was like, I don't want to do it anymore, and she was like, then don't, you shouldn't do something you don't want to do, that's, that's ridiculous. She really did not care, and talking to a couple of other people who had really mentored me and put a lot into my career and into me, like, no, can't wait to see what you do next. Oh, really? Okay.
Kim Meninger
That’s important because I think you know there's two ways of thinking about this, the fact that they were supportive is a reminder that we often make up stories that aren't true.
Kate Kayaian
Yes, yes.
Kim Meninger
And maybe they're rooted in previous conversations, like your mother's, when you're young, as a mom said that to you, but now you're, you're still attached to that belief that she's going to be disappointed in you, but even had they said this is, you know, a disappointment, or I'm, you know, I really sorry to hear that, that still wouldn't mean you were wrong.
Kate Kayaian
No, because that's another story that we're telling ourselves, that we are obligated to live our lives in a way that makes other people happy and comfortable.
Kim Meninger
Exactly.
Kate Kayaian
Why? [Right.] Right, you could rewrite the story of, oh, these people were really disappointed that I wasn't going to play anymore. I'll take that as a compliment and do what I want to do anyway, right? Like, you know, and but you hit the nail on the head that it's all about these stories. The my book, Beyond Potential, the subtitle is, you know, a creative's guide to reassess, redefine, and reignite their career. And the reassessing part, the whole first part of the book is about reassessing these stories that are standing in our way, that are keeping us from doing the things that we want to do, and rewriting them. We have to, we absolutely have to rewrite those stories, and in fact, as a little aside, my mother, who again completely supportive of my cello career, she loved music, she loved that I wanted to be a musician, but every once in a while she would stop and she'd be like, Are you sure you don't want to be a writer, and I was like, what are you talking about? Like, the only.. I mean, okay, I was a latchkey kid, I was a lonely kid. My mom worked full time, and so I journaled every day of my life, because it was like.. I just.. I think I kept myself company. I had somebody to talk to, I would just talk to myself. So she knew that I. Wrote in journals, but it's not like we were close enough that I would ever talk to her about it, or God forbid, certainly never shared them, whether she was reading them when I was out of the house or not. I hope not, but the only writing I did outside of that was like in my English class, I would write the essays, and I would get A's, because I was, I loved to read, I liked to. It just came easily to me, but she was fixated on the fact that if I wasn't going to be a cellist, I should be a writer. So, of course, she was absolutely thrilled when I wasn't going to be a cellist anymore, that I was doing more writing, and it was writing a book, I was writing articles, and she was like, she felt like, yes, I knew it all along, and that's another thing I talk about in the book, and you know, people talk about this all the time, that when you are in that moment where you're not quite sure what you want to do, you're not quite sure what direction to go in next, I think that we can find a lot of clues in our past. What are the things that you used to do for fun, and it might not be that exact thing, but it could be something like it, right? Like, even if it's I loved helping my parents in the garden, I used to always like grow a little herb garden on the windowsill, and I loved that so much. Okay, maybe you want to work in landscaping, maybe you want to open a garden center, maybe you want to do something with plants or nature, or maybe you want to be the executive director of a botanical garden near you, right? Like something, look to your past, look to your childhood, to the things that just naturally drew you, and that made you curious to learn more.
Kim Meninger
I think that's a really great suggestion, because I think we do get tunnel vision when we're in a, in a career, and all, all of the forces that we're talking about play a role in this, and so we forget that there are other facets of our lives that we have other interests, especially if we're burnt out and we feel like we have no time for anything but the work itself. So be broad, and you know, just expand the aperture a bit, is…
Kate Kayaian
Yeah, yeah, do something fun and random, and just, you know, I mean, my current career really is the combination of all of the things I did growing up when I wasn't playing the cello, right, the little business ideas, the little friendship bracelets, and selling them on the corner, the coming up with little summer camps for kids in the neighborhood, and you know, and, and that I joke about, like, why get paid for one family when I get paid for 10 of them, but really the reason for that camp was because I was like the babysitter, and the moms were like starting to try to book me like six weeks in advance, and this I was like, and they were trying to like outbid each other and pay me more, which was great, but I was like, why don't I just watch everybody's kids, and then you guys can just calm down, like stop the neighborhood infighting, right? So, yeah, I, and that's what I like to do, I like to see, oh, there's a need here, even here in Bermuda, there was a need for a symphony orchestra. There were tons of musicians that there had been one previously. It had dwindled down to just a few, like a small little string chamber orchestra. I thought, no, no, there's potential. Again, I'm obsessed with potential. There's a potential here on this island to have a really great orchestra. Music has always been important to Bermudians. There are so many talented musicians here that they're just, they're just teaching, they're playing in small little bands, and they're teaching, and they should be performing, they should be out there. So now we have a huge orchestra, the Bermuda Philharmonic. So I love seeing little, you know, find a need and create a fix, find a solution.
