How to keep your identity when you lose (or leave) your job

When you lose your job, often your first thoughts will turn towards money and the need to keep the financial stream flowing. This can be a very real and urgent hurdle, particularly if you have dependents.

But it’s not the one that comes up again and again when I talk to people about job loss and redundancy. What seems to hit hardest is the blow it can land on your identity. This is a storm that hits deep. It leaves you feeling completely unmoored.

This is because work is a major organising principle of our lives. It is where we meet our friends. It gives structure to our days. It gives meaning and purpose to our lives. It’s the anchor for our goals. It makes us feel useful.

Job loss is a struggle; there is no denying that. I’m not going to be one of those annoying people who scoots over to your side and tells you to just stay positive.

But I do believe that you will eventually find some meaning in your situation, even if it takes a while to emerge. Inside every struggle is a gift. You don’t have to go looking for it while you’re in the depths of despair, but let yourself trust, even a little, that it is out there. Don’t lose hope because you never know what might happen.

Janna Koretz, a clinical psychologist who specialises in the mental health challenges associated with high-pressure careers, told me a great story about a client whose business was in the start-up phase and only had about two weeks’ worth of money left.

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He’d had stacks of interviews with venture capitalists and investors, but they’d come to nothing: nobody was willing to fund his start-up for the next round. He was upset and talking the problem through with everyone. He happened to tell his mail man about it, and his mail man just happened to deliver mail to an angel investor – who went on to fund the project!

“These are the crazy things that happen in life,” says Janna. “Sometimes really interesting things can come out of situations that feel excessively hard and impossible to navigate. So, not to negate how difficult it is, but this could be a great opportunity for something kind of unusual and unexpected to happen that might actually be great.”

Deirdre initially lost gigs when concerts were cancelled due to the pandemic, but was able to return to work part way through 2020. However, a month in, she injured a finger on her left hand and was unable to play. She had to cancel everything.

“That’s when it really hit,” she says. “Not only can the world kind of cancel your career for a while, but something could happen at any time that means, from one moment to the next, you might not be doing what you’re doing.”

She was privileged enough to have a bit of time to weigh up her options; the French government gave musicians a stipend so they would have an income, even though COVID meant they couldn’t perform. She’d been thinking about taking time off to complete some form of further study, but this wasn’t what she’d envisaged because she hadn’t been given a choice around the timing.

“This kind of inner tantrum hit me: ‘This was not my choice!’ I’d been thinking about taking a sabbatical for so long, and then suddenly a sabbatical arrived on my doorstep and I hated it.”

But it did mean Deirdre had time to consider forms of further study and there was a heightened sense of urgency because of her finger injury. She landed on the MBA.

“At first it felt very much outcome-focused,” Deirdre reflects. “I wanted to find a solution in case I couldn’t play the viola anymore, and this seemed like a logical way to formalise my tacit skills and get a salaried job.

“The MBA isn’t a contradiction to music. I’m really enjoying doing it, and at the same time I have no idea where it’s going, so it’s become process-focused, subject by subject. I don’t need to try to control the outcome – nothing ever really goes to plan in life anyway. I’ve realised that if I’m happy doing the process, the outcome will take care of itself.”

For Deirdre, the pandemic has been a time of prodigious paradox. Of grief and loss and difficulty, and incredible gratitude. Of being terrified of the unknown ahead, and excited by it. Of somehow finding a way for these seemingly contradictory things to exist together.

Deirdre has come to believe we need a bit of chaos sometimes; that this is where the fertile ground for growth is. You can see things from the edge that you can’t see from the safety of the centre.

There is some excitement in the uncertainty of what comes next. Deirdre gave me a beautiful philosophical lens through which to look at job loss, and at life and its struggles in general. For her, the pandemic has been a time of prodigious paradox. Of grief and loss and difficulty, and incredible gratitude. Of being terrified of the unknown ahead, and excited by it. Of somehow finding a way for these seemingly contradictory things to exist together. The biggest and most wonderful paradox, she has realised, is that everything matters, and also nothing matters.

“I mean, it really, really matters – who we feel we are, and our identity, and what we do – but from the perspective of the whole big universe, it also doesn’t matter at all; no one is going to remember who we are. It’s like, every moment matters, every note I play matters, how I pass from one note to the next note matters – but none of it matters. This is nothing.”

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It’s messy and hard to define, but it’s like standing on top of a mountain and feeling huge and small all at once. It’s like staring up at the vastness of the night sky, and feeling significant in your insignificance. Everything and nothing, at the same time. This is a wonderful paradox to hold within our every experience. What a beautiful perspective to carry through the world. How freeing it is. What you do matters, but not as much as who you are. They both matter. But also, not at all.

This is an edited extract from This Working Life (Hardie Grant Books) by Lisa Leong and Monique Ross, out now.

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