Work identity forms an essential component of an individual’s self-concept. It represents the way in which people define themselves through their occupational roles, relationships and sense of contribution to society (Ashforth, 2000; Walsh & Gordon, 2008). This identity evolves in response to personal experiences and contextual changes (Miscenko & Day, 2016). Work identity therefore encompasses both cognitive and emotional dimensions. It reflects the way people understand who they are in relation to their work and how they feel about that relationship. In this sense, work serves as a means of income and as a primary source of meaning, belonging and self-worth (Caza et al., 2018; Ibarra, 2023).

When individuals receive an unexpected financial windfall, the necessity of employment may appear to diminish. The result is a psychological and behavioural shift in how people view their professional role and their broader purpose in life (Hokemeyer, 2019; Jelschen & Schmidt, 2023; Woike et al., 2020). For the individuals featured on I Blew It, work identity appeared to erode rapidly once economic survival was no longer an immediate concern. This shows that work identity is intertwined with perceptions of necessity and value, all of which change significantly when financial conditions are altered. While work identity research has largely focused on identity maintenance during employment or career transition, far less attention has been given to how work identity unravels when work becomes economically unnecessary. Unlike identity threat, which arises from negative evaluation, that follows role exit, work identity disruption refers to the suspension of work’s perceived necessity and leads to voluntary disengagement rather than imposed exclusion.

Research shows that work identity can be destabilised by major life transitions such as job loss, retirement or sudden affluence (Furaker & Hedenus, 2009; Pratt et al., 2006). These turning points challenge established routines and self-definitions (Ashforth, 2000; Walsh & Gordon, 2008). When the need to earn a living is abruptly removed, individuals may initially experience relief, followed by uncertainty and disorientation as their occupational role loses relevance (Bland & Chambers, 2020; Bothma et al., 2015). The transition can provoke identity ambiguity, characterised by difficulty in answering the question ‘Who am I without my work?’ (Caza et al., 2018; Miscenko & Day, 2016). These patterns suggest a cycle of work identity suspension and later re-engagement, rather than a permanent exit from occupational identity.

The individuals featured on I Blew It often described leaving their jobs shortly after acquiring wealth (Molokoane, 2024; Mpofu et al., 2023). The departure from employment was not only an economic decision but also a symbolic one, as it signalled a perceived shift in status and freedom (Hedenus, 2014; Shayo, 2020).

However, when their wealth diminished, many struggled to reintegrate into the workforce or rediscover a sense of vocational purpose (Ibañez & Lopez, 2018; Van Wyk, 2012). This cyclical process of disengagement and attempted re-engagement demonstrates how sudden wealth can both disrupt and later necessitate the reconstruction of work identity (Mpofu et al., 2023; Stoeffler & Joseph, 2020).

South Africa presents a distinctive environment for exploring work identity transformation after sudden wealth. Local financial reports indicate that many South African windfall recipients, including lottery winners, rapidly deplete their funds owing to social pressure and limited financial literacy (Old Mutual, 2021). Extreme inequality and high unemployment create a socio-economic backdrop where work is both scarce and symbolically important (Francis et al., 2020; World Bank Group, 2024). For many South Africans, employment represents dignity, belonging and contribution to family and community life (Botha, 2015; Lee & Hanna, 2015). When sudden wealth interrupts this relationship, it alters financial conditions and how individuals perceive their value within collective structures (McKeever, 2024; Mpofu et al., 2023).

The narratives in I Blew It demonstrate how sudden affluence interacts with collectivist norms (see Czarnecka et al., 2020; Ngoepe-Ntsoane, 2022). Recipients often felt obligated to support extended family networks, which reinforced their social identity as providers but weakened their personal work identity (Bartels & Reinders, 2016; Małecka et al., 2022). This dual tension between individual aspiration and group responsibility highlights the cultural specificity of work identity change in South Africa (Dawson, 2023; Dube-Addae, 2019).

Furthermore, limited access to financial education and employment opportunities made the re-establishment of work identity after wealth loss particularly challenging (Nhemachena & Murimbika, 2018; Sibanda et al., 2025).

