What’s the difference between my two books?

When people hear I’ve written two books, Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You (2020) and Another Door Opens (2025), they sometimes ask the question:

“What’s the difference between them?”

And sometimes they think the first book was called Another Door! Just to confuse things.

So what’s new about my new book?

The first book is about navigating job loss and trying to find opportunity despite all the emotions to process. It’s about having three options; Stick, Twist or Bust. Stick to what you do, who you are, Twist what you do, who you are, or Bust - completely change everything!

I got many messages from people saying they hadn’t lost their job but resonated with what I talked about and the message of the book. So second book was born. Another Door Opens is about navigating any kind of change, career, personal, or life transitions, with intention, courage, and creativity.

Book One: Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You

Written: 2017–2018
Published: 2020 by Penguin Random House

It all started with a blog. Back in 2016, I’d lost my job and found myself asking, “What happens when you lose your job but you don’t want to go back to doing what you’ve always done?”

I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t even know where to start.
So I decided to ‘search out loud’.

The blog became a space to share interviews with others who’d navigated similar transitions, to recommend articles and books I found inspiring, and to document my own thoughts along the way. As I shared, people started reaching out. They’d lost their job too. They wanted to connect, swap stories, and feel less alone. Through those conversations, my blog evolved. It became less about me figuring things out and more about offering practical ideas, tools, and inspiration for others in the same position.

I’m a creative thinker, I work best in a framework. Structure helps me channel my energy and ideas into something useful. Out of my own experience and listening to others I developed a framework for navigating job loss:

Shock → Stuck → Slow Go → Unstuck → Thrive

This wasn’t just theory; it was lived experience. My own journey through these stages, and the journeys of people I’d spoken to, became the backbone of the first book. When Why Losing Your Job Could Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You came out in 2020, I started getting messages from readers saying, “This resonated so much but I haven’t actually lost my job.”

That’s when a lightbulb went on.

Book Two: Another Door Opens

Written: 2020–2024
Published: 2025 by Bonnier UK / Blink

If the first book was my lived experience of one type of job loss, the second is a deeper, broader exploration of change itself. I returned to the original blog name, Another Door, and started asking: What if I could share what I’ve learned about change in all its forms, change and transformation at work, career shifts, life transitions, personal reinventions?

By this point, I’d qualified as a coach and delivered over 1,000 hours of coaching, in 121 and group settings. I’d facilitated change and transformation programmes for large organisations. I’d listened to hundreds of personal stories about navigating uncertainty, resistance, and possibility.

Patterns started to emerge.

I noticed that when we face change, we often resist the very things that could help us most.

We resist pausing.
We resist embracing emotions and “getting messy.”
We resist playing with ideas, trying new things, and being truly intentional.

Instead, many of us “go with the flow” , which can be fine, but sometimes it means we miss opportunities to grow, pivot, or create something new.

Pause → Mess → Play → Try → Restart

Another Door Opens maps out these moments in the change journey. It’s built on hundreds of conversations and observations, showing the steps we pass through when we navigate change well and where we tend to get stuck. It’s written for the reader, to the reader.

I very intentionally put the reader at the heart of the writing. It became less about what I wanted to say, more about what I knew the reader needed to hear, or needed to read. Stories and tales were designed to give the reader a break from themselves. It can intense doing al that thinking about yourself. But most of the time the book is tracking where they are at. Some parts will resonate more than others. Essentially it’s a framework to ‘think trough change’. It’s not telling the reader what to do, more what to do think about.

It’s less about recovering from one specific event and more about developing a mindset and approach that can carry you through any transition in life, so you become better at change, anytime.

Which Book Is for You?

If you’ve just lost your job, especially if you’re questioning whether you want to return to the same kind of work, start with my first book. It’s practical, empathetic, and designed to walk with you through those first bewildering steps.

If you’re navigating a “door closing” of any kind, change at work, a career shift, business exit, retirement, a life change, or simply the sense that you’re ready for something new, the second book is for you. It’s a deeper, research-backed guide to embracing change with curiosity, courage, and purpose.

Change comes for all of us, sometimes chosen, sometimes not. You can meet it in a way that not only gets you through, but also opens new doors you never imagined.