Role Models as Lanterns Through Life Quakes: Finding Stability When Everything Changes

The most important role models in people’s lives, it seems, aren’t superstars or household names. They’re “everyday” people who quietly set examples for you-coaches, teachers, parents. People about whom you say to yourself, perhaps not even consciously, “I want to be like that.” – Tim Foley

In the rhythmic flow of professional life, we often craft careful narratives about our trajectory—the strategic career moves, the calculated risks, the five-year plans. Then, without warning, life delivers what sociologist Bruce Feiler aptly terms a “life quake”: a massive disruption that fundamentally alters our personal landscape. These seismic events—whether job loss, industry disruption, health crises, divorce, or global pandemics—can leave even the most accomplished professionals feeling unmoored, questioning not just their next move but their very identity.

When the ground shifts beneath our feet, we instinctively search for stability. While strategies and systems certainly matter in navigating change, there’s another powerful resource that often goes underappreciated: role models. These aren’t just inspirational figures whose success we admire from afar, but real-life exemplars whose journeys through similar disruptions can illuminate our own paths forward.

The Unique Power of Role Models During Disruption

Why do role models become particularly valuable during life’s most challenging transitions? The answer lies in the unique cognitive and emotional support they provide exactly when we need it most.

They Embody Possibility When We Can’t See It

When disruption hits, our vision narrows. The shock of major change can create a psychological tunnel where we see only what we’ve lost rather than what might emerge. Role models break through this tunnel vision by embodying living proof that there is indeed life—often remarkable life—on the other side of upheaval.

Consider Arianna Huffington, whose physical collapse from exhaustion became the catalyst for leaving her media empire to found Thrive Global. Her pivot from media mogul to wellness advocate didn’t simply represent a career change—it modelled the possibility of using personal crisis as fuel for reinvention. For professionals experiencing burnout, Huffington’s example serves as tangible evidence that rock bottom can become a foundation.

They Normalize the Messy Middle

Professional culture often demands polished narratives. We present success stories with clean arcs, editing out the confusion, false starts, and emotional tumult that accompany true transformation. This creates a dangerous illusion that transition should be graceful and linear.

The most valuable role models demystify this “messy middle” by speaking candidly about their own disorientation. When Satya Nadella discusses taking the helm at Microsoft while simultaneously processing his son’s medical challenges, he normalizes the reality that personal and professional earthquakes often strike simultaneously. When Serena Williams shares her postpartum struggles while attempting to return to championship form, she validates the complexity of managing multiple identity transitions at once.

These honest accounts serve as permission slips for accomplished professionals to acknowledge their own humanity during disruption, rather than adding the additional burden of maintaining a façade of unwavering competence.

They Demonstrate Specific Navigation Strategies

While inspirational stories lift our spirits, role models offer something more concrete: observable strategies for managing similar challenges. They transform abstract advice into actionable patterns.

When former FBI negotiator Chris Voss details how he applied his professional skills in high-stakes personal decisions after leaving government service, he provides a transferable blueprint for repurposing existing strengths in new contexts. When organizational psychologist Adam Grant documents his process of questioning his own expertise and reframing failure as data, he models intellectual flexibility during periods of uncertainty.

The value lies not in blindly copying these approaches, but in recognizing patterns that might apply to our own circumstances, saving us from reinventing navigational wheels while in the midst of crisis.

How to Select and Leverage Role Models During Life Quakes

The effectiveness of role models during transition depends not just on who we choose to learn from, but how we engage with their examples. Here are strategies for identifying and leveraging role models during periods of major disruption:

Seek Resonance, Not Just Resume

When searching for role models during transitions, many accomplished professionals make the mistake of focusing exclusively on outcome metrics—wealth, title, recognition—rather than resonance. A more nuanced approach involves identifying figures whose values, temperament, and circumstances create meaningful parallels with our own situation.

This might mean looking beyond the most obvious success stories in your field. The tech CEO who navigated a company through disruption might seem like the natural role model for an executive in transition, but perhaps the novelist who reinvented her creative practice after losing her spouse speaks more directly to your emotional experience.

Effective role models don’t need to share your exact professional background, but should demonstrate qualities that resonate with your core values and the specific challenges you face. Ask yourself not just “Who has achieved what I want?” but “Who has navigated change in a way that feels authentic to who I am?”

Diversify Your Role Model Portfolio

Just as financial advisors recommend diversified investments, transition navigation benefits from a diversified “portfolio” of role models. No single person perfectly models every aspect of effective change navigation. Instead, assemble a constellation of figures who collectively illuminate different dimensions of your journey.

Your portfolio might include:

• A historical figure whose long-arc perspective reminds you that careers span decades, not moments
• A contemporary peer facing similar industry disruption whose real-time struggles normalize your own
• A cross-disciplinary exemplar whose experience in an entirely different domain offers fresh perspectives
• A personal connection whose intimate knowledge of your strengths provides tailored guidance

This diversification prevents overidentification with any single approach and creates a more robust framework for navigating complexity.

Distinguish Between Public Narrative and Private Reality

In our media-saturated environment, accomplished professionals must become sophisticated consumers of role model narratives. The public stories of successful transitions often undergo significant editing, with messy elements removed and timelines compressed to create more compelling narratives.

