How to Survive a Job Loss, Rediscover Your Identity, and Rebuild Yourself After Being Let Go
Most career books teach you how to craft a new resume. This one tells you the whole truth about what happens when the career ends and nobody talks about it: the identity crisis, the isolation, and the process of clarifying what you’re actually trying to rebuild.
“No title, no job, no house, no citizenship. Nothing, no one can take that away from me.”— Mike Lee, executive and investor
It took a year of interviews with 29 people to write it. A Pentagon executive who lost two identities within one morning. A USAID employee who watched her agency collapse. A professional disc golf player whose career was never part of the plan. A single mother who returned to school at 52, finally able to pursue the thing she’d always loved. Different backgrounds, different titles, different reasons for leaving. The same core problems underneath.
Savan wrote it while living the transition himself — unemployed for a year after leaving the Department of Defense, diagnosed with ADHD at 46, figuring it out in real time as he wrote each chapter. Every chapter ends with a Try This section: concrete steps you can start this week, not someday advice.
If you just lost a job and don’t know who you are without it, this is for you. If you’re still searching and feel alone in it, this is for you too. If you’ve got the next job lined up but can’t clarify what you’re actually rebuilding, this is for you as well.
We've outsourced our identities to our careers for years. Without the title, we see just how much of ourselves was outsourced into it.
The job search is public optimism with private brutality. Isolation makes you believe something's wrong with you. There isn't.
Career advice teaches you how to find the next job. That's not the right place to start until you know where you're going.
“Success to me at the time was just coming back every day.”
“The hardest thing is getting in touch with the real you.”
“You’re not behind. You’re not broken. Let’s get into it.”