Find the upside in rock bottom, after losing your job

Research on recovering from job loss by Dean Shepherd, Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at Mendoza College of Business, was featured in Canadian Business. Read the full story here.

A new outlook and a new plan bring a fresh start personally and professionally. “Sometimes your identity is so tied up in your work that if you lose that the identity, you’re in a lot of trouble,” explains Shepherd. When ego depends so much on work, a looming failure feels both personal and public. But once it’s happened and over, failure isn’t an abstract insurmountable humiliation anymore—it’s a real-live situation that you’ve proven you can survive. With any luck, you’ll even thrive: “Many people end up describing rock bottom as the best thing that ever happened to them,” says Shepherd, “and far more often than you’d think.”