What is the identity gap?

The identity gap is the space between who you were in a role and who you’ll be when it ends: the athlete after the final whistle, the owner after the sale, the executive after the title. It’s the stretch where the old answer to “Who are you?” stops working and the new one doesn’t exist yet.

Almost nobody prepares for it. I didn’t.

How did I fall into the identity gap?

When I was seven years old, I put on a football helmet. From that moment on, my identity was sealed. I was an athlete. It was my DNA.

Years later I was a starting defensive end at the University of Nevada, standing on Nebraska’s field in front of ninety thousand fans. Coach Ault looked me dead in the eye and said, “It’s your time, Dixon!” We lost, but it was the highest high I had ever felt.

Then it ended. I remember walking off the field after the last game of my college career thinking, I’m done. Now what?

It’s often said that athletes die twice. When my helmet came off, I felt like I’d died. For the next three years, I struggled in all areas of life. Relationships were ruined. I bounced around to different jobs. The football calendar had dictated my life so profoundly that when I stopped playing, it felt like the earth had ceased spinning on its axis.

I no longer had a coach to point me toward a goal. I wasn’t even sure what the goal was.

That was the identity gap. I just didn’t have a name for it yet.

What does the identity gap feel like?

After the last game, you step into the real world with two questions hanging over your head: “What’s next?” and “Who am I?”

The first one sounds like a career question. The second one is the real one.

When you’re inside a role, your whole rhythm of life is set by it. For an athlete it’s the seasons, the ongoing cycle of training, competing, and improving, with your coach’s voice playing in your head even off the field. Then one day there’s no more summer conditioning. No more locker room banter. No more marching band pumping you up from the stands.

It took me years to learn that what I missed wasn’t the game. It was the team, the purpose, and knowing exactly what I was supposed to do tomorrow.

Those three things disappear on the same day. That’s what makes the gap feel less like a job change and more like a loss.

Who falls into the identity gap?

Not just athletes. I’ve lived it more than once: when football ended, and again when I handed over companies I built. Handing over something you built feels a lot like leaving the field. The people are what you miss.

Years later I sat across the table from business owners on closing day and saw the same look on their faces. Different uniform, same feeling.

The research lines up with what I’ve seen.

Athletes. Research reviewed by Haslam and colleagues links a strong, exclusive athletic identity to more depression and anxiety symptoms after retirement. In their own interviews with 21 retired elite athletes, the ones who defined themselves mainly through their sport felt the loss more deeply than those who had a sense of multiple identities.¹ Psychologists have a name for one version of this, athletic identity foreclosure: “commitment to the athlete role in the absence of exploration of occupational or ideological alternatives.”³ That was me at seven.

Business owners. In a study of 16 former owner-CEOs, 13 described no forward-looking sense of who they would be after leaving their company, and 11 hit an adverse state during or after the separation. The study’s lead author, a former owner-CEO himself, described selling his company as being “out of the club; off the team.”⁴ And a lot of owners are walking toward that door: in the Exit Planning Institute’s 2023 survey of 1,162 business owners, 75% said they would like to exit their business within the next ten years.⁷

Executives. A title works the same way a jersey does. It answers the question for you, right up until the day it doesn’t.

Researchers call the underlying hazard identity threat: “an experience appraised as indicating potential harm to the value, meanings, or enactment of an identity.”⁵ Money doesn’t fix it, and a great career doesn’t prevent it.

Is “identity gap” an academic term?

Yes, and I want to be straight about that. In communication research, Jung and Hecht used “identity gaps” in 2004 to describe discrepancies between the different layers of a person’s identity, like how you see yourself and how others see you.⁶

I use the phrase for a specific moment in time: the gap between the identity a role gave you and the one you haven’t built yet. The two ideas are cousins. When the role ends, the way you see yourself and the way the world sees you stop matching, and you feel it everywhere.

Why is the identity gap so hard to get through?

The identity gap is a real thing, and people know about it. It’s out there, and people talk about it a bit. What isn’t talked about is the solution. Where’s the playbook, and where are the coaches to get you there?

Think about the athletic journey. You’ve got seasonality. You’ve got a playbook. You’ve got a coach. Every question about what to do next has an answer, and someone whose job is to give it to you.

Then it’s over, and nobody hands you a playbook for that part.

How does the identity gap close?

The same research points to what helps. It’s also what I wish someone had told me at 22.

Plan the ending. Earlier research summarized by Haslam and colleagues finds that planning ahead, and having some control over when and how you leave, shape how the transition goes. The blow is softer when the old identity has already loosened before the end. In their interviews, the athletes who found a new purpose typically did it “through active planning and recognising that athletes were more than their sport.”¹ I’ve watched the business version of this. A great price doesn’t guarantee a good ending. The owners who did well had planned for the day after closing.

Keep your team, find a new one. In a survey of roughly 400 retired athletes, keeping old group memberships and gaining new ones were both associated with better adjustment, and they offset the effects of losing the athletic identity.² That study shows a link, not proof of cause. It matches my experience anyway: the people are what you miss, so don’t let all of them go at once.

Build who’s next. In the owner-CEO study, most of the leaders eventually worked through it: 10 of the 16 moved from a negative to a positive sense of self.⁴ The gap closes. It closes faster when you start building the next identity before you need it.

What can you do this week?

Write down the three things your role gives you that have nothing to do with the scoreboard or the paycheck: your team, your purpose, and what you’re supposed to do tomorrow.

Circle the one you’d miss most. Then find a second source for it this week. One phone call, one group, one standing commitment that doesn’t depend on the jersey, the company, or the title.

Every game ends. Who you become next is still up to you. The sooner you start building it, the smaller the gap.