When we leave a job it can feel very similar to a romantic relationship breakup. Whether you resigned, were fired or let go, there can be a sense of loss and many other feelings to navigate your way through.
Here are four ways leaving your job can be similar to a breakup and how to handle the fallout so you’ll come through the other side even stronger and ready for what’s next.
1) Trust you’ll find who you are without that role. You’ll find your bearings again.
After a breakup you may find yourself asking, “Who am I without this relationship?” Likewise, after leaving a job you may question who you are without it. Our roles both as partners and as employees naturally over time often become part of our identity. So when job change happens, there is also a shift in our identity. You may have to spend some time untangling who you are now from who you were in that previous role. Know that this is a normal aspect of big life changes, try to relax and trust that you’ll eventually find your bearings again.
2) Don’t push yourself to “get over it.” Let yourself go through the process.
After a relationship people may be encouraged by others to “get over it” but, as you may have experienced, that’s often just not possible. There’s a natural process to moving on that takes time. In her groundbreaking book, On Death And Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross outlined the 5 stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. As the title suggests, it was written about grieving the approach of one's own death or the loss of a loved one. However, Kübler-Ross later stated the stages may be broadly applied to many situations where we are experiencing a form of loss like the loss of a relationship or job. You may experience one to all of these stages after you leave your job or even in the time before you leave - we can hang on to jobs like we hang on to relationships long after we know it’s not going to work out.
The key is to be patient and loving with yourself as you go through the stages and when you find yourself experiencing intense emotions it can be helpful to remind yourself it’s part of the process. Give yourself space and time to feel what’s coming up for you instead of pressuring yourself to just “get over it.”
3) A new future is waiting for you. And it may be even better than you imagine.
When we break up with someone we can suffer the loss of all the hopes and dreams we had for our future with that person. The same goes for when we leave a job. We may have had a future planned out in our head and expectations about how it was all going to go. So, when it doesn’t work out that way it can feel painful. And we may be telling ourselves it means something negative about what’s to come in our future (ex. perhaps some variation of “I’ll never be successful.”)
But the thing to remember is that we can never really know what the future holds for us. It could even be something much better than what you had planned out for yourself. We just never know and often what we see as bad events actually lead us to good things. A life coach teacher and mentor of mine, Martha Beck has a little exercise to help illustrate this point. Think of something good that has happened or positive in your life now. Then, look backward in time to see how it could not have come into existence for you had some “bad” things not also happened.
The point is to try to see how what you’re going through now could all be unfolding into something beautiful that may actually be in your favor. Like in the hit single, “Since U Been Gone,” by Kelly Clarkson, “I’m so moving on...Thanks to you now I get what I want.” Which brings me to the last point.
4) Use the opportunity to gain clarity on what you want. And stay positive.
Just like how failed romantic relationships can help you gain clarity on what you’re looking for in a partner, your experiences with past jobs can make you wise to what you want. Reflect on why it didn’t work out, what your takeaways are and what you might look out for in your next job. In doing this you may be able to avoid repeating this situation in the future, but also the more we get in touch with what kinds of work and work environments are right for us the higher our chances of success and, more importantly, happiness in our work.
When reflecting, I want to note two things to look out for in your thinking. First, we can get a bit jaded. After relationships some may come away with negative and broad-sweeping statements like, “All relationships are doomed.” Similarly, after leaving a job, we might take on beliefs like, “All corporate jobs are terrible,” or some other negative global statement. While jadedness can be a coping mechanism to deal with our pain, these kinds of statements are rarely ever true and often just serve to limit us. So observe your thoughts.
Second, don’t get discouraged. Some may declare after a breakup that they’ll never find love, but we know that probably isn’t true; similarly, know that there is work out there that’s right for you. It may just take some time to uncover what that is and find your groove. The important thing is to get more curious about and focus in on what you would really love in your work and to keep a willingness to go after it.
