“You cannot possibly say that you are what you think yourself to be! Your ideas about yourself change from day to day and from moment to moment. Your self-image is the most changeful thing you have. It is utterly vulnerable, at the mercy of a passer by. A bereavement, the loss of a job, an insult, and your image of yourself, which you call your person, changes deeply. To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
This quote is considering the difference between ‘I’ and ‘Self’. ‘I’ is the constant observer of your ‘self’. You ‘self’ is the person who gets depressed, has a thrill, worries about what other people think, as a [insert your job here!].
Your ‘self’ is transient because you are not always worried/depressed/thrilled. You were not, and will not always be, whatever job or profession you have now. If you are respected now perhaps in the future you won’t be. Anything that can be considered as a passing phases belongs to the ‘self’.
So when you consider ‘Who am I?’ the best way to start is from ‘Who I am not’. Identify each of the things which actually belong to the ‘self’ and you will realise that ‘I’ is not really much at all. Perhaps the only label you can put on it is ‘Human Being’.