Be brave: WHO > WHAT

First ask: Who am I? Then ask: What do I want to do?

A man stood at a fork in a farm road in the Northern Cape, in the middle of the night. He was on a four-day solo fast in the mountains, no food, only water, part of an eleven-day retreat built to strip away every distraction so that you can hear yourself. He stood at that fork for an hour and a half. He could not choose. Eventually he turned around and walked back the way he had come.

That was Pierre du Plessis, my most recent guest on the ROAR for MOAR podcast. Pierre is the founder of Be Brave.

The lesson from this pivotal moment that evening only came later. It was the recognition that he had spent his life waiting for somebody to come along and save him, or at least tell him what to do. Nobody was coming. If he wanted to build a life worth living, he was going to have to be brave enough to make his own decisions and carry the consequences of them.

Interesting fact: he named the business Be Brave in 2013, and the night at the fork came five or six years later. He chose the word long before he understood why he needed it.

That struck me, because ROAR! came about the same way round. First it was a book, then it became the name of my business, and it was only many years later that I understood why I needed it.

Is who you are mostly borrowed?

Pierre's view is that identity comes in layers, and that most of them are not ours. Your story, your memories, the tribe you belong to, your gifts, what you like, what you value. Some of it is yours. A great deal of it came from somewhere else: from parents, from culture, from employers, from brands, from everyone who ever had an opinion about what you should be.

Which is why Pierre is so passionate about answering the WHO before answering the WHAT. What you do matters. But until you know who you are, you are answering somebody else's question.

His friend Bernard gave him the phrase that compresses it:

WHO > WHAT

Listen to how we actually talk, he said. What do I want to do? What will make the most money? What do my parents want? What do my kids need? What does the market need? What, what, what, what, what.

And it does not stop at identity. If who you are was borrowed, so is what you want. As Pierre put it, what you wanted was probably what somebody else wanted. It was never yours to want in the first place.

And if you dig deeper and do not like what you find? Change. You are not a tree. Now there's a tough truth.

The first identity question: do I belong?

Underneath the layers, Pierre said, identity is not an attribute at all. It is not a like or a dislike or a strength. Deep in the centre of it sits belonging. Do I belong is the first question of identity, and everything else gets built on top of that answer.

Which means the answer to 'who are you' is stranger than we expect. It is not I’m brave, or I’m clever, or I’m successful. It is:

'I belong. I am loved. I am enough. Like, who are you? I am enough.'

Present tense. Not who I intend to become one day. The floor you build from, not the summit you climb to.

And then he named the thing that keeps people trapped: the belief that you have to earn your right to belong.

'We believe this absolute obscenity that you have to achieve enough and then you will be enough.'

What it costs to believe you have to earn it

I asked Pierre for his take on burnout, and his answer surprised me.

He is sceptical of how we talk about it. In his experience the people who burn out are rarely the people who love what they do. They are the people in the wrong work, doing something with no satisfaction in it, or working inside a machine so large that they never see the results of their own effort. He quoted a line he had heard elsewhere, that you cannot burn out because you are not a candle, you are a human being.

I highlighted one extra cause, which is the one I meet most often. The inner bully. The narrative running quietly underneath the work, saying not yet, not enough, keep going. The limiting beliefs, the old stories and the lies we tell ourselves.

Because if you believe you have to earn your right to belong, you will keep paying for it, and the currency is your energy.

ROAR in action: answer the who, then the what

The four-step ROAR process is what I use when the inner bully has the floor.

Recognise. The inner bully rarely speaks in its own voice. It borrows one, usually from a parent, a first boss, or an industry you have been in long enough to absorb. Write down the exact sentence you say to yourself when you are tired, then ask whose voice it is in. Then ask: how do I know it's true?

Observe. Now take one of the layers, something you hold as simply true about who you are. I am the reliable one. I am not creative. I am the one who copes. Look at it without judging it, and ask where it came from. Is it genuinely who you are?

Assert. Say who you are in the present tense, out loud, before you feel you have earned it. I belong. I am loved. I am enough. Assert is usually about holding a boundary with somebody else. This one is a boundary with yourself, and it is the harder of the two.

Redirect. Now answer the what, from who you truly are. What do I want to do? Then choose one brave thing you can do this week. Do not wait until you feel ready. Take massive, messy, imperfect action.

Are you standing at your own crossroads?

The decision you've been circling for months. The job, the business, the city, the relationship, the direction of the whole thing. The one where you keep gathering a little more information and telling yourself you will decide once it is clearer.

I have been standing at my crossroads for a while now; mainly decisions about my business and how I want to position myself and our services. I am a speaker, author, high performance coach, cyber security consultant and wellbeing consultant. I have been struggling to articulate what it is that I actually do without sounding like I do everything, and therefore nothing.

So this conversation could not have come at a better time, because it showed me I had been asking the wrong question all along. I was asking which road. Which niche, which audience, which version of the work. What, what, what.

The question underneath it was always who.

What I am doing differently is that simple, but not easy. I answer the who first now, out loud and in the present tense. The what has become the second question, and the answer has already begun to change.

So here is the invitation. If that's you, stop waiting to be told. Nobody is coming to save you.

Ask who am I first. You have all the answers inside you already. You are more than enough. Take massive, messy, imperfect action.

Because Pierre is right, and I will give him the last word.

'Starting to realise that you are enough is great, but it's worthless if you don't act. You have to be brave.'

🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Pierre du Plessis on the ROAR for MOAR podcast here: ROAR for MOAR | Be brave: WHO > WHAT. If you have not subscribed yet, do that while you are there, so the next one finds you.

🔸 If you are at a crossroads of your own, this is exactly what Stage 1 of the five-stage ROAR for MOAR Hero's Journey is built for. Get your copy of ROAR! and MOAR! today.

🔸 About ROAR! and MOAR!

In ROAR! How to Tame the Bully Inside and Out (December 2019), I tackle the silent damage bullying causes, in the workplace, online, and in everyday life. The book helps readers recognise toxic behaviour, understand the dynamics between bully, victim and culture, and respond with confidence and clarity rather than fear or avoidance. I wrote it after discovering, the hard way, just how common and costly workplace bullying really is.

Get your copy of ROAR! here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781334277

In MOAR! How to Play to Win Without Burning Out (February 2026), I turn to burnout, exhaustion and the quiet emptiness so many high achievers feel despite their success. Rather than treating symptoms, MOAR! introduces practical frameworks, including the Wellbeing Trio, the four-step ROAR process and the ROAR for MOAR Hero's Journey, to help readers lead with authenticity, build thriving cultures and reclaim their energy and voice.

Get your copy of MOAR! here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1049244788

For South African readers, ROAR! and MOAR! are available in bookstores nationwide, most notably Exclusive Books.

If you would like a signed copy sent directly from me, email marilise@marilise-de-villiers.com (R350 per book, plus R50 postage).