By integrating social identity theory (Tajfel et al., 1971) and hedonic adaptation theory (Brickman et al., 1978), we are able to make sense of how financial windfall affects individuals’ work identity. Social identity theory helps to explain how work-related meaning is affected by belonging after a sudden windfall (Harwood, 2020; Scheepers & Ellemers, 2019), and hedonic adaptation theory examines the emotional changes that come with the windfall, from exhilaration to adjustment to renewed purpose (Jelschen & Schmidt, 2023; Klausen et al., 2022; Luhmann & Intelisano, 2018). The two frameworks together explain how work identity changes over time through social validation and emotional adaptation (Caza et al., 2018; Ibarra, 2023). From a theoretical point of view, this study extends the understanding of how work identity changes in the context of socio-economic fluctuations. From a practical perspective, the study has bearing on career counselling and psychosocial support to help individuals rebuild their work identities after changes in financial circumstances and ensure they do not slip back to a life of poverty (Lusardi, 2019; Makina, 2017). While shaped by South Africa’s inequality and collectivist norms, these dynamics resonate with other contexts where sudden wealth intersects with strong social obligation.

Given the study’s focus on identity, reflexive engagement was central to how meanings were interpreted and themes constructed.

We adopted a qualitative research approach in this study to gain a deeper understanding of how sudden wealth influenced the work identity of participants featured on I Blew It. An exploratory deductive qualitative approach was most appropriate because it allowed the interpretation of meanings, emotions and social dynamics that shaped the participants’ experiences after their financial windfalls (Busetto et al., 2020; Shepherd & Williams, 2018). The research followed a constructivist paradigm, which assumes that knowledge is socially constructed through human interaction and cultural context (Chandra & Shang, 2017; Ugwu et al., 2021). Within this paradigm, the study explored how individual narratives and media portrayals reflected the evolving work identities of sudden wealth recipients.

Each episode of I Blew It follows a single case of sudden wealth. In addition to interviews with the recipient of wealth, accounts from their friends, family and other community members are also featured. We use the term ‘participants’ to refer to both the recipients and their friends or family and community, as all contributed valuable data towards answering the research questions.

The selection of episodes was based on several factors. Firstly, the featured individuals needed to have had a source of income before they acquired sudden wealth. Secondly, we sought variation in the sources of sudden wealth. The participants’ windfalls came from the RAF, sports, acting and music contracts and inheritance.

The main source across seasons was the RAF. Lastly, the episode needed to reflect shifts in work and self-understanding across time. Episodes were transcribed by the first author as part of her master’s research. She combined narrations by the participants and relevant contextual cues from the visual narrative to preserve meaning. Identity disruption was inferred through recurring patterns in how the participants described themselves (or referred to the recipient), their roles and their relationship to work across different narrative moments and not as a stable or directly observable construct.

Consistent with recent methodological work on participant experiences (Sekaja & Kgosiemang, 2026), we recognise that participation in televised narratives is shaped by relational dynamics not visible in the final broadcast. Individuals who appear on I Blew It volunteer for public storytelling, which may carry its own forms of social pressure by way of obligation to producers or family expectations. While we cannot access these behind-the-scenes dynamics directly, we acknowledge that while the situations we analysed were true and verified by the show’s producers, there is a layer of production for entertainment purposes.

We drew the episodes from multiple seasons to increase the experiences of the participants as far as possible while also attempting to reduce participant identifiability, despite the episodes being available to the public. Doing this allowed the study to capture a broader range of work identity shifts while maintaining ethical sensitivity in the use of secondary data.

The featured individuals were at least 18 years old when they received their wealth and held a job before or pursued income-generating activities after acquiring it. A total of 10 episodes were selected from the series across multiple seasons. Table 1 presents a summary of the recipients’ characteristics, including demographic details, sources of wealth and work trajectories across time.

This study treats identity as a narrative and socially constructed process that is expressed through stories people tell about themselves. Narrative identity theory argues that individuals construct a sense of self through life stories that integrate past and present experiences with future aspirations (McAdams, 2018). Therefore, televised narratives such as those presented in I Blew It are another avenue to perform and negotiate identity.

