Why High Achievers Get Stuck After a Layoff

Hey friend,

Whether you've been laid off or you're still at your job, what if the thing slowing you down isn't a gap in your skills, your network, or your timing but the fact that you've never quite let yourself hear what you already know you have to say to yourself?

The first time I was laid off, it was during the financial crisis. Late 2000s. And what made it so disorienting wasn't just the job loss, it was the timing.

I had real momentum going. The kind that feels like proof you're on the right track, that the work is compounding, that your trajectory is unstoppable. I was building something and I could feel it. And then, almost overnight, the ground shifted in a way that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with a world I couldn't control.

That is the thing no one ever bothers to tell you. When external circumstances cause the disruption, there's nowhere to direct the confusion. You can't fix your way out of a financial crisis. You can't outwork a recession. So you're left holding this gap between who you thought you were becoming and where you actually find yourself and that's really hard to make sense of.

I did what I knew how to do. I managed things. Created spreadsheets to track applications, did network outreach, updated my resume. I was busy, even when I wasn't sure what I was moving toward. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I was avoiding the one question underneath all of my discomfort.

Not what was my next role. Not what do I qualify for. But what do I actually want?

I had never seriously asked myself that question in a way that mattered. I had been so focused on building, on momentum, on the next credential and the next opportunity, that I had skipped right past it. And when the momentum stopped, I didn't have a clear answer.

What I found, slowly and not gracefully, was that I had built an entire sense of self on top of my career forward motion. When the motion paused, there wasn't much underneath it to make decisions from. That was the real disruption. Not the layoff itself. The discovery that I didn't quite know who I was when things stopped moving.

I've worked with a lot of people navigating career transitions over the years, and what I see most consistently is that the thing stalling them isn't readiness. It isn't the market, or their resume, or some version of themselves they haven't yet become.

It's their identity.

When a career becomes the primary source of how we know ourselves and when it's the answer to "who are you?", losing or questioning it doesn't just create a practical problem. It creates a foundationally personal one. There's nothing stable enough underneath to make decisions from. So people do what I did. They manage the surface work. They stay busy. They apply to things that feel safe or that they "qualify" for. They keep moving so they don't have to sit with the question they're not sure they can answer.

The quieter and more uncomfortable truth is that most people in that chapter already know something important about themselves. They've known it for a while. They just haven't slowed down long enough or felt safe enough to actually listen to it.

I think of this step as "Locate" and its the first and most necessary step, and it has almost nothing to do with strategy. It's about stopping the noise long enough to hear what's already there... to locate it.

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to get there myself. But I did eventually land somewhere that was not where I thought I was going, and honestly, somewhere better. My path there started when I stopped managing the situation and started paying attention to what I already knew.

Just one question this week. You don't need to write it down or do anything with it. Just let think about it.

What's one thing you already know about yourself that you've been too busy or maybe too scared to actually listen to?

You probably know the answer before you finish reading the question. That's not an accident.

🩵  One Thing I'm Loving

This is on a completely different thread than what I was just talking about, but it's what's been rattling around in my head alongside everything else this week.

I came across a clip of Steve Jobs at WWDC in 1997. This was the year he came back to Apple and he was explaining why the company had lost its way and what he thinks it actually takes to turn something around. He says: change is hard and you've got to start with the big vision, the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. He's talking about product strategy, but I couldn't stop thinking about how precisely it describes how most people are approaching AI transformation. Most organizations start with the technology, the model, the platform, the vendor. They go looking for use cases afterwards and upskill employees based on use cases. And then they're confused when people don't adopt or change their behavior. They are confused when the ROI story won't hold together, when the change feels imposed rather than created.

Steve Jobs said he'd made this mistake more than anyone in the room. That he had the scar tissue to prove it.

There is something both humbling and clarifying about a 1997 clip being the clearest articulation I've found this week of a 2026 problem. The underlying human pattern of reaching for the impressive tool or title before you've defined the outcome you need doesn't change much when we look at AI or our careers. The race to be first in AI adoption is at an all time frenzy but yet how many organizations or individuals clearly know the outcome they are striving towards. The clip is on YouTube: "Steve Jobs WWDC 1997 start with the customer experience." It's about three minutes.

If something in this week's letter landed or if you recognized yourself in any part of that chapter I described, or you've got your own answer to that question, I'd genuinely love to hear it. Just hit reply to this email - I read and response to every one personally.

Warmly,

Heather

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