The End of Work Is Not the End of You
How to transform the loss of title, status and power into presence, perspective, and the chance to finally be yourself.
If you are lucky, you are old — or you are going to get old. If you are a person who has had a successful work life, that is something to be very grateful for. But if that is over, or is going to be over soon, that can be very challenging. If you are not that old, and you are getting pushed out of your work identity, that can be very painful.
So, starting with the good stuff, it’s good that you are alive. But for many, it can be very difficult to transition into the post-professional part of your life. This book, and the following words, are here to help you with that.
I’m a psychotherapist and coach. Here are a few stories.
A guy in his mid-fifties came to see me because he was experiencing overwhelming anxiety. He couldn’t sleep, and his rumination was driving him, well, crazy. He’d worked for a financial firm for thirty years. He and his three partners built it from nothing, and now it was worth billions.
His partners never said it to him directly. They told him he could always have an office — and wasn’t the money all he needed anyway? He had the sinking feeling in his stomach - he was being pushed out.
Understandably, whatever the motivations of his partners, he took this very personally. He was a scrappy kid who worked himself up from humble beginnings. His work identity was a huge part of who he was. The success he found allowed him to take care of his family, both nuclear and extended. As each part of his identity was amputated from him, he plunged into a depression.
Here’s another one. I worked with a woman who inherited a retail company from her father, whom she idealized. She grew the company into a substantial brand. When the financial crisis hit, like so many companies, she couldn’t pay her short-term debts, and the banks wouldn’t give her any money. Instead of taking the good advice of her partners, she couldn’t let the business go. To simply take the money that she would get if she sold it meant betraying her father. She couldn’t face the decision and ended up with virtually nothing.
One more. I worked with a man who was very successful in the music business. When he came to see me in his 70s, he was in conflict. He was still in demand. But he was tired. He was uninspired. He knew that his best work was behind him. He’d had some health issues. He was being told to take it easy. But what would he do, who would he be, without the accolades? What would happen to his legacy?
Underneath all these stories is one unspoken word — mortality. The end of our central roles in the work world points to the fact that we are one significant step closer to the end of it all. Of all the issues that one can bring into therapy, mortality is one that we can’t fix.
So, what is one to do?
First, let’s look through one lens to deepen our understanding of what is going on here. Robert Moore, an archetypal psychologist deeply influenced by the psychological pioneer Carl Jung, came up with a four-stage framework for the lifespan of a man. (I would say that there are, and can be, parallels for women, but for now we’ll go with his structure.)
Moore claimed that the four stages of a man’s life are Puer, Hero, King, and Senex.
The Puer is the youth. Like the bumblebee, he doesn’t know that physicists say he shouldn’t be able to fly, yet somehow he jumps off cliffs and survives. The Puer is idealistic, takes risks, rebels against authority, and doesn’t care about the contingencies of life.
The Hero leaves his home to go on adventure, slay dragons, and win the princess. He seeks to prove himself through struggle, ambition, and external achievement — often testing his limits and forming his identity in the world.
The King sits on his throne and holds dominion over his realm. He represents stability, achievement, and benevolent power.
Finally, the Senex represents old age. He is the Wise Elder. He represents an inward turn toward meaning, legacy, giving back, and spiritual insight.
Together, these archetypes provide a powerful lens for understanding the psychological tasks and transitions of a man’s life.
As individuals move into their post-professional years, many face a loss of identity, purpose, and social relevance — challenges that can be meaningfully understood through this lens of archetypal psychology. This shift often feels disorienting in modern cultures that prize material goods over contemplation and relevance over introspection. In a world that often discards and ignores our wise elders, there is no healthy model for this passage. As a result, people often struggle to relinquish their former roles because they don’t even have the first clue of what they are supposed to do next. We all know the cliché — the man retires and dies on the golf course.
So what is the answer?
If you are young enough, don’t put all of your identity eggs in one basket. Yes, in order to succeed we need to give our work a great deal of time. And we may also want to have a family or relationship life outside of our work. (Let’s not forget the meaning of those relationships.) But there’s still time to pursue avocations beyond the work you do for money. Be creative. Start a side hustle. Volunteer. Save us from tyranny. Learn something new. Grow vegetables. Make TikToks!
Or how about this one: start learning about the most interesting subject in the world — you. Go on a deep dive into making yourself the best person you can be. Start working on it now, because if you do, when you reach that Senex stage, you’ll already have plenty to do.
If you are already there, I’ll admit, it’s harder. But why can’t you teach an old dog new tricks? Who said? Read the last paragraph and start doing all those things now. The world still needs you, especially when it comes to preventing tyranny. And we can add a few more to this list. You can teach. You can mentor.
Common wisdom has it that philosophy is for the old. It is also said that all philosophies, religion, and art are ultimately about accepting our mortality. (Maybe art is also about sex, but that’s another essay.) Jung tells us that in the second half of life our development turns inward, toward the spiritual. Yet, again, we have no guides for this in our modern world. Even organized religion often fails to show us a satisfying way in this regard. So that leaves a few ways of doing this.
One is to — dare I say it in this phone-based world — read. Immerse yourself in the inherited wisdom of humankind from every era and culture. Here are a few suggestions: the writings of Ptahhotep from Egypt; the Greek Dialogues of Plato and Socrates; the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle; the Upanishads from India; The Four Books of Chinese Wisdom; Grimm’s Fairy Tales; Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung. Go deep!
Second, work with an old guide, like me. It is important to have a place where you can dialogue about these issues, where it is safe to talk about decay and death with someone who gets it.
Third, find a group of like-minded seekers who don’t sit around and “kvetch,” but can do something positive together, even if it is just tell jokes and laugh.
Of course, stay active and physical. Dance. Love. Walk in nature. Look out to sea. Get some perspective on eternity. You are almost there.
We can focus on the sadness of what we are losing, or we can find joy in what we have right now. Cultivate “appreciative consciousness,” the ability “To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower …”
Finally, let us work toward the thing we all want but none of us have: acceptance. Buddhism tells us that suffering comes from attachment. What we are most attached to is life — the thing we are surest to lose. And knowing that we are going to die hurts like hell. I sure ain’t no Buddha, so I don’t pretend to have let go of that attachment. But we can all work toward it.
When we get old, we don’t have the same energy we once had. The Rolling Stones may not write another Honky Tonk Women. Whether they should or not, the world may not be as interested in us as it once was. You’ll probably get replaced by someone younger, stupider, and certainly cheaper. Maybe even AI. You’ve had a good run. At least there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. You might as well sing that song you’ve kept in all these years. You might as well work on that painting you always wanted to do but never did because you had to make a living instead.
Framing this life stage as an archetypal journey helps us see the end of your professional life not as an end, but as part of a vital transformation into a phase rich with insight, mentorship, and inner growth.
Don’t believe what your boss tells you. We need you. The world needs you. Your loved ones need you. We need your wisdom. We need your love. You have something important to give. Stick around and give it.
Oh, and while you are at it, do what you can to save us from tyranny.