Find Your True Identity After Losing Your Job
	By Bradley G. Richardson

Some call it the cocktail-party question: "So, what do you do for a living?"

Those few words can paralyze usually confident and accomplished adults who have lost their jobs, reducing them to stammering idiots. "Uh, I'm between jobs." Or, "Well, I used to be...." Or, "In my former life I was...."

Regardless of how you became unemployed, your public label or persona has changed. Not being able to lean on a job or occupation for their identity can be frightening to professionals who have relied on a title, position or company name to define or shape their image.

What happens when you no longer have the prestigious title or company name to drop? For years, acquaintances may have known you as Jim or Jane with WXY Company, and, now, suddenly, you're just Jim or Jane. Many who lack an identity outside of work cling to the past, like the aging high-school cheerleaders or homecoming kings who at 35 realize that they peaked during their senior year and life has been downhill since.

This tendency may manifest itself by describing yourself in the past tense. For example, "I used to be..." "For more than 20 years I was..." or "I'm the former..." Great, but who are you now?

When you were asked to return your company garage key and parking pass, your employer didn't require you to leave behind your experience, skills, talents, contacts, decision-making ability, track record, accomplishments, professionalism, ethics or creativity. You still have those things. Nothing about you has changed, except that you're now on the job market and available. You're a free agent. You're the same person you were before, only you have a new direction and new choices to make.

You don't have just one identity, but several, each based on roles you play at a given time and situation. You are an employee or professional, but you also are a parent, child, friend, spouse, brother or sister, community member, athlete, volunteer, teammate and so on. Each role changes or gives way to another according to the situation and what you're experiencing at that moment.

If one role presents a challenge or is altered, then leaning on the other roles can support and buoy your confidence. In this case, your role as an employee has been temporarily diminished, allowing the others to step up. Rotating the roles you play, rather than relying on your professional title or occupation to determine your identity, can lessen the shock of a career setback.

Self-confidence and a positive professional self-image come from the sum of your experiences, beliefs, values and abilities, not from a title or association with a company. Titles can be empty and companies can go out of business or lose their luster. Consider that people once took great pride in saying they worked for Enron or Arthur Andersen.

Stress from a career setback can produce a domino effect. Reactions to even the smallest of problems can snowball to the point where we may start feeling as though the world is conspiring against us.

If the car won't start in the morning, the affronts can start to pile up: "My kid has a fever, the dog peed on the rug, my daughter's grades are dropping, I cut myself shaving, I need to work out, and I don't have a *&@%#$ JOB! God, what are you doing to me?"

Whoa! Slow down, and take a deep breath. Now is the time when you need to count your blessings.

If you open your heart and mind and look for blessings and positive outcomes, they'll happen more frequently. If you're looking for the swarm of locusts and the sky to darken and for people to avoid you, guess what you get? When you hold a strong belief, you see confirmation of it everywhere. This is known as "confirmation bias."

Of course counting your blessings won't suddenly make your phone ring with job offers. But they're a remarkable counterbalance to the unproductive doom-and-gloom thoughts that can dispirit jobless professionals.

While it's good to have high expectations, small victories are the key to a successful comeback. Instead of cursing the five people who wouldn't return your call or e-mail, rejoice about the one contact who did respond favorably.

What Matters to You?

What do you look forward to? What lights your fire, gets you excited or makes you smile inside? What makes you keep pushing on when things seem insurmountable?

It's critical to know what motivates you and what drives your decisions before you make your next move.

You're probably thinking that "What matters to me?" is a pretty simple question. "How about finding another job before I lose the house, my unemployment benefits run out, or my savings dry up?" You're absolutely right. Those things matter... a lot.

If you're like most people, you're trying to juggle work, family, finances, relationships, kids, and other priorities. These things can tug you in so many directions that it's easy to lose sight of what's important.

Believe it or not, your job loss handed you the controls of your career and life again. This career setback is a unique opportunity to revisit your priorities and steer your life in a direction that truly matters to you. Although it may not feel like it, you're in the driver's seat.

Life constantly sends us signals that gently nudge us in a certain direction or shine a spotlight on something that deserves our attention. It may be a layoff, illness, new relationship or other personal change or simply reading a news article or book. Some signals are subtle, some blatantly obvious. Often these signals go unnoticed because we're so consumed by the rat race that we let the urgent, rather than the important, rule our lives.

Sometimes you can start a trip with a particular destination in mind, but a detour can send you miles from your goal. Your career and life can do the same. You may hold certain beliefs and goals that you fully intended to use as a roadmap or guide, but external factors and choices altered your path, pushing you farther off the course you intended to follow. While your values may still be your mantra, this career crisis allows you to ask yourself: "Am I walking my talk?"

If you say that you want to slow down and create more balance in your life, why are you seeking positions that keep you on the road five days a week?

If you say that you want to make more money so you can provide your family with a better life and more material things, why do you refuse to search beyond your low-paying industry or remain unwilling to switch to a more lucrative profession?

If what matters to you is creativity, why do you pursue careers that stifle your imagination? If you value interacting with others, why do you choose to work from your home in a city where you know few people?

Be honest with yourself, and decide if you're living your beliefs. View this assessment as a compass that can guide and keep you headed in the right direction. If your career setback presents a fork in the road, knowing what matters to you can make the choice easier. Self-knowledge is powerful because it helps you choose the right employers, workplace cultures and job opportunities and, ultimately, find a job situation that's truly satisfying.

• The next installment: planning your next career move.

-- Mr. Richardson is the author of "Career Comeback: 8 Steps to Getting Back On Your Feet When You're Fired, Laid Off or Your Business Venture Has Failed" (Broadway Books, 2004). This article has been excerpted from his book. He lives in Dallas.