Kim Meninger
You know, one of the things that keeps coming up for me that I think that I would love your take on is being a cellist will always be part of who you are, right? I mean, it's not like you're, you're never going to lose all of the, you'll always know how to play it, you'll, you'll always have the memories of it, and there is nothing wrong with closing a chapter in your life, right, and I think that that's one of the things going back to the idea of stories is you can have something for a moment, whatever, however long that moment is, be proud of it, put. All of yourself into it, reach a natural end point, and then move on to something else that's also inspiring and part of who you are, and not feel like there's any shame, regret, failure, anything like that associated with it, because you don't have to pick one thing in life and stick with it forever.
Kate Kayaian
Absolutely, but that's been the story, like that's, that's been the process for everybody for so long, and you know, when I was going through all of this, like I said, there were no books, there were no resources, like there was nobody I could look to for an example, certainly not in the classical music world, people just didn't quit unless they had hit some crisis. I wasn't in a crisis, I just didn't want to do it anymore. I wanted to do something else, but the one example that I had was that when I lived in Miami, played in the New World Symphony, we were pretty much next door to the Miami City Ballet, and an orchestra schedule is exactly the same as a ballet schedule, right? We rehearse during the day, we perform on the weekends, and we all have Monday off, so we'd all go have brunch Monday morning together. We were all really good friends, and my friends in the Miami City Ballet, being ballet dancers, retired.
Kim Meninger
Ah.
Kate Kayaian
At 30, right? So they would retire from ballet at 30, 35, sometimes 40, if they could really push it, but usually not, sometimes even earlier, sometimes 25, and they would go back to school, they, my friend Miriam, went to Stanford. She's a brilliant author now. She worked in publishing before, like one became a physical therapist, like totally different careers, and that's just how it works. Some of them, yes, stayed in dance, stayed in ballet, they opened ballet studios, they became teachers, right? Some of them stay in the industry, but not as principal dancers. Yeah, they're not the ones on stage, and that's great, because they're young, and I think that that is the same for all of us these days. You can, before the idea of switching a career at 45, 50, 55 like it was unheard of. Like, come on, just wait it out a few years and retire. But now, even if you are going to quote-unquote retire at 62, 65 you're not just going to sit around and knit sweaters, like you're active, you have energy, right? What do they say? Like, you know, 60 is the new 30. Feel like we have so much more vitality, so we're living longer, we're living healthier lives, and we want to take on second careers and second lives. And so part of the reason for this book was to give permission, and to give an example of I did it, all of these other people did it, you can do it too, and this is this is how to do it. And you know your show talks about imposter syndrome, which of course we wouldn't have any sort of pivot in life. We wouldn't have any situation in life without imposter syndrome, that is, of course, a big part of it. And so there are tools to, to get past it, to, to work with it. It's never going away, is it?
Kim Meninger
Oh, that's right. That's absolutely right. No, I love your perspective on this, and I'm so grateful that you're sharing it with us. I would love for you to share as people are listening, and you know, wanting more of what you're describing. Where can people find you? Where can they find your book? Where can.. how can they stay connected to you and your work?
Kate Kayaian
Yeah, I would love that. Well, the main place, you know, one stop shopping is my website, Kate Kayaian dot com and that's you. I have links to all of the booksellers online and in person, where you can get the book, Beyond Potential. My blog is there, information about my coaching practices there. You can book me to speak at an event. I do a lot of women's or conferences and organizations, and I love those. I also do like board retreats and talking about how to really live into your potential and your company's potential, your community's potential. And then Instagram is where I hang out and socialize, so you can come find me on Instagram and tell me you found me here, and tell me what you're up to, and what kinds of pivots you're, you're dreaming about
Kim Meninger
Wonderful. Well, those links will be in the show notes. And thanks again, Kate. This has been really enlightening, and hopefully inspiring to people who have been thinking about this, and maybe telling themselves a different story.
Kate Kayaian
Yeah, I hope so too. Keep reassessing and rewriting those stories, everyone. Thank you so much, Kim, for having me. It's been great.