When Life Changes How You Show Up at Work
Major life events can change how you show up at work, even when you believe you’re coping. Divorce, grief and redundancy can bring uncertainty, loss and fear into meetings, decisions and working relationships — sometimes before you’ve recognised the impact yourself. For divorce and identity coach Jonathan Burston, recognising what he was carrying became the beginning of a reset: not trying to recreate who he had been, but deciding who he wanted to become next.
Can you really separate a major life event from work?
Sometimes, you can’t — even when you think you are.
When Jonathan was going through his divorce, he believed he was good at keeping his personal and working lives separate. Looking back, he saw something very different.
“Divorce didn’t stay at home. It came and followed me into every meeting, every interaction, every decision, every conversation that I had.”
At the time, Jonathan was processing uncertainty, loss and fear. His mother also died during the same period.
He was physically at work, but, as he describes it, mentally somewhere else.
“I thought I was functioning at work, but actually just barely surviving.”
It affected how he showed up with clients, how he interacted with his team and how he managed them.
If you’re navigating divorce while trying to keep your working life moving, Lucia has also explored the practical side of this with divorce coach Danielle Barbereau — including how to communicate what’s happening at work, set boundaries and protect your energy during divorce.
Jonathan’s experience raises another question: what happens when the effects of a difficult experience stay with us?
What happens when work is part of your identity?
Losing a role can feel particularly difficult when your identity has become wrapped up in your career.
Jonathan had been with the same company for eight years. He had a senior management role, a decent salary and a good team. He admits he wasn’t overly happy in the role and that it was probably time to move on — but the decision was made for him.
Eventually, that led him to a different question:
“It’s not about me looking back to try and create who I was. It’s who do I now want to become as a result of what has happened to me here?”
That shift allowed him to see what had happened as a turning point — a reset — without pretending the difficult experiences hadn’t happened.
What are we carrying with us after something difficult happens?
Jonathan describes regrets, resentment and old stories as “invisible baggage” that can continue weighing us down.
The problem, he says, isn’t having those experiences in the first place.
“The problem isn’t about experiencing those things. The problem is we keep carrying them.”
And sometimes we may not immediately recognise what we’re carrying. In an earlier conversation with psychotherapist Dipti Tait, Lucia explored the less obvious forms of grief that can follow significant life changes. Dipti describes these as “life losses” — including the loss of identity, agency, autonomy, independence or freedom — and explains that their emotional impact doesn’t always appear straight away.
That makes Jonathan’s image of a heavy bag particularly useful. Resetting doesn’t mean dismissing divorce, grief or redundancy. It means acknowledging what has happened while asking where you want to go from here.
Does a reset require a big life decision?
No. Jonathan believes a reset rarely begins with one big decision; it starts with something small.
His first question is:
“If nothing changed, where would you be this time next year?”
From there, change might begin with a phone call, taking a different route to work, moving something in your house or doing something solely for yourself.
Those small changes can begin creating momentum.
“Our futures aren’t built by one huge decision, invariably they’re built by multiple small steps to get there.”
You don’t need to see the entire path ahead. You need to decide what small change you can make today.
What could your next step be?
If life has changed how you’re showing up at work, you don’t have to have your whole future figured out before you start exploring what you want next.
Take Lucia Knight’s free Boost Your Joy at Work Quiz to discover your Joy Readiness Score, your easiest quick win and your biggest blind spot:
https://lucia-trqb5gnw.scoreapp.com/
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[00:00:00] When Personal Life Follows You to Work
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: Divorce didn't stay at home. It followed me into every meeting, every interaction, every decision, every conversation that I had. I thought I was functioning at work, but actually just barely surviving.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: We are not robots. It's absolute madness to imagine that we can compartmentalise giant life events like divorce by putting it in a box while we continue to thrive at work. Work gets much harder when we're going through emotionally painful experiences beyond work.
So when I heard Jonathan Burston talk really powerfully about the vulnerable experience of his divorce, followed by an unexpected redundancy, I had to invite him to share his ideas with you on resetting post divorce.
Let's dive in.
Jonathan, when we were chatting recently, you said something about when you were going through your divorce, it had a huge impact on your performance at work, and I don't think many people talk about that very often. I wonder, could you share a little bit more about that?
[00:01:18] When ‘Coping’ Starts Affecting Your Work
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: Yes, absolutely. I used to think that I was really good at separating work from my personal and home life. Then divorce happened and I realised perhaps looking back now, it was completely impossible because if I reflect on it now, divorce didn't stay at home. It came and followed me into every meeting, every interaction, every decision, every conversation that I had.
And what I hadn't realised at the time was that I was processing uncertainty, loss, fear. So even though I was physically at work, mentally I was somewhere else, but I didn't recognise that at the time. I was simply functioning to get through the day. And that really impacted how I showed up for what I did in the day to day, how I interacted with clients, how I interacted with the team that I managed, and how I managed that team.
And then compounded by my mother's death through the same period. Suddenly I thought I was functioning at work, but actually just barely surviving. That ultimately, I think it had a a major impact on me being made redundant by that company. And if I look back trying to juggle all those things at the same time and not acknowledging it actually really had an impact on my performance at work.