Although these narratives underwent editing and production processes, this mediation does not invalidate them as data points. Rather, it makes it visible, through illustrations and storytelling, how identities are co-constructed in social contexts. This includes media representations. Media texts have been widely used in qualitative research to examine how roles and identities are constructed, particularly where they reflect recurring cultural patterns. In this study, the focus was therefore less on unfiltered accounts of the recipients’ internal identities, but on analysing how work identity was narratively constructed in these mediated accounts.

This approach is in alignment with an interpretive, constructivist paradigm, which supports the use of televised narratives as valid material for examining identity as a socially situated and discursively produced phenomenon.

We chose to analyse data using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2021) over content analysis, as presenting the data through themes allowed for the evolution of the participants’ work identity stories to emerge. Reflexive thematic analysis was particularly suited to this study as it allowed for the examination of work identity change as a dynamic, interpretive process, rather than a fixed category. The process involved familiarisation with the data, coding, identifying themes and refining thematic relationships.

Initial codes were generated from interview transcripts and visual narratives. During coding, we constantly turned to the research questions to ensure that the findings would ultimately be aligned to them. We then developed themes to capture work identity disruption before, during and after financial decline. Having all the research members involved in the analysis, each with our potential biases and own life stories, which shaped our understanding of the participants’ experiences, called for us to interrogate our assumptions to reduce bias (see Linneberg & Korsgaard, 2019; McGowan & Sekaja, 2022).

We deliberately planned how we would maintain rigour when using publicly available data. Rigour in this study was treated as an interpretive practice rather than a checklist of techniques. Trustworthiness was ensured through credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). We maintained credibility by grounding interpretations in both literature and direct quotations from participants. This helped to preserve their authentic voices. We enhanced dependability by maintaining detailed methodological documentation and engaging in regular consultations among ourselves. Having three researchers involved in the process acted as a form of investigator triangulation. Reflexive engagement and ongoing dialogue among the researchers helped achieve confirmability. This also ensured that the interpretations of experiences remained grounded in the data while also acknowledging the researchers’ roles in the construction of knowledge. Lastly, transferability was supported by rich descriptions of participants’ experiences, context and process, which would allow future researchers to assess the applicability of the findings to other research settings.

This study received ethical clearance from the Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management’s Research Ethics Committee, under clearance code IPPM-2025-942(M). Although the data were obtained from publicly available episodes of I Blew It, formal clearance was obtained to ensure responsible secondary data use and to confirm that the study met institutional ethical requirements. It was important for us to still protect the participants and treat them and their stories with care. As there was no direct contact with participants, informed consent was not required. However, participants’ confidentiality was maintained by omitting episode identifiers and using coded references when quoting individual narratives (Ngoepe-Ntsoane, 2022). It was important for us to do this because even though the participants applied and agreed to be featured on a publicly available platform, professional psychology practice calls on us to still respect the privacy of participants. This study demonstrates how narratives that are available publicly may be ethically mined and used to explore psychological processes without direct participant contact.

We conducted all interpretations with sensitivity to participants’ dignity, cultural context and lived experience (Griesel, 2020; Wasserman, 2020). We have taken care to avoid moral judgement or stigmatising language when discussing participants’ financial or occupational outcomes. The research focused on systemic issues that influence work identity change, rather than on individual shortcomings (Workman et al., 2017).

This theme captures how participants defined themselves through work prior to receiving their financial windfalls. Their retrospective accounts revealed that they not only held jobs as an economic necessity, but a few derived meaning and a sense of self from their work roles. For those participants, their work had structure and purpose, and they could imagine a future in that work. Establishing this pre-wealth work identity was important for understanding how sudden wealth later disrupted it.

The participants’ accounts pointed to occupational aspiration, family responsibility, work routine and future orientation. For example, Tebogo had a pre-existing music career that he wanted to continue to build:

For Vinesh, work before sudden wealth provided a sense of purpose that he linked to meeting family needs:

Andile saw himself in aspirational terms. He viewed work as a pathway to leadership and recognition:

One of Andile’s family members contrasted his pre-wealth discipline with his later disengagement. They put it plainly:

Before the windfall, Lebogang had built a small business from the ground up. He regarded the business as an extension of himself and saw himself as an independent, capable businessman:

This theme establishes that before windfall, work was both an economic activity for participants and a source of routine and aspiration. Without this baseline understanding of work as identity anchoring, the disruption that followed sudden wealth would lack meaningful contrast.

