You’re in the sweet spot. You’ve mastered your role. Everything is going right. And then: You’re laid off. The market shifts. A company goes under.

These are always looming threats, but they came into sharp focus during the pandemic. Matthew Swaney has been an airline pilot for more than 35 years. When travel patterns shifted at the height of COVID, he was let go from his job with limited prospects for a new one.

Re-inventing yourself early in your career is one thing. But Swaney built a lifetime of experience around flying, only to have it taken away so close to retirement. As a regular listener of “Disrupt Yourself,” he reached out to Whitney for advice. The result is this candid conversation about grieving the loss of your identity, and the fear of jumping to a completely unknown S Curve in uncertain times.