How the Most Powerful Person in the World Found Himself Again After Leaving Office — Clinton's Lesson on "When a Title Expires"
I interviewed Clinton twice, both after he'd left office — in 2005 and 2010. Which means the person I met wasn't the U.S. president standing at the peak of power, but "Clinton after office." And I later came to feel that the Clinton of that stage held a lesson more precious than any lesson about power.
Have you ever thought about what a former U.S. president faces after leaving office?
Clinton himself told a vivid detail. He said that when he first left office and returned to private life, he felt a little lost — because when he walked into a room, people no longer played "Hail to the Chief." That tune, which had once announced "the most powerful person has arrived," vanished overnight. He was only 54, his energy and ideas still at their peak, and yet suddenly the position was gone.
This is a situation many people meet, only at different scales: one day, the title that defined who you are is gone. It might be retirement, stepping down from a post, leaving a company you spent years at. When "general manager," "director," "chief of something" is taken off the front of your name, you suddenly face a question: with the title removed, what do I have left?
Clinton's answer is, I think, the most remarkable thing about him.
He didn't spend his energy "chasing the title back" — he could easily have kept reminiscing, kept trying to return to the center of the spotlight. He did something else: he redefined his own influence.
Just days after leaving office, a massive earthquake struck India, and the call for help came; he threw himself in at once. Later, he built a foundation and global initiatives, taking everything he'd accumulated as president — his relationships with world leaders, his ability to solve complex problems, his gift for rallying people — and carried it all over, applying it to fighting AIDS, disaster relief, climate. He even titled his post-presidency memoir simply Citizen. In his farewell address he said: he would never again hold a position higher than "President of the United States," but no title made him prouder than "citizen."
Do you see what he did? He didn't treat "president" as the source of his influence; he treated "president" as a stretch of time used to accumulate ability. The title expired, but what he'd trained under that title — relationships, judgment, the power to rally — didn't expire. He simply carried these things from a post called "president" to an identity called "citizen," and kept exercising them.
This, in fact, is the same principle as my own experience along the way. We too easily tie our value to a title — as if because I'm an anchor, my value is being an anchor; because I'm some chief at some company, my value is that position. But titles expire, and positions are left behind. If you completely equate yourself with a title, then the day you lose it, you'll feel you're nothing.
But if you've long understood that your real asset is the ability beneath the title — then the coming and going of titles can't shake you. What Clinton lost was the position of "president," but he didn't lose the Clinton who "can get a group of people willing to accomplish something together." The position was gone; the person remained.
So if you're standing at a crossroads where a title is about to be taken away — retirement, a career change, stepping down, or any shift of identity — I'd ask you not to rush to mourn the title you're about to lose. Ask yourself a more important question first: beneath this title, over these years, what have I actually trained that I can truly carry away?
Think it through, and you'll understand: what expires is only ever the title. Your real weight as a person is what remains on you after the title is removed.