This theme refers to the way participants described a rapid weakening of their attachment to employment after receiving sudden wealth. Based on their narratives, dissolution of the worker self reflects a shift from identifying as workers with routine and occupational commitment to viewing work as unnecessary once financial pressure was removed, which indicates that their work identity depended more on financial need than personal meaning. The participants described how work no longer felt like a central part of who they were, and how their sense of responsibility towards jobs and career goals faded as soon as they no longer needed regular income. Gradually, the featured individuals began to withdraw from the routines they had been accustomed to. Feelings of relief, detachment or indifference towards employment took over, which pointed to a gradual pulling away from their identity as workers.

Across the episodes, once the participants had received money, staying motivated and engaged in labour was difficult for them. Their newly gained independence took away any need for practical and psychological necessity for employment, which became a burden that restricted the enjoyment of newly acquired freedom.

This changed how they saw work: from something necessary to something limiting. The recipients and their relatives captured these feelings of relief and detachment from work. Reflecting on how quickly his relationship with work changed once the money arrived, Kabelo described feeling mentally exhausted and ready to prioritise rest over routine:

Tebogo also recalled that seeing the payout reflect in his account created an immediate sense of liberation from employment. It prompted a decisive break from the demands of daily labour:

A family member of Andile explained the stark contrast in his behaviour before and after receiving the windfall. The family member noted how quickly his structured habits disappeared once he no longer needed to work:

Similarly, Lebogang described the shift from a demanding routine to complete freedom. He emphasised how the absence of pressure made returning to work feel unnecessary:

In these accounts, the dissolution of the worker self suggests that work identity may be vulnerable to both job loss and the removal of economic necessity. When work was no longer required for survival, its function as an identity-making process was lost and left participants without a clear sense of occupational purpose.

This theme refers to how the participants spent their time following the dissolution of their work identities. Based on their narratives, this shift reflects how individuals no longer saw themselves through occupational roles but instead formed new identities anchored in spending and social recognition. This indicated a move away from work-based identity towards lifestyle-based identity. The participants described adopting roles that emphasised lifestyle and generosity, which temporarily replaced the sense of purpose and discipline previously associated with work.

Once the participants had shed their identities as workers, they drifted towards their other identities that were unrelated to labour. At this stage, the participants had not grounded themselves in any other occupation and opted to construct their identities around enjoyment, leisure, unstructured freedom, material spending and gaining social status, all of which suggested that they lacked a stable alternative identity to replace work.

These patterns of identity expression align with broader findings that sudden access to wealth often prompts individuals to adopt such as consumption practices associated with globalised status norms. For the participants, this was a way to pay themselves back for years of economic and social struggles. They would become spenders for themselves, family, friends and other people that had gravitated towards them because of their newfound riches. This might point to spending as serving both personal reward and social expectations. Common across the participants was the fleeting nature of these identities and how they left little time for productive activities, from a familial and economic point of view. Therefore, these identities were short lived. By eliminating employment, purpose and personal discipline became absent, and this had a detrimental impact on the recipients’ psychological well-being. This suggested that before sudden wealth, work may have given structure to their lives.

As the participants explained, these new identities were shaped by internal goals and how others began to treat them. A recurring pattern across episodes was that the featured individuals described feeling valued because they could provide, entertain or maintain a certain lifestyle, which gradually became central to how they understood themselves during that period. This indicates that their identity depended on how others responded to them. Their day-to-day lives revolved around social activities, constant availability to others and the pressure to maintain an image associated with wealth. This identity shift was therefore grounded in visibility and relational expectations rather than work or long-term goals. This may point to identity being about being seen rather than what one produces.

The participants’ reflections captured how quickly these identities took hold:

These accounts demonstrate how sudden wealth encouraged a shift into identities centred on pleasure and social validation. Although these identities felt liberating, they lacked stability and direction, and the participants described how difficult it became to sustain them once the featured individuals’ resources later began to decline.

In these narratives, work temporarily ceased to function as a primary source of meaning, with little evidence that anything enduring replaced it as a source of purpose. Instead, the recipients of sudden wealth relied on social recognition to feel valued, but this did not last once their funds were depleted.

