Marijana Sommerfeld on Why Leaving Corporate Won't Fix It - And What Actually Does
Marijana Sommerfeld discusses burnout, illness, identity, career change, and why the patterns we carry can follow us even after leaving corporate life.
Leaving corporate won't fix it — if you take the pattern with you.
This is the conversation nobody has about career change and burnout recovery for women.
In this episode I'm joined by Marijana Sommerfeld — former business analyst at Coca-Cola, corporate consultant at Lufthansa, and someone who spent years pushing through exhaustion, suppressing her emotions, and performing "fine" — until her body made her stop.
In 2015, Marijana was diagnosed with breast cancer.
What followed wasn't just a health crisis — it was the beginning of a complete identity transformation that eventually led her to write a book, found the Self-Healing Academy, and build a practice helping exhausted leaders find their way back to themselves.
But this isn't a story about leaving corporate and living happily ever after. It's about what actually happens after you resign — and why the patterns tend to come with you if you haven't done the inner work.
In This Conversation We Talk About
- Why accomplished women stay in roles that don't fit them — and the real fears driving that (it's not what you think)
- How the body signals misalignment long before crisis hits — and how to start reading those signals practically
- The difference between "I am fearful" and "I have a fear" — and why that one word changes everything
- Why leaving your job doesn't fix the problem, and what actually does
- How Marijana rode her bike to chemotherapy while refusing to identify as sick — and what that teaches us about identity and healing
- What acceptance really means as a strategy (and why it's the opposite of giving up)
Whether you're navigating a health challenge, a career crossroads, or simply the quiet feeling that something needs to change — this episode will give you a new framework for listening to yourself.
Connect with Marijana
Work with Marijana: reconnect2self.com
Read Marijana's Book: Corporate to Calling
Mentioned in This Episode
Marijana's book Reiseführer für eine ungeplante Reise (in German)
Upcoming Launches
My group mentorship "Spiritual Accelerator" is launching next month (in Bulgarian).
To find out more and stay in touch, join the Business as Poetry Substack Circle.
Substack: https://businessaspoetry.substack.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/business_as_poetry/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hristina-vaceva-cfa-4245901a/