Develop a healthy scepticism about too-tidy transformation stories. Seek role models who acknowledge the gap between public perception and private experience. Look for those rare figures who discuss not just what they did during upheaval, but how it actually felt—the doubts, the false starts, the unexpected obstacles.

Author Cheryl Strayed’s unflinching account of her physical and emotional journey on the Pacific Crest Trail, for instance, provides a much more useful template for navigating upheaval than sanitized success stories that skip from crisis directly to triumph.

Extract Principles Rather Than Prescription

The most common mistake in leveraging role models is seeking prescription rather than principle. Your circumstances, resources, personality, and goals differ from even the most relevant role model. The value comes not from duplicating their exact steps, but from extracting the underlying principles that guided their navigation.

When studying how Ursula Burns rose from intern to become Xerox’s CEO despite massive industry disruption, the principle might be her practice of stepping toward problems others avoided. When examining how Bryan Stevenson built a consequential legal career addressing systemic injustice, the principle might be his commitment to proximity with those he serves.

Ask not “What exactly did they do?” but “What principles guided their choices during uncertainty?” These principles travel well across different contexts and can be adapted to your specific circumstances.

When Role Models Become Relationships: The Power of Direct Connection

While distant role models provide valuable guidance, transition research consistently shows that direct relationships with those who’ve navigated similar terrain dramatically accelerate adaptation. When possible, transform role model observation into actual connection.

The Courage to Reach Out

Accomplished professionals often hesitate to approach potential mentors during transitions, fearing they appear vulnerable or presumptuous. Yet most people who have successfully weathered major disruption feel a genuine desire to help others through similar challenges.

Technology has democratized access to potential role models. A thoughtful message that specifically references what you admire about someone’s transition journey—not just their accomplishments—often receives a response. The key is making clear that you seek insight on a specific aspect of change navigation, not general career advancement or broad mentorship.

Creating Reciprocal Value

The most productive role model relationships during transition involve reciprocity rather than one-way learning. Consider what you might offer someone whose journey you admire—perhaps perspective from your industry, connection to your network, or simply the opportunity to reflect on their own experience through fresh eyes.

This approach transforms what might feel like an imposition into a mutual exchange, creating sustainable relationships that can evolve as you move through and beyond your current transition.

Beyond Individual Examples: Collective Role Modeling

While individual role models provide powerful guidance, some transitions benefit equally from collective examples—communities that model alternative approaches to professional challenge and change.

Organizations like The Modern Elder Academy, founded by hospitality entrepreneur Chip Conley (one of my own role models), create environments where midlife professionals collectively explore new definitions of success and purpose. Industry-specific communities like Retirement Coaches Association demonstrate how entire cohorts can model transitions from traditional careers to meaning-focused encore work.

These collective role models expand our imagination about possible responses to disruption beyond the limited templates provided by mainstream professional culture.

When the Student Becomes the Teacher: Becoming a Role Model for Others

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of role modelling during transition is the eventual shift from student to teacher. As you navigate your own life quake, consciously documenting your journey creates resources for others who will later walk similar paths.

This documentation need not wait until you’ve “completed” your transition. In fact, real-time reflections often prove more valuable than retrospective accounts, capturing nuances that memory tends to smooth away. Whether through journal entries, conversations with peers, or more public sharing, the act of articulating your transition experience serves both as a processing tool for yourself and a future resource for others.

I didn’t set out to be a role model.

I just survived a series of storms that stripped away everything I thought I was—until I realized that giving back wouldn’t be a duty— because it’s a calling.

I certainly didn’t become a mentor because I had all the answers. I became one because I’ve lived through the questions—the storms that undo you, the crossroads that paralyze you, and the quiet rebuilding that no one claps for.

I’ve known success. But I’ve also known what it means to lose the map, the title, the certainty. What I discovered on the other side wasn’t just resilience—it was a deeper calling: to guide others through their own reinvention.

That’s why I created the iNFINITE iMPACT Mentoring Protocol—for high-achieving individuals ready to shift from success to significance. For those who want to turn hard-won wisdom into a meaningful legacy. For those who know that true leadership begins the moment we stop performing and start becoming.

This isn’t just mentoring. It’s a mirror, a map, and a mission.

If you’re standing at a threshold, I’d be honoured to walk with you.

The willingness to serve as a role model—not claiming perfection but offering authentic witness to both struggle and progress—creates meaning even amid the most disorienting changes. It transforms personal disruption into community resource.

Conclusion: From Imitation to Integration

The ultimate goal in learning from role models during life quakes isn’t imitation but integration—absorbing their wisdom so thoroughly that it becomes part of your own navigational system. The best role models don’t create disciples who mimic their exact paths, but rather inspired individuals who synthesize observed principles with their own unique gifts and circumstances.

As you move through your current or future life quakes, consider regularly asking: “Who has navigated similar territory with grace and authenticity? What can I learn not just from their outcomes, but from their process? How might their example illuminate aspects of my own path that I cannot yet see clearly?”

In answering these questions, you’ll find not just direction but something even more valuable: the reminder that you are not the first to stand where you now stand, disoriented but poised for renewal. Others have walked this ground before. Their footprints, if we look closely, reveal not just where to step next, but the infinite possibilities for creating our own path forward.

If it weren’t for Jesus, I would not be where I am today and my life would be without purpose. I’ve heard kids say they want to be just like me when they grow up. They should know I want to be just like Jesus. – Albert Pujols