Just trying to cope with all those things going on at the same time.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: It sounds impossible, but I rarely see people acknowledging that, they might just say, oh, this is hard, but we're just on the train to keep going, keep everything moving, spinning all those plates. So what, in reflecting about that, because it's been some years since that situation, what, what have you learned, or what new thoughts do you have about that?
[00:03:06] When Your Career Identity Gets Disrupted
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: In many ways now, looking back, what happened to me in that role was probably a blessing. What happened in terms of that redundancy. I know at the time it felt really rubbish, because you think your identity is wrapped up in your career, who you are, and that is me. And and I can't say I was overly happy in the role that I was in, but probably I was probably a little bit too lazy to go and look elsewhere because I was in a senior management role.
I had a decent salary, had a good team. And I liked the company, but I'd been there eight years at that point, in the same role. It was probably time to move on. Just so happened it wasn't decided by me when to move on. It was decided by the company.
And I can understand why they did. It, once I got over that sort of piece around my own identity and the ego feeling bruised, which, is there to try and protect us, it's not about me looking back to try and create who I was, its who do I now want to become as a result of what has happened to me here?
So seeing it as a turning point, seeing it as a reset, and in that way, not pretending that those difficult things didn't happen, but trying to accept that those things happened without allowing it to dictate or decide what my future was going to be.
[00:04:22] The Invisible Baggage We Keep Carrying
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: We've got this invisible baggage that we never seem to get rid of, that weighs us down. Whether it's regrets or whether it is resentment, old stories, the things that people say, the things that happen to us. And the problem isn't about experiencing those things. The problem is we keep carrying them.
In the early days of being made redundant and everything that's going on, I had the bag with me carrying all the stones in it that you were carrying with you and then trying to get rid of some of these stones as you were going along to lighten, lighten, lighten up the bag.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: I love when you used the word reset, and I know that you use that word in your work and it's part of the philosophy of how you do it. And I love the imagery that you've just described, this heavy bag. I read a childhood book once called The Big Bag of Worries. Yeah. And you, I've just seen you carrying the big bag, but somehow this reset that you're talking about helps you to lighten that load.
Tell me a little bit more about that reset.
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: So reset to me was all about how do you have those challenging times in our life, particularly in the likes of divorce, which is, up there with grief . How do you use them as the reason to move forward.
We can't change what's behind us, but we can change what is ahead of us. And that's about giving more focus to what we want from life.
My father used to say, you can't go back and wonder what if because you can't. And you're just wasting a lot of energy do doing that.
Not dismissing the fact that divorce is hard and it is a real challenge for people to go through as is going through redundancy, going through grief, to acknowledge them and then say, where do I go forward in my life so that I just don't keep carrying this bag with me and it just weighs me down and I'm not living something positively.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: And that's sort of the reset and everything you've said. It's got this real, it feels as if it's got momentum. Yeah. So that the slowing down of the heavy bag gets lightened because you're focusing on the future and walking into a new future that you've decided love, love that.
So if someone is listening, yeah. And they themselves are either experiencing divorce, going through it or at the end of it, or beginning of it, but they're thinking about, ooh, that idea of reset resonates. Is there something really practical or easy or just fast that they could do now to begin to experience a little bit of that gorgeous reset philosophy?
[00:06:47] How Small Changes Create a Reset
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think there's one question I would suggest that people answer reflectively is if nothing changed, where would you be this time next year? Now, most people know the answer to that question, and that's not about making necessarily some substantive change today.
'cause people think that a reset comes from some big decision. And my experience of it, it rarely does come from a big decision. It starts with something really small that it could be a phone call, it could changing the route to work, it could be moving something in the house, doing something that is solely for ourselves to try to create those new neural pathways to demonstrate the brain that I can do something that is different from the thing that I did yesterday.
And those small changes, and I've seen this multiple times over the years of those small changes, can change our identities and they build up to being bigger things. Because , back to your point earlier of momentum of change, and I changed yesterday. I'm changing something today and I'm changing something tomorrow, really small.
And then suddenly within a week, two weeks, even in that short period, you've come a long way further than where you were. So my question then would be to somebody is, so what's that one small decision, one small change that you can make today? You don't have to know where you're going that the full path ahead of you.
You just have to stop standing still and taking that next step. Because our futures aren't built by one huge decision, invariably they're built by multiple small steps to get there.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: One more tiny question. What does Joy at work look like or feel like for you?
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: Helping people fulfil a positive life to overcome the thing that is challenging them. And just to help them on that path is not about me, it's about them. Everybody is okay and everybody has the thing inside them that they need to move forward. All they need sometimes just somebody giving them that little bit of a nudge. And to me, I get a huge amount of fulfilment outta that.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: So what if I was looking at Jonathan, who was getting a huge amount of fulfilment out of the work that he has done at the end of the day, how would I know?
Jonathan Burston - Breakup and Recovery Coach: Oh, that's a good question. How would I know? You would see me at the end of any session with somebody smile, but you would hear the words that you've done this work, not me. You've done this work.
Lucia Knight - Midlife Career Design Coach: When you're ready for more, take the Boost Your Joy at work quiz. I built it for experienced people who know that more joy at work is possible, but they're just not sure where to start. This is where to start. You'll discover your joy readiness score, your easiest quick win, and your biggest blind spot so that you can start moving immediately towards work that you might want to do forever.