While some participants prioritised leisure, others tried to find ways to continue to make money. When they were still in possession of substantial wealth, recipients attempted to start or develop an existing enterprise and generate income independently as business owners. By doing so, they signalled upward mobility, shed their pre-sudden-wealth identities and showed that business activity may have been a way to present themselves as successful to others. Their newfound wealth afforded them opportunities to experiment with enterprising, which was something they could not attempt previously with limited resources. Having money, therefore, can be seen as presenting individuals with new identity possibilities. While the windfall inspired some participants to start a business, others in the dataset had been wanting to do so for some time; therefore, the windfall became an enabler of this dream. They invested in a rental room to generate passive income. In addition, participants invested in others’ businesses as a way to support and uplift their community. For example, Karabo described how he used their payout to build rental rooms and support a local business. They believed that this would generate long-term financial security. Similarly, Vinesh used some of his funds to pay for a family member’s education and invest in small-scale ventures. For this participant, these actions were about laying a foundation for sustained income.

Although starting a business was a long-standing aspiration for many of the featured individuals, they lacked the financial and business know-how to sustain the businesses beyond the short term. All of their enterprises came to an end, which diminished their entrepreneurial identities. This made their business identity difficult to sustain over time. A close examination of Andile’s journey reveals that for him, his ventures had less to do with sustaining his wealth and more with maintaining his newfound economic status because he wanted to be seen as a ‘boss’. He attempted to do this by opening multiple businesses, including a tavern, taxi service and spaza shop. He valued being seen as a successful figure of authority and subject of community admiration more than actually being successful. This indicates that others’ perceptions mattered more to him than business outcomes. Maanda also demonstrated this pattern by attempting to run a small shop, yet the lack of proper operational systems and the pressure to give financially to others caused the business to collapse. Therefore, at least in part, social pressure influenced whether their businesses would become successful. Andile and Maanda’s reflections showed that the entrepreneurial identity was aspirational but not supported by the structures needed for long-term sustainability.

Lebogang came into money already having been a small-scale entrepreneur. Therefore, the expansion of his business after his windfall was an alignment of his entrepreneurial intentions, rather than an emergence of a new identity. However, soon, nightlife and image-driven spending took over. This reduced the time he spent on business operations. By his own admission, he was ‘too busy partying to run it properly’. Therefore, whereas he was previously disciplined with his business and showed signs of making it an even greater success, sudden wealth undermined the entrepreneurial potential he had shown before. This shift was also observed by Lebogang’s family members, who found that he spent increasingly less time at his business site and more time socialising, which eroded the stability he had built before receiving the payout.

At times, the lines between business and lifestyle were blurred in ways that undermined the participants’ attempts to establish entrepreneurial identities. Maanda described how he and others would consume the stock that was purchased for the shop during social gatherings, explaining:

Andile also blurred these boundaries. A relative noted:

In addition, Maanda struggled to enforce repayment of goods taken on credit. He stated:

In the case of these participants, entrepreneurial identity represented an attempt to retain a work-related self-concept without returning to formal employment. However, those ventures were often driven by image and social pressure rather than operational discipline, and so they failed to provide the stable identity anchor that the participants sought. This showed that not all work-related identities are equally durable.

The final theme refers to how the featured individuals’ sense of themselves as workers resurfaced after their wealth diminished. The re-emergence of work identity reflects the return to small jobs, informal trading or entrepreneurship as the participants regained appreciation for structure and stability, with work once again taking on a central role in how the participants organised their daily lives and understood themselves. Their financial loss ignited a need for them to reflect and re-establish routines through income-generating activities, where necessity became the primary condition under which engagement with work resumed. Several participants explained that working again helped them to regain dignity and confidence, and for some, the return to work represented a turning point that allowed them to correct past mistakes. The participants also described regaining a sense of control over their lives, expressing that returning to work created direction and brought meaning back into their daily experience.

The featured individuals’ accounts reflected that once their sudden wealth declined, they were compelled to re-establish a connection with work. While the return to work varied in form, several participants resumed income-generating activities after their finances were depleted. For example, Tebogo returned to small creative and informal earning projects, Maanda went back to working on creative tasks to support himself, Vinesh re-engaged with steady responsibilities to provide for family needs, and Lebogang restarted a smaller but more disciplined business venture. The participants consistently described this period as a turning point marked by renewed motivation. They viewed work no longer as an obligation to survive but as a meaningful source of identity and stability. This marked a shift from externally driven participation in work to a more internalised sense of its value. Entrepreneurial identity tended to re-emerge more authentically after the loss of wealth, with business activity becoming more closely tied to sustainability and discipline rather than image or status.

This was strongly supported by an operational discipline that had been lacking during economic stability. Family members also confirmed this shift, observing how the recipients’ behaviour became more structured and purposeful once they re-entered productive activity. One relative explained:

These experiences illustrate a process of rebuilding work identity through necessity, reflection and regained personal agency, as supported by the following participant quotes:

Another participant described how returning to work restored structure:

Family members also confirmed this shift. One of Vinesh’s relatives commented that once the money was depleted, they noticed that he ‘became more focused again and wanted to rebuild properly’.

In these accounts, when participants lost their money, work regained centrality to their identity, largely because financial need returned. However, they no longer saw work as just survival, but as something that gave them dignity and structure. This suggests that after losing wealth, individuals may develop a deeper and more stable sense of work identity than before, when it was taken for granted.

The five themes trace a trajectory of work identity across time for the windfall recipients on I Blew It. Theme 1 establishes that work functioned as a source of meaning, routine and aspiration before the participants acquired wealth. Theme 2 shows how sudden wealth dissolved this worker self, as participants described losing their attachment to employment when financial necessity was removed. Theme 3 illustrates the shift into non-work-based identities centred on leisure, generosity and social recognition, which temporarily displaced work as a source of meaning. However, these new identities proved unstable because they were built on social attention and spending rather than a deeper sense of purpose and thus made them difficult to sustain once the money and recognition began to fade. Theme 4 captures participants’ attempts to forge entrepreneurial identities, which often failed because of image-driven motives and a lack of operational discipline. Lastly, Theme 5 captures how the depletion of wealth prompted a re-emergence of work identity, with participants regaining appreciation for the structure and dignity that work provides.

Table 1 shows the shifts in identity after the attainment and loss of sudden wealth.

While the trajectories of the featured individuals differ in form and outcome, a shared pattern of disruption and reconstruction is evident across cases. As reflected in Table 1, the participants’ trajectories reveal a clear temporal sequence: a pre-wealth work identity, followed by dissolution of the worker self, displacement into non-work-based identities, attempts at entrepreneurial identity and finally a reconstruction of work identity following financial loss. These patterns suggest that, within these narratives, sudden wealth featured prominently in the way the participants described changes to their sense of self and personal value.

The study was conducted through the lenses of social identity theory (Tajfel et al., 1971) and hedonic adaptation theory (Brickman et al., 1978). The findings advance social identity theory by indicating that social identities may be reconstructed after sudden wealth attainment. This change is brought about by a change in economic status but lasts only as long as the money lasts. Figure 1 depicts the work identity transition that takes place in the attainment and loss of sudden wealth.

The participants were earners before receiving the financial windfall, and afterwards, they lost this worker identity in favour of a more leisure-based identity. Their newfound wealth brought a shift: they wanted to be seen and recognised as someone who could provide a good time for others (Mpofu et al., 2023; Ngoepe-Ntsoane, 2022). Where participants sought a sustainable means of generating income after attaining their wealth, they attempted enterprises. However, they did not seek to advance their previously held knowledge or attain new knowledge, qualifications or skills, which is an important factor for building and sustaining wealth and making more informed financial decisions (De Beckker et al., 2025). The participants’ experiences extend social identity theory by demonstrating that status elevation can occur without substantive group integration and that as rapidly as social status is gained through sudden wealth, so too is this status quickly and easily lost when the economic basis of social elevation dissipates (Falk & Graeber, 2020; Raschke, 2019). Social identity theory typically assumes that group membership precedes and stabilises social identity, but our findings complicate this claim by suggesting that this assumption may require refinement in contexts where status elevation occurs without group integration. Our participants gained status without acquiring credentials or sustained group affiliations that would normally be the basis of enduring social identities. As a result, their elevated status was brittle because it lacked the structural support, skill development, professional networks and institutional recognition that theory would predict as being necessary for identity maintenance.

The findings also deepen how we understand hedonic adaptation theory (Brickman et al., 1978) by illustrating that adaptation can also occur at the level of work identity, not just at an emotional well-being level. The participants were able to escape from work-related constraints, but this freedom was short lived and quickly replaced by destabilisation as routine was dropped in favour of a less structured pleasure-seeking lifestyle (Falk & Graeber, 2020; Sherman et al., 2020). As their funds depleted, the participants turned back to work to restore lost structure and stability. By doing so, the participants exemplified that hedonic adaptation can compel one to reconstruct their identity when their lifestyles undermine meaning and agency. The study thus expands hedonic adaptation theory by linking adaptation directly to work-related self-concepts. Importantly, this suggests that emotional equilibrium can return through work. Our findings show that people return to their emotional baseline by rebuilding their work identity, not just by getting used to how they feel. Therefore, taking both theories into account, the study shows that when sudden wealth is at play, self-conceptions around work are fragile and sensitive to social and economic factors.

The findings highlight the importance of designing interventions that strengthen individuals’ work identity and financial decision-making following sudden wealth (Mpofu et al., 2023; Ngoepe-Ntsoane, 2022).

Institutions that administer substantial payouts, including the RAF, pension funds and lottery bodies, should facilitate access to industrial psychologists and financial advisers to help recipients manage the psychological adjustment to sudden wealth, make informed financial decisions and sustain meaningful engagement in work or income-generating activity. The recipients of large sums should undergo financial education programmes.

Furthermore, a portion of the funds should be retained and released in intervals as income or as investment into start-ups or retirement savings to ensure that the money benefits the recipients throughout their lifetimes.

This approach would ensure that they not only retain agency as they receive a lump sum but also ensure they sustain themselves and live a meaningful life upon receiving an income. Encouraging individuals to maintain meaningful engagement in work, enterprising activity or investments that will bring passive income after receiving sudden wealth may safeguard identity continuity and psychological well-being (Caza et al., 2018; Furaker & Hedenus, 2009; Miscenko & Day, 2016).

Employers and career counsellors can play a proactive role by offering post-event coaching to individuals who undergo major financial or social transitions (Ashforth, 2000; Walsh & Gordon, 2008). Similarly, integrating psychological resilience and identity development into financial literacy initiatives may assist in preventing self-destructive behaviours such as excessive spending, social overextension or work withdrawal (Mnisi, 2015; Sherman et al., 2020). In community contexts, media producers can promote more balanced narratives in programmes such as I Blew It to emphasise long-term empowerment rather than short-term consumption (Ferreira, 2016; Molokoane, 2024).

This study had a few limitations. The data were obtained from televised narratives, as opposed to narrative accounts common in qualitative inquiry. Because of this, it is possible that accounts from the participants (including the family and friends of the featured individuals) were subject to editing to enhance the entertainment value of the episodes. This means the narratives analysed in the study may not have fully captured the contextual factors around the spending of the recipients’ money. Direct engagement with the participants could have shed light on gaps or any part of the sudden wealth story not captured by the show, or at the very least, provided the opportunity for member checking. Because we relied solely on the televised accounts, we had no way of verifying timelines of events or actual amounts claimed to have been gained or spent. However, it must be observed that the producers conduct a vetting process and ensure the ethical treatment of the participants in line with broadcasting ethics.

The data used from the show captured retrospective accounts around the featured individuals’ work and entrepreneurial experiences, which could result in the participants’ having forgotten or omitting important details regarding thoughts, attitudes and behaviours around work and establishing enterprises that are important for making interpretations about work identity. Longitudinal studies would be effective in this regard, as they could explore the sustainability of re-established work identity after wealth and how these shifting identities remain vulnerable to future disruptions.

All of the study’s key and featured participants were men. This was not unexpected, given that the overwhelming majority of the show’s participants have been men. This is an important consideration, given that work identity, financial behaviour and reactions to sudden wealth are influenced by gender roles. The findings, especially pulling back from work, focusing on status and visibility and certain types of entrepreneurial efforts, may reflect masculine ideas of work and success. So, the work identity processes we observed might not work the same way for people of other genders. Future research should examine how gender shapes different responses to sudden wealth in relation to what work